PARIS, Sept 13: Libya and families of 170 people killed in the 1989 bombing of a French UTA airliner over Niger said on Saturday they disagreed on how much Tripoli should pay out under a compensation deal.

The development came a day after a key Libyan negotiator unveiled conditions for the pay-out, throwing into doubt the compensation deal concluded on Thursday which paved the way for the lifting of U.N sanctions against Tripoli on Friday.

In a joint statement issued on Saturday, the families and the private Libyan fund that will handle the pay-outs said they were on track to reach a compensation deal within a month of Thursday’s accord, but disagreed over the size of the pay-out.

“The ongoing negotiations will allow to set up the final amount and the payment mechanism, but also to organize an event giving evidence of the reconciliation,” the fund and the families said in the statement.

The fund, which is run by Saif al Islam, son of Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi, believed the sum paid to the family of each victim should not be greater than one million dollars, it said. The families wanted more.

On Friday, Saif al Islam told the French daily Le Figaro that as part of an overall settlement, Libya wanted to resolve the cases of six Libyans convicted in absentia by a French court in 1999 for the bombing, and whom Tripoli insists are innocent.

Libya also wanted to upgrade relations with Paris by signing a friendship pact, Saif al Islam said. A foreign ministry spokesman said his comments “were not an official government statement”.

The Libyan leader’s son made the remarks a day after France withdrew a threat to veto the end of UN sanctions against Libya in Friday’s UN Security Council vote — a move which was prompted by Tripoli making the promise of new compensation.

Saif al Islam’s comments prompted fears that Tripoli wanted to weaken the compensation accord, which was already expected to be less favourable than the $2.7 billion pay-out Tripoli is to make for the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, in which 270 people died.

In Libya, Saif is regarded as instrumental in Tripoli’s drive to normalize relations with the West. Diplomats say his views often reflect his father’s thinking.

In Saturday’s statement, the families and the Libyan fund said they were negotiating on the basis of a “constructive and faithful relationship”.

A visit by some relatives of the victims to the site of the crash could be organized in conjunction with the pay-out, they said. The plane exploded over Niger in West Africa.

The Lockerbie settlement, agreed earlier this year, dwarfed the 34 million dollars pay-out accepted by France in 1999 for the UTA bombing and prompted it to deploy its UN veto as a lever to secure more cash for victims’ relatives, among them Africans, Americans and Britons.—Reuters