The pressure on Gordon Brown over the UK's dealings with Libya has intensified after Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's son said there was an "obvious" link between their trade talks and efforts to release the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.
The Tory leader, David Cameron, led a chorus of opposition complaints after Saif Gaddafi said it was "not a secret" that Libya's oil and trade talks with the UK were linked to its efforts to get Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, jailed in 2001 for planting the bomb that killed 270 people, returned to Libya.
| But my dears, just because Libya had a nefarious purpose for negotiations does not imply the British government were other than pure as the driven snow in their own motives... and their motives can be imputed from their subsequent behaviour. |
The Tories, Liberal Democrats and senior SNP MPs said Brown now had to disclose all the details about ministerial meetings and dealings with the Libyan regime before Megrahi was released last week by the Scottish government.
Saif Gaddafi attempted to dampen down the row by insisting that the prisoner transfer agreement signed by Tony Blair in 2007 ultimately had no bearing on the decision by Scottish ministers to free Megrahi, who is close to death with prostate cancer, on compassionate grounds. |