No. 2 at US Embassy in Tel Aviv picked as new envoy to Libya

The appointment of Cretz, who is Jewish, still needs to be confirmed by the Senate.

By HERB KEINON, AP
Gene Cretz 88 (photo credit: )
Gene Cretz 88
(photo credit: )
US President George W. Bush on Wednesday announced the nomination of Gene Cretz, the number two official in the US Embassy in Tel Aviv, to serve as the US's first envoy to Libya in 35 years. The appointment of Cretz, who is Jewish, still needs to be confirmed by the Senate. The nomination has run into some opposition in the Senate by lawmakers who don't think the time is yet ripe to restore formal diplomat ties with the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. The nomination of the veteran diplomat Cretz, who has been at the embassy in Tel Aviv for the last three years, has been in the works for a number of months. Prior to serving in Israel, Cretz served as the charge d'affaires at the US Embassy in Damascus. He has also served in Cairo. Cretz received a bachelor's degree from the University of Rochester and a master's degree from State University College at Buffalo. The nomination continues a process that began when Gaddafi surprised the world by agreeing to dismantle his country's weapons of mass destruction programs. The United States had not had formal diplomatic relations with Tripoli since 1980, although a thaw in hostilities enabled Washington to open a diplomatic office in Libya in 2004. Libya was held responsible for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, which claimed 270 lives, most of them American. Gaddafi later agreed to pay $2.7 billion in reparations to the victims' families. Several senators are pressing the Bush administration to demand action from Gaddafi on unresolved compensation for the Lockerbie bombing. They also want the administration to push for a complete Libyan accounting for a 1986 Berlin disco bombing that killed two US troops. Unless the cases are settled, the senators said Congress may balk at State Department requests for money for a new US Embassy in Tripoli, aid for Libya and Senate confirmation of the new ambassador. "Until Libya fully compensates the Pan Am families, no US ambassador should set foot in Tripoli," said Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY). "We're serious about improving relations, but Libya needs to show that it is, too. Paying off this long-overdue debt would be a start." After Gaddafi came to power in a 1969 coup, Libya turned against the West. Throughout the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, Libya was regarded as a pariah in Washington's view, designated a state sponsor of terrorism, the target of US air strikes in 1986 and subject to penalties barring American companies from doing business there. The Bush administration said in May 2006 that it was resuming regular diplomatic relations with Libya for the first time in more than a quarter-century after removing Gaddafi's regime from a list of state sponsors of terrorism. Bush's announcement of the Cretz nomination came on the same day that Libya's Supreme Court upheld the death sentences of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor convicted of infecting more than 400 children with the AIDS virus. The six, who have been in Libyan custody since 1999, have said they are innocent. Libyan court officials said they admitted infecting the children, but some of the nurses have since said they confessed under beatings and torture. Bush had asked Libya to free the medics.