The Libyan disarmament issue was peacefully resolved in December 2003 when Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi agreed to eliminate his country's weapons of mass destruction program, including a decades-old nuclear weapons program. Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Libya's nuclear program was "in the very initial stages of development" at the time.
In 1968, Libya signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), ratified the treaty in 1975, and concluded a safeguards agreement in 1980. Despite its commitment to NPT, there are reports indicating that Gaddafi either made unsuccessful attempts to build or entered in an agreement to purchase a nuclear weapon from nuclear-armed nations. In the 1970s–80s, Gaddafi made numerous attempts to accelerate and push forward his ambitions for an active nuclear weapons program, using the nuclear black market sources. However, after the end of the Cold War in 1991, Gaddafi sought to resolve its nuclear crises with the United States aiming to uplift the sanctions against Libya, finally agreeing to authorize rolling back Libya's weapons of mass destruction program on 19 December 2003.
As of 2013, over 800 tons of chemical weapons ingredients remained to be destroyed. In February 2014, the new Libyan government announced that it had finished destroying Libya's entire remaining Gaddafi-era stockpile of chemical weapons. Full destruction of chemical weapons ingredients was scheduled to be completed by 2016.
Precursor events
According to Clinton administration diplomat Martin Indyk, Muammar Gaddafi sought more respectability as early as the start of Bill Clinton's Presidency, in the early 1990s. According to an article written by Indyk in 2004, by the 1990s, Gaddafi gave up on supporting various Pan-Arab and African movements and instead began focusing on getting sanctions on Libya removed. Indyk stated that Gaddafi offered to give up his weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and open his facilities to inspection in 1999 in (then-)secret talks with the Bill Clinton administration. According to Gaddafi's former Foreign Minister, Abdel Rahman Shalgham, the event which ultimately caused Gaddafi to give up his WMDs and nuclear weapons program was a reported 2001 message from U.S. President George W. Bush which told Gaddafi that “either you get rid of your weapons of mass destruction or [the United States] will personally destroy them and destroy everything with no discussion.” Libyan officials began to meet covertly with British, Russian, and U.S. officials to officially dismantle the program. In March 2003, days before the invasion of Iraq, Gaddafi's personal envoys contacted U.S. President George W. Bush, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair about Libya's willingness to dismantle its nuclear program. Subsequently, at Gaddafi's direction, Libyan officials provided British, Russian, and U.S. diplomats with documentation and additional details on Libya's chemical, biological, nuclear, and ballistic missile activities. Libya reportedly allowed Russian, U.S., and British officials to visit 10 previously secret sites and dozens of Libyan laboratories and military factories to search for evidence of nuclear fuel cycle-related activities, and for chemical and missile programs.
In October 2003, U.S. intelligence agencies raided a cargo ship and seized a consignment of centrifuge-related equipment bound for Libya in a northern Mediterranean port. The U.S. investigations revealed that many of these components were manufactured by a Scomi Precision Engineering facility in Malaysia and were produced under the technical guidance of Dr. A.Q. Khan and various nationals from the United Kingdom, Germany and Switzerland. After the news became public, Libyan nuclear ambitions were cooled and demoralized.
Disarmament
The 2001 September 11 attacks in the United States were denounced by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Following the U.S. military response in the War in Afghanistan, Gaddafi increasingly sought to normalize relations with the United States, initially focusing on the lifting of U.S. sanctions on Libya. On 19 December 2003, Gaddafi made a surprise announcement of his intention to dismantle Libya's WMD programs. The Libyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials were quoted "Libya had bought nuclear components from various black market dealers", and provided the various designs of centrifuges to U.S. officials and gave the name of its suppliers.