Libya claims it acted on its own

TRIPOLI, Libya — Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi decided to abandon weapons of mass destruction after receiving assurances that the United States was not plotting his ouster, his son said Saturday.

Seif el-Islam Gadhafi said the move, announced late Friday by Libya and promptly confirmed by President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, was a "win-win deal" for both sides.

Seif said in a CNN interview that for Libya, the deal held out the prospect of the lifting of sanctions which would allow the North African nation to acquire defensive weapons and technology.

"It would pave the way for the normalization" of relations with the United States, Seif said. It would also lead to the elimination of "threats against Libya from (the) West and the (United) States in particular."

Libya’s Foreign Ministry said that after nine months of secret talks with U.S. and British envoys, it agreed to rid itself of internationally banned weapons and adhere to treaties on nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. It also agreed to tell the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nation’s nuclear watchdog, about its current nuclear programs.

While Bush and Blair said Moammar Gadhafi had bowed to pressure to halt his nation’s drive to develop chemical and nuclear weapons, Libya claimed it had acted of "its own free will" to serve as an inspiration for the rest of the world.

As a first step, a Libyan delegation met Saturday with the head of the U.N. nuclear agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, at agency headquarters in Vienna to discuss the dismantling of the nuclear program, the agency’s spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said.

The delegation then headed to Libya.

The decision came after Libyan weapons experts met with U.S. and British weapons experts to discuss Libya’s weapons programs, stockpiles of materials and equipment, and development plans — including to develop chemical weapons.

Libya admitted to nuclear fuel projects, including the possession of centrifuges and centrifuge parts used in uranium enrichment, a nuclear effort more advanced than previously thought.

Gadhafi said his country had taken "a wise decision and a courageous step" and that it wanted to lead by example "in building a new world free of weapons of mass destruction and all kinds of terrorism, with the aim of preserving international peace and security and progress for humanity," reported Libya’s official news agency JANA.

Gadhafi, who seized power in a 1969 military coup, said that ridding the world of such weapons would help promote "popular democracy" and "meet ecological challenges so that the color green will prevail all over the globe."

Seif Gadhafi said the process started almost a year ago when U.S. representatives approached him saying his father could be assured "there was no agenda against him."

When the Libyan leader was convinced the Americans were not plotting against him, "he decided to discuss all the American concerns and to be more transparent, and he told them ‘now we can trust each other and we can open all the files, including the WMD file’," his son said.