UN: Another crisis is brewing between France and the US and Britain in the UN Security Council. But the roles have been reversed. This time, Britain demands conciliatory treatment for an Arab dictator accused of supporting terrorism. Like last March in the Iraq crisis, France again threatens to use its veto.
The confrontation is the legacy of the twin bombings of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in December 1988 and UTA flight 772 over Niger the following year.
A total of 446 civilians were murdered in the two attacks. There was sufficient evidence against Libya for the UN to impose sanctions in 1992, under resolutions 731 and 748.
A draft resolution presented by Britain on Monday would end the sanctions in exchange for Libya's wishy-washy admission of guilt and a payment of $2.7 billion in blood money: $10 million (€9 million) to the family of each of 270 Lockerbie victims.
The Libyan Foreign Minister, Mr Abdel Rahman Chalgham,boasted on Al-Jazeera television that his country had bought the lifting of UN sanctions.
The US has been a passive partner in the operation to rehabilitate Libya. The agreement stipulates that US claimants will receive only two-fifths of their payment if Washington fails to lift its own unilateral sanctions against Libya and keeps Libya on its list of "terrorist states" - where it has languished for the past 24 years.
Why Britain is so eager to mend fences with Col Gadafy is a mystery, especially after his past assistance to the IRA and the killing of a policewoman in front of the Libyan embassy in London. But Foreign Office Minister Dr Denis MacShane has hailed the UN resolution as a step marking Libya's return to the international community.
The linking of the atrocities over Scotland and Niger in the original UN resolutions is one of Paris's arguments in its quest to keep UN sanctions in place. There were 65 French citizens among the 170 victims of the Brazzaville to Paris flight, and some of their families received partial settlements of between €3,000 and €30,000 in 1999.
Once UN sanctions are formally lifted, France will have no leverage over Libya. The French Foreign Ministry wants the US and Britain to postpone the Security Council vote out of solidarity.
Unfortunately for the families of the UTA victims, France bungled their case.
The US and Britain insisted from the outset that the Lockerbie suspects be handed over and that "appropriate" damages be paid. Two Libyans were extradited for trial in the Netherlands in 1999. One is serving a life sentence in Glasgow; the other was acquitted.
In France, it was left to the families to file a civil suit against six Libyan suspects. Paris did not try to extradite the Libyans, though before they were tried in absentia, President Jacques Chirac received a vague commitment from Col Gadafy that the assize court's decision would be respected.
Despite life sentences handed down by the French court, none were imprisoned. The chief perpetrator of the UTA bombing, Col Gadafy's brother-in-law, Abdallah Senoussi, was promoted to head of Libyan intelligence. The court set damages according to the scale used for traffic accidents in France, and Libya was delighted to pay the total of $35 million. Mr Chalgham, the foreign minister, now claims there was an agreement with France. "It was carried out in full," he said. "We will not accept extortion or blackmail."
For the families of the UTA victims, the British-sponsored resolution has been painful.
"It's not a question of time," Mr Guillaume Denoix de Saint-Marc, the spokesman for the families' association, whose father died on the UTA flight, said. "We still feel the way we did when it happened, because the crime remains unpunished."
Mr de Saint-Marc met Col Gadafy's son and heir apparent, Seif al-Islam, when he visited Paris last year.
The Frenchman has twice travelled to Libya to continue negotiations, and believes he can obtain an equitable agreement for the French if the UN Security Council vote is delayed.
Seif al-Islam al-Gadafy arranged the liberation of German and French hostages in the Philippines in 2000, and mediated the release of 14 European hostages held by Algerian fundamentalists in the Sahara this week.
Mr de Saint-Marc insists that the problem is justice, not money. "I couldn't put a price on my father's life," he said.
"Should it vary according to whether he was in the American or the French plane? Were the French citizens who died over Lockerbie worth $10 million, while the Americans in the DC-10 (over Niger) were worth peanuts?"
Though UN sanctions have been suspended since Libya turned over the two Lockerbie suspects in 1999, the possibility they might be enforced again hung over Col Gadafy's regime and deterred investment.
If they are lifted without a proper settlement for the French victims, Mr de Saint-Marc says, "it will be like killing my father a second time."