Arms inspectors return

last updated 8 January 2015

Tripoli

The U.S. and U.N. reached an agreement this week on how to dismantle Libya’s illegal weapons programs. U.S. and British experts will remove and destroy the nuclear and chemical weapons components, and the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency will document and verify the process. The U.S. and U.N. had been at odds over the issue since last month, when Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi admitted he had an illegal nuclear program and volunteered to give it up to get U.S. sanctions lifted. The IAEA wanted to oversee the dismantlement, but U.S. officials contended that the agency had been easily duped in the past by the governments of Iraq and Iran.