The Financial Times of 31 January 2008 contains an article under this headline by Dino Mahtani in London and Andrew Bolger in Edinburgh asserting that Libya’s ratification of a $900m oil exploration contract with BP was delayed because of Libyan concerns over the position of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi under the prisoner transfer agreement negotiated with the UK government.
The exploration contract was apparently part of a package of agreements arranged by the former UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, on an official visit to Libya last year. But ratification of BP's deal had been left hanging for months, with Libyan negotiators saying they were angered that Mr Blair had left open the possibility of excluding Megrahi, the Libyan jailed for his part in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, from a deal to repatriate Libyan prisoners held in British jails. But, in spite of a request from the Scottish Government for the specific exclusion of Megrahi from its terms, the agreement as finally concluded does not make him an exception. This provoked anger in the Scottish Government and Parliament, politicians there accusing London of ignoring Scottish legal procedures in order to smooth relations with Libya.
However, the article refers to Westminster sources as insisting that safeguards were in place to give Scottish ministers a veto over whether Mr Megrahi would return. It also quotes Saad Djebbar, a London-based lawyer who has worked with the Libyans on the Lockerbie case as saying: "The matter of Megrahi had delayed matters, not just for BP but all other commercial arrangements." He said that Tripoli had been waiting for a sign of "goodwill". BP denied there were political reasons for the delay to ratification of the deal.
See
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/703dc9e4-cfa0-11dc-854a-0000779fd2ac.html
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