France said Thursday it was prepared to vote to lift UN sanctions against Libya after the families of those killed in the 1989 bombing of a French jet over Niger reached a compensation deal with Tripoli. "Now that the families have arrived at an agreement, France naturally no longer has any objection to the UN Security Council voting as soon as possible on the lifting of sanctions against Libya," Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin told a joint press conference with representatives of the families. Minutes before, families' spokesman Guillaume Denoix de Saint-Marc and attorney Francis Szpiner announced a deal had been reached to compensate the relatives of the 170 people killed when when a DC-10 belonging to the French airliner UTA went down over the west African state of Niger in September 1989. A Libyan official reached by telephone from Cairo confirmed the deal, telling AFP: "We have reached an accord and an understanding on settling this matter." Britain had originally planned to call for a vote on Tuesday, but gave in to pressure from France, which threatened to veto the resolution unless Libya offered a comparable compensation deal to the families of the 1989 attack. The relatives of those killed in the UTA bombing initially received about 35 million dollars in compensation -- a fraction of the deal offered to the Lockerbie families. Kadhafi agreed the Lockerbie deal with Britain and the United States last month in the hope of securing his country's return to normal international relations. The unpredictable Libyan leader, who took power in a 1969 coup, began to shed his violent anti-Western rhetoric in the late 1990s. He was the first Arab leader to condemn the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, but Libya remains on Washington's list of state sponsors of terrorism. A Libyan agent is serving a life term in Scotland for the Lockerbie attack, and in 1999 a Paris court found six Libyans -- including Kadhafi's brother-in-law -- guilty in absentia for the UTA bombing. The French aircraft was carrying 54 French citizens, 48 Congolese, 25 Chadians, 10 Italians, eight Americans, five Cameroonians, four Britons, three Canadians, three people from Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), two people from the Central African Republic, two Malians, two Swiss, one Algerian, one Greek, one Moroccan and one Senegalese national. **PHOTO CAPTION*** Wreckage of the French UTA plane that exploded over Niger, killing all the 170 passengers and crew onboard.(AFP/File)