23 October 2007: United Nations -- Libya will take its place in the Security Council next year and with it membership of the UN’s Counter Terrorism Committee.

Once reviled as a pariah state that bankrolled a series of deadly terror organizations, the north-African nation’s rehabilitation is now seen as complete.

It will join Burkina Faso, Costa Rica, Croatia, and Vietnam as non-permanent members of the Security Council serving a two-year term as of January 1, 2008. The new members were elected by secret ballot last week. U.S. deputy ambassador to the UN, Alejandro Wolff, declined to reveal how the U.S. had voted. But Libyan Ambassador Mr. Giadalla A. B. Ettalh told reporters the U.S. “had not worked against our candidacy, I am sure of that.”

The UN’s Counter Terrorism Committee works to monitor the implementation of resolution 1373 which “obliges all States to criminalize assistance for terrorist activities, deny financial support and safe haven to terrorists and share information about groups planning terrorist attacks.”

Libya--the recipient of the UN’s first ever attempt to use economic sanctions in the fight against terrorism in 1992 after its failure to handover suspects in the Lockerbie bombing of a Pan-Am flight in 1988--has previously been accused of funding terrorists organizations in Europe and Palestine and was implicated in the bombing of a nightclub frequented by U.S. servicemen in West Berlin in 1986. Later that year, the U.S. bombed Tripoli and the country was declared a state sponsor of terrorism.

In 2003 Libya agreed to a compensation package worth $2.7 billion for the families of victims of the Lockerbie disaster, and in 2006, it was finally removed from the State Department’s terror list after its nuclear ambitions were simultaneously revealed and abandoned.

Yet another thorn in Libya’s international reputation was removed in June of this year when Bulgarian medics held since 1999 for allegedly infecting Libyan children with AIDS were released.

Meanwhile, much has been made of Libya’s efforts to restore peace to Africa’s many war zones and Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s role in bringing disparate factions to the negotiations table.

Deputy Ambassador Wolff, citing Germany and Japan as now responsible members of the UN as compared to their status when the organization was formed following World War II, said, “The world does change, relationships evolve.”

It remains to be seen how Libya will operate on the Security Council, but it is unlikely to deliver surprises as work continues on rehabilitating its international credentials.

Ambassador Ettalh was suitably guarded when asked if Libya would support sanctions against Iran.

“We’ll see” he said adding, “we are an African-Arab candidate; we have to take that into consideration.”

The newly elected countries will replace Congo, Ghana, Peru, Qatar, and Slovakia when their terms on the 15-member body expire at the end of this year.