"We Want Them Out!"

By William E. Smith

A killer goes free as an angry Britain sends Libya's "diplomats" packing

Somewhere over the western Mediterranean or southern France last Friday evening, a British Caledonian Airways jetliner heading northwest toward London crossed paths with a Libyan airliner flying southeast toward Tripoli. The planes were carrying home the second and final contingents of British and Libyan diplomats, thereby ending an eleven-day war of nerves between the two countries. It had begun a week earlier when an unidentified man fired shots through the windows of the Libyan embassy in London, killing a British policewoman and wounding eleven Libyan dissidents gathered outside in St. James's Square.

After the British government responded by breaking relations with the government of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and giving his representatives until midnight Sunday to vacate the premises in London, it seemed at first that the petulant Gaddafi might hold out until the last possible moment before repatriating his people. The British remained fearful that a slip-up could lead to a gun battle in St. James's Square and a greater loss of life. In the end, however, after more than a week of painstaking negotiation, the withdrawal of diplomats and the closing of embassies was accomplished without further mishap.

The week was a tense and painful one for the government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The British public was outraged by the murder of the policewoman, Constable Yvonne Fletcher, 25, and by the thought that the Libyan "diplomat" who had fired an automatic weapon into a crowd of anti-Gaddafi demonstrators should go unpunished. Even as the diplomats of the two countries were preparing to fly home on Friday afternoon, the funeral of Constable Fletcher was being held at the 13th century Salisbury Cathedral in southern England.

But the Thatcher government had been concerned about the welfare and safety of the estimated 8,500 Britons in Libya. It also doubted the feasibility of bringing the Libyan gunman to trial, since in the end he could probably claim diplomatic immunity. Finally, there was the fear that the Libyans might attempt a desperate act of terrorism, possibly by planting a time bomb in their vacated London embassy. The feelings of exasperation were summarized by a high-ranking British official: "We want them out, out, out!"

There were reasons for the British concern. From within the sealed-off embassy on St. James's Square, the militants sent Gaddafi a message, reported from outside sources, pledging that they were prepared to die "in defense of our principles and aims." The British government understood that such rhetoric comes easily to Libyan revolutionaries, but it also knew that it could not rule out the possibility of a Libyan act of ultimate defiance. In the meantime a coroner's court was told that Constable Fletcher had died of stomach wounds from shots fired by a high-velocity weapon, and that eyewitnesses had seen smoke and flames emanating from the barrel of an AK-47 automatic rifle thrust from an upstairs window of the embassy. For most of last week, her constable's cap lay on the pavement where it had fallen, still within firing range of Libyans inside the embassy. On Thursday, a fellow officer flouted orders and retrieved the cap so that, in police tradition, it might rest on the slain constable's coffin.

In Tripoli, the Libyan government kept up a propaganda barrage, accusing Britain of collusion with the U.S. in an effort to damage the reputation of the Gaddafi regime. A government-controlled newspaper, The Green March, charged Britain with "setting criminals, the police and stray dogs onto the Libyan students."

That theme was quickly echoed by the Soviet press. Pravda declared that the shooting incident was part of an elaborate provocation of Libya by Britain and the U.S., and stated flatly that the gunfire had come from outside the Libyan embassy. The British Ambassador to Moscow, Sir Iain Sutherland, protested to First Deputy Foreign Minister Georgi Korniyenko, who reportedly replied that Pravda was not necessarily speaking for the Soviet government. This lame and altogether misleading response was taken by Western diplomats as a tacit admission that Moscow was embarrassed by Gaddafi's excesses but felt it had no choice but to try to assuage the humiliation suffered by a client state.

Though the Libyan government publicly maintained what one Western observer in Tripoli described as "a defiant sulk," the British gradually decided that Gaddafi realized that the shooting incident had damaged Libyan interests and was anxious to get it over with. Early in the week, at Britain's invitation, he sent to London a three-man negotiating team led by Colonel Abdul-Rahman Shaibi, 46, believed to be Libya's security chief. The two sides went to work immediately to find a way to settle the crisis.

At the start, Shaibi insisted that the main group of Libyans inside the London "People's Bureau," as Libyans call their embassies, should not leave the United Kingdom until shortly before midnight Sunday, April 29, when the British ultimatum expired. As negotiations continued, Shaibi offered assurances concerning the safety of the British community in Libya, and the Thatcher government responded by making significant concessions. It was agreed that the Libyans would not be interrogated when they left the London embassy, and that their baggage would not be opened. Furthermore, the British police would not immediately enter the embassy to search for weapons and explosives, though they would do so early this week. Some observers suspected that this last concession was made after Shaibi assured the British that the embassy would not be booby-trapped to blow up after the Libyans had departed. The absence of explosives may have been confirmed by British electronic equipment monitoring the building.

On Thursday, the first exchange of diplomats and dependents took place after the arrival of two Libyan planes at London's Heathrow Airport. One was soon filled with a group of 137 Libyans, mostly the wives and children of diplomats, as well as a few Libyan officials who had not been in the embassy at the time of the shooting. The other plane was filled with 18 large canvas sacks, which had been removed from the embassy under the watchful eye of Saudi, Syrian and Turkish diplomats and taken unopened to the airport.

In Tripoli, 30 departing Britons, including Julia Miles, the spirited wife of British Ambassador Oliver Miles, sang Rule Britannia and God Save the Queen as they boarded a plane for home. They had been ready to leave for two days, and in the end spent seven hours at the airport waiting for permission from the Libyans, who were determined that their departure should be synchronized with that of the Libyans from London. Ambassador Miles complained of "petty harassment" but continued to negotiate arrangements for the two British diplomats who will remain in Tripoli to look after British interests under the auspices of the Italian embassy. Said Miles: "A diplomat is not paid to be angry."

On Friday morning, a few minutes before 10, the big black door at 5, St. James's Square swung open, and out walked the first of the 30 Libyans inside. As soon as their names had been checked by police, they were loaded, in groups of five, aboard green police vans whose windows had been blacked out. Another vehicle carried four large sacks and a score of smaller pieces of luggage, all unsearched by British authorities. The convoy then sped noiselessly along thoroughfares cleared of traffic and guarded by police at every intersection. After brief interviews by immigration officials and police, the Libyans were taken to their plane. By the time they reached Tripoli, chanting "Down with Britain!" and "The leader forever!," the British airliner carrying Ambassador Miles and his colleagues had landed in London.

Even before the exchange of diplomats had been completed, the British government had begun to address itself to the political damage caused by the whole affair. In the House of Commons, Opposition members were restrained last week while British lives were still in danger. This week they were likely to be more pointed in their criticism. They will undoubtedly ask, for instance, why the government did not take a firmer hand with the band of "students" who seized the Libyan embassy two months ago in Gaddafi's name. They will also ask why the government failed to respond to a warning of trouble from U.S. intelligence, though high-ranking officials said last week that, even if the U.S. information had been handled properly and had reached the responsible ministers in time, the Thatcher government would have gone ahead and permitted a peaceable demonstration, which had previously been authorized. To have done otherwise, they maintained, would have been to allow Gaddafi to set British domestic policy. Thatcher remained largely out of sight last week, content to let her ministers handle a situation that, whatever happened, could hardly fail to attract criticism for her government.

On Thursday, the task of British police had been further complicated by a takeover of Iran's London consulate by a group of Iranian Marxists, members of the Fedayeen guerrilla movement, who are opposed to the rule of the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini in Tehran. But this action, which coincided with similar demonstrations in Paris, The Hague, Frankfurt and Vienna, was ended quickly and was regarded by British authorities as relatively minor compared with their troubles with the Libyans.

If nothing else, the whole ugly incident at the Libyan embassy had demonstrated the need for some changes in the Vienna Convention of 1961, which defines the norms of diplomatic privilege and conduct. Two subjects that require special consideration in this age of Libyan "People's Bureaus" are diplomatic immunity and the special treatment of diplomatic baggage. Immunity was intended to protect bona fide diplomats from harassment, not to provide an umbrella of safety for state-supported terrorists. Diplomatic baggage was supposed to be free from interference by the host government, but not serve as a conduit for the unauthorized shipment of arms, ammunition or, as in a few alleged cases, narcotics, contraband and even an occasional political prisoner.

The British Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, is expected to advocate some changes in the existing regulations when the International Law Commission of the United Nations holds its annual meeting shortly. Since any change in the Vienna Convention would require the approval of its 140 signatories, the process could take years. In the meantime, the British government is seeking support at the U.N., the European Community and within the commonwealth for modifying the existing code of diplomatic conduct.

Whether such changes would have any effect on the behavior of a government like Gaddafi's, however, is another question. For years his London embassy had been a center for agents seeking to exterminate anti-Gaddafi dissidents and engaging in other forms of international mischief. The host government did not know the size of the staff or even who was in charge. The British assumed last week that, since the Libyans in the embassy were calling for food in multiples of 40, there must be 40 people inside; as it turned out, there were only 30. Toward the end of the impasse last week, the wives of Libyan diplomats made final shopping trips to the big department stores, occasionally hiding their faces from pursuing cameras. The Libyans inside the embassy even asked whether they might make one last visit to London's banks and stores. The police, who by then had maintained a vigil there for nine days after the killing of Yvonne Fletcher, turned them down. Letting them go unhindered was enough. --By William E. Smith. Reported by Bonnie Angelo/London and Roland Flamini/Tripoli

With reporting by Bonnie Angelo, Roland Flamini