Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Paris Signs Nuclear Agreement With Libya
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Reuters AlertNet
By Emmanuel Jarry
05 March 2006

Paris, March 5 (Reuters)--France will sign a pact with Libya in the next two to three weeks to help develop the North African country's civilian nuclear energy programme, a top French legislator said on Sunday on his return from Tripoli.

"An agreement on cooperation in civilian nuclear power will be signed the next two to three weeks," Patrick Ollier, president of the French National Assembly Economic Committee, told Reuters.

"The governments have already given their approval."

France, home to the wolrd's largest maker of nuclear reactors, AVERA, , and top nuclear power producer EDF , expressed interest last May to develop peaceful atomic energy in Libya, after it had voluntarily agreed to give up internationally banned weapons.

In 2003, Libya promised to give up nuclear, chemical and biological arms, it also signed additional protocols with the U.S.'s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi said at the time that he still hoped to develop a nuclear programme for peaceful means.

Libya cast off more than a decade of International ostracism in 2003 when it accepted responsibility and began paying compensation for the bombing of airliners over Scotland and Niger in 1988 and 1989.

Fears over oil and gas supplies and climate change have also pushed nuclear power into the limelight as a means to produce energy without emitting much carbon dioxide, blamed for global warming...

Source:
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L0585254.htm


The Financial Times.com
By Tom Braithwaite in Paris
Published: March 7, 2006

France is set to endorse a civil nuclear agreement with Libya in a further sign that Western countries are eager to do business with the former pariah state in previously taboo sectors.

Patrick Ollier, president of the Economic Affairs Committee at the French National Assembly, on Tuesday said an outline agreement had already been reached between the two countries which "should be signed in the next two weeks."

Source:
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/2f2c7cb0-adfc-11da-8ffb-0000779e2340.html

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