Sanctions That Actually Work? : Good reasons for turning up the heat on Libya’s Col. Moammar Kadafi

Did units of Libya’s 55,000-man army rebel against Col. Moammar Kadafi earlier this month? Western intelligence agencies are treating as credible reports of an extensive but failed uprising, which apparently included serious casualties in its first phase and purges and executions within the military in its aftermath.

Libya, which has been under Kadafi’s erratic if not demented rule for 24 years, is no stranger to revolts and bloody retribution. This most recent effort to topple the dictator is notable in that the discontent probably resulted directly from the economic sanctions imposed on Libya by the U.N. Security Council nearly 19 months ago. All the more reason, we think, not just to continue those sanctions but to toughen them.

That’s what the Clinton Administration wants to do unless Libya quickly hands over for trial in either the United States or Scotland two Libyan intelligence agents who were indicted in connection with the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am airliner that killed 270 people. Libya’s complicity in that atrocity was established after years of the most painstaking international detective work. Evidence placed before the Security Council led to sanctions that include banning international air travel to and from Libya and embargoing all sales of military equipment and spare parts.

The sanctions are clearly causing shortages and inconveniences and encouraging discontent, not least in the military, which is the only institution capable of forcing a change in national leadership. To the extent that they are putting pressure on Kadafi’s regime--and the reported rebellion a few weeks ago indicates that is what is surely happening--the sanctions can be said to be working.

But they have yet to force Kadafi to extradite the two suspects in the Lockerbie bombing, or to comply with other U.N.-ordered steps to take Libya out of the business of fostering international terrorism. That’s why the United States wants to extend the sanctions to include among other things a freeze on Libyan assets. No military intervention is needed in this case to secure a worthy goal. The Security Council should move quickly to endorse Washington’s call to tighten the screws on Kadafi’s odious regime.