Libyan team heads for talks with UN

Libyan officials were flying to Vienna for talks this evening on Tripoli's nuclear programme with the UN atomic watchdog the …

Libyan officials were flying to Vienna for talks this evening on Tripoli's nuclear programme with the UN atomic watchdog the IAEA.

Libya announced late last night that, after negotiations with the United States and Britain, it was scrapping banned weapons programmes and seeking to prove that its future nuclear research was for peaceful purposes only in return for an improvement in trade and diplomatic ties with the major international powers.

Libya's move was the culmination of secret negotiations with Britain and the United States launched around the start of the US-led Iraq war in March.

Libyan officials were not immediately available to comment on the planned talks with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna.

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One Western diplomat told Reuters in Vienna he expected the delegation would discuss the details of future IAEA inspections in Libya and the process of dismantling whatever weapons programme Tripoli might have developed.

An IAEA spokesman declined to comment on the talks and no details about the delegation's schedule were available.

Libya's decision to voluntarily dismantle its atomic weapons programme is almost unprecedented. The only other country to have done this was South Africa, which destroyed its nuclear weapons programme under IAEA supervision after the collapse of the Apartheid regime.

Western diplomats said yesterday that prior to the Libyan announcement, the IAEA had been growing increasingly concerned about signs Tripoli wanted to develop atomic arms.

A British official said Libya had not acquired a nuclear bomb, "though it was close to developing one".