|
PRESS RELEASE:
13 NOVEMBER
2001
1986
U.S. AIR RAID ON LIBYA―NEW SOVIET EVIDENCE REVEALED
Today's verdict by the German
court that finds Libya responsible for the 1986 terrorist attack on
the "La Belle" discotheque in Berlin is supplemented by new
evidence made public on the Zurich-based web site of the Parallel
History Project on NATO and the Warsaw Pact (PHP)―an
international consortium of scholars dedicated to the study of the
historical background of European security.
The new evidence of the US
retaliatory raid provoked by the attack and of the Libyan response
comes from a report made at that time by Soviet General Koldunov
after an on-site inspection. It was given at a confidential briefing
of Soviet allies during the session of the Military Council of the
Warsaw Pact on 23-25 April 1986. The document, recorded by the East
German intelligence, has been found in the Berlin files of the State
Security Service (Stasi) by PHP associate Bernd Schäfer, a senior
research scholar at the German Historical Institute in Washington,
D.C.
General Koldunov's account
reveals as false Libyan assertions that at many as 20 US aircraft
were lost in the raid; in fact, only one failed to return. The
report sheds light on the tense relationship between the Soviet
Union, which supplied Libya with advanced air defenses, and the
state ranking at that time as a premier sponsor of international
terrorism. Soviet-supplied Libyan fighters never took off and
missile complexes never fired as their crews fled in panic.
US retaliatory action fulfilled
its short-term purpose of jolting Colonel Muammar Qadaffi's regime,
exposing it to the danger of an overthrow from within, but did not
succeed in turning the tide of international terrorism. "In the
polarized world of that time," Schäfer concludes in his
introduction to the document, "there was no room for an
international 'coalition against terror'."
The document is the first to be
published from the previously unexplored collection of East German
intelligence reports that are being examined and evaluated by the
Research Group for the Study of Stasi Archives, led by Schäfer,
which is part of the PHP network.
For further information,
contact Bernd Schäfer at 1-202-387-3355 or schaefer@ghi-dc.org,
or Project Coordinator Vojtech Mastny, Mst3696@aol.com.
PARALLEL HISTORY PROJECT ON NATO AND THE WARSAW
PACT (PHP)
Sponsored
by the Center for Security Studies and Conflict Research of the
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, the National
Security Archive at the George Washington University in Washington,
DC, the Institute of Military Studies in Vienna, the Machiavelli
Center for Cold War Studies (CIMA) in Florence, and the Norwegian
Institute for Defence Studies in Oslo
In
association with the Cold War International History Project of the
Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, DC,
Institute
for Contemporary History, Munich, Federal Military Archives of
Germany, Research Group for the Study of Stasi Archives, Cold War
Research Group, Sofia, Institute of International Relations, Prague,
Cold War History Research Center, Budapest,
Institute
for Political Studies of Defense and Military History, Bucharest
Affiliated
with the Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defense Academies and
Security Studies Institutes
|