London  - Relatives of victims of the Northern Ireland conflict have called on Libya to pay compensation on the grounds that explosives used by the former Irish Republican Army (IRA) came from Libya, it was reported Tuesday.

The BBC said relatives had stepped up their campaign following the release from a jail in Scotland of Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, the Libyan man convicted of the Lockerbie airliner bombing in 1988 with the loss of 270 lives.

The families want Libya, which supplied weapons and explosives to the former Catholic terrorist organization, the IRA, to recognize publicly the pain it inflicted through its support for terrorism.

They believe that the return of al-Megrahi to Libya will help their cause. The relatives have written to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown for help.

Jeffrey Donaldson, a leading Protestant politician in Northern Ireland, was planning to travel to Libya in the autumn to press the case, the report said.

During the 30-year-long so-called Troubles between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland the IRA staged a number of major bomb attacks in which Semtex explosives supplied by Libya is alleged to have been used.

Libya paid large-scale compensation to the families of the victims of the Lockerbie disaster following negotiations with the US and Britain, the main countries affected by the bombing. (dpa)