Libya became independent in 1951 under King Idris al-Sanusi. In February 1952 first elections for parliament were held.

Libya granted two American oil companies a concession of about 14 million acres in 1956. In 1961 Libya exported oil for the first time as a pipeline to the Mediterranean Sea was finished.

A new era in the history of Libya began on September 1st 1969, when a group of young army officers overthrew the royal government and established a republic under the name "Libyan Arab Republic". The revolutionary government, led by Muammar al-Gathafi, aspiring to leadership of the Arab world, showed a determination thereafter to play a larger role in the affairs of the Middle East and North Africa.

In September 1971, Egypt, Libya, and Syria agreed to form the "Federation of Arab Republics" (FAR). But the FAR and a later agreement to form a union with Tunisia never took off.

The constitution of 1977 laid out the new political system, whereby Libya became a “state of the masses” (jamahiriya) ostensibly run by the people through a system of local and national committees. The country’s official name was changed to Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. A decade of economic change began as the government seized most private property and instituted a radically egalitarian welfare state.

In 1980 Libya and Syria agreed on a merger, but this also failed to materialise. In the same year Libyan troops started intervening on a large scale in civil war in northern Chad.

US troops bombed in 1986 Libyan military facilities, residential areas of Tripoli and Benghazi killing 101 people. Gathafi's home was also damaged and his adopted infant daughter was killed.

In 1992 UN imposed sanctions on Libya in an effort to force it to hand over for trial two of its citizens suspected of involvement in the blowing up of a PanAm airliner over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in December 1988.

In 1999 Lockerbie suspects were handed over for trial in the Netherlands under Scottish law. The UN sanctions were suspended.

Four years later, in 2003, Libya signed a deal worth 2.7 billion US-Dollar to compensate families of the Lockerbie bombing victims. Libya took responsibility for the bombing in a letter to the UN Security Council.

In the same year Libya disclosed that it had been pursuing a program to develop nuclear weapons but that the program had been discontinued. Gathafi announced that Libya was forsaking weapons of mass destruction and would cooperate with international organizations in dismantling its weapons programs.


Sources: BBC, Lexicorient, MSN Encarta