President Mandela took a particular interest in helping to resolve the long-running dispute between Gaddafi 's Libya , on one hand , and the United States and UK on the other , over bringing to trial the two Libyans who were indicted in November 1991 , and accused of bombing Pan Am Flight 103 , which subsequently broke apart and fell to and near the Scottish town of Lockerbie on 21 December 1988 , with the loss of 270 lives . As early as 1992 , Mandela informally approached President George H.W. Bush with a proposal to have the two indicted Libyans tried in a third country . Bush reacted favourably to the proposal , as did President François Mitterrand of France and King Juan Carlos I of Spain . In November 1994 – six months after his election as president – Mandela formally proposed that South Africa should be the venue for the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial
Pan Am Flight 103
Pan Am Flight 103
Presidency of Nelson Mandela