Bowing to a French veto threat, the Security Council on Tuesday put off for three more days a vote to lift U.N. sanctions imposed on Libya over the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Just minutes before a scheduled vote, Paris said it had asked current council president Britain to postpone the vote, which had been already repeatedly delayed, to allow a settlement in parallel talks on Libyan compensation for the bombing of a French UTA airliner in 1989.

After four hours of closed-door talks as more than 50 relatives of Pan Am 103 (news - web sites) victims waited in the gallery of the otherwise empty council chamber, British Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry announced the delay until Friday.

He said it was intended to win unanimous support for ending the sanctions and said there were "other very legitimate concerns pertaining to Libya which still need resolution."

U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said the delay was approved after "the government of France had indicated it would veto the resolution" if it were put to a vote on Tuesday.

"We are certainly very disappointed that the vote did not take place today and our hearts go out to the families of the victims who have been waiting and suffering so patiently for the day to come when this vote takes place," he said.

Lifting the sanctions is sought by Libya to help it end its pariah status in much of the world. A vote would also clear the way for the families of the 270 Lockerbie victims to each receive compensation which could eventually reach $10 million.

Diplomats had initially said France intended to abstain rather than block the resolution, but French officials refused to confirm this, saying Paris was still awaiting word of an agreement with Libya from the families of the UTA victims.

LIBYA ACCEPTED BLAME

Britain and the United States had agreed last month to seek an end to the sanctions as part of a deal in which Libya accepted blame for the Pan Am attack, swore off terrorism and agreed to pay compensation to the victims' families.

French backing for the deal was in doubt from the start, however, because of hitches in the separate compensation deal over the UTA attack.

The UTA families had asked Paris to block a U.N. vote and reopen a previous deal with Libya because the Tripoli government had paid a total of just $34 million in compensation for the UTA attack several years ago, a sum dwarfed by the $2.7 billion accepted by Libya in the Lockerbie case.

After more than three weeks of negotiations between the UTA families and the Libyan authorities, sources familiar with the talks said an agreement was within reach under which the UTA relatives were likely to get close to $1 million per family.

But family members and French officials said the final terms of a deal could not be reached in time.

"At this stage there is no agreement -- not even the first signs of agreement. The families are not happy with how the negotiations are going," said Guillaume Denoix de Saint Marc, who lost his father in the UTA bombing.

A senior State Department official who asked not to be identified likened the French veto threat to French efforts to block U.N. approval for the U.S.-led war on Iraq (news - web sites).

It's "deja vu all over again," the official said. "We would be astonished if the French were going to veto. We also ... can't imagine how they would explain such an action."

The U.N. sanctions, including an air and arms embargo and a ban on some oil equipment and financial assets, were imposed in 1992 and 1994 and suspended in 1999 after Libya turned over two suspects for trial for the bombing.

Washington, which is expected to abstain on the U.N. sanctions resolution for domestic political reasons, has vowed to keep in force separate U.S. sanctions including a ban on Libyan oil sales to the United States.

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