The Security Council agreed on Tuesday to consider delaying the lifting of U.N. sanctions on Libya to give France more time to win a better deal from Tripoli for the victims of the 1989 bombing of a French airliner.

At France's request, the council asked Britain and France to try to reach agreement -- and then report back to it -- on a reasonable delay for a vote to end the sanctions and thus close the book on the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

"We agreed they would come back to us as soon as possible" with the results of their talks, Deputy Ambassador Fayssal Mekdad of Syria, the council president for August, told reporters after a closed-door meeting.

Britain had asked the council on Monday to quickly end the sanctions, imposed after the Pan Am jumbo jet was blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland, now that Libya has agreed to pay up to $10 million to each of the families of the 270 people killed.

London's request, backed by the United States, capped 15 years of three-way negotiations with Libya on the Lockerbie atrocity, culminating in Libya's Friday letter accepting responsibility for the bombing and agreeing to pay an expected $2.7 billion in compensation to the families of the victims.

But Paris, which has veto power in the Security Council, then vowed to block the resolution while it pursued talks aimed at a better deal for the families of the 170 people killed in the bombing of a UTA jet over the West African state of Niger.

The expected Lockerbie payment dwarfs the $34 million handed over earlier by Libya for the downing of the jet from the now-defunct UTA airline, for which a Paris court found six Libyans guilty in absentia.

Individual pay-outs for the UTA victims have been put at $33,780 at most.

FRANCE SEEKING 'FAIR AGREEMENT'

"All council members agreed the calendar must be changed to accommodate France's needs," Ambassador Michel Duclos told reporters. "We will support the (sanctions-lifting) resolution as soon as we get a fair agreement for the victims of the UTA flight."

A British envoy said council members were eager to avoid a confrontation if only "a few more days" would enable Paris to wrap up its talks. "But we cannot string this along."

While Libya, Washington and London last week had hoped for a vote early this week, a delay of at least a few more days appeared inevitable as of Wednesday.

Their agreement stipulated that a vote could not occur until Libya transferred the compensation to a special account at the Basel-based Bank for International Settlements, a process that just began and may take a few days to complete.

"It (will) probably take until Thursday or perhaps even Friday to complete the transfer," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington.

Secretary of State Colin Powell called his French counterpart Dominique de Villepin and "made clear that we don't want to impede the settlement but that we do want to work with the French and would try to coordinate with them," said a senior State Department official.

"The fact the transfer takes a little while may give the French a couple more days to try to do what they can," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

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