WASHINGTON, April 20 (UPI) -- The United States will lift economic sanctions it imposed against Libya in 1986 this week, the Financial Times reported Tuesday.
The move will enable U.S. companies to embark on oil-related business and closes one part of the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, which allowed Washington to penalize foreign oil companies investing in the oil sector in either country.
It will also result in a second payout of $1 billion to the families of the 270 victims of the Lockerbie bombing, the report said.
The decision comes just before Thursday deadline set under the agreement reached last year between Libya and the families of those killed when Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 by a Libyan-planted bomb.
Under the deal, the families are eligible for an additional payout of $4 million each if the United States removes its economic sanctions by that deadline.
