In return for Libya compensating US victims of its atrocities, America said it would lift the remaining sanctions against its former foe, once branded synonymous with "barbarism" by President Ronald Reagan.
Unlike Mr Obama's two predecessors, George Bush and Bill Clinton, the president said that building should stop even in the suburbs of East Jerusalem and in the West Bank settlement blocks that are likely to become parts of Israel under a peace treaty, in return for land swaps to compensate the Palestinians.The size of those blocks and how Jerusalem might be shared has never been determined.
Most of them have now demobilised under a peace agreement in which their leaders were offered reduced sentences in return for confessing crimes and compensating victims.
Jill Robinson, a Briton, spends most of her time in Sichuan province, caring for bears rescued from bile farmers, who are compensated in return for shutting down their operations.
It followed a similar deal with the US in 2008, when Gaddafi agreed to compensate victims in return for diplomatic ties with Washington.
(In return for the lifting of sanctions, Libya compensated the families of the dead and acknowledged responsibility for the bombing thought by some to be retaliation for the 1986 American air strike on Tripoli but Libyan officials implied the move was motivated by pragmatism rather than guilt).
At the beginning of the war, he also sought to persuade the states to accept compensated emancipation in return for their prohibition of slavery.
The way it works is that winners have to compensate the losers in return for their political consent.
In return for lost logging rights, Sierra Leone has compensated locals with road and school renovations, additional training for police officers, and construction of churches and a mosque.
He also pioneered a scheme by which labourers were encouraged to send their children to school in return for two calves that they could rear, to compensate for the loss of the child's income.
