Two hundred and seventy were murdered, and still we fail them

[On this date in 2015, I learned with deep sadness of the death of Ian Bell. His writings on Lockerbie can be found listed here. What follows is an example from April 2011:]

One of my favourite pictures is Raeburn’s portrait of Henry Cockburn, Lord Cockburn, once judge within the Court of Session. It’s there in a glance, cool as you like, direct from an age of reason. It says: here are my principles; convince me.

I once entertained a theory that most of Scotland’s high-end prose, Walter Scott’s most obviously, descended from Scots law. Years ago, I even tried to convince an audience that Robert Louis Stevenson could not have written nit-picking tales of moral difficulty without Hume and the Faculty of Advocates. They wondered what I was on about.

Scotland is soaked in the language of lawyers. After the churches and education, the law was the one inviolable (supposedly) thing we rescued from Union. We are a country of laws, of legal tradition, and of reasoned prose. Most of our politicians have been lawyers, and most of our hired legal hands have been political. They can’t help themselves.

Cockburn concludes his Memorials with the news that he’s getting on in the world. Thanks to the usual patronage, the boy from Edinburgh’s Hope Park is to be Solicitor-General. He writes: “I trust that we [Jeffrey had bagged Lord Advocate] shall do our duty. If we do, we cannot fail to do some good to Scotland. In the abuses of our representative and municipal systems alone, our predecessors have left us fields in which patriotism may exhaust itself”.

So, Cocky: what would you have made of Moussa Koussa?

Here we have an unresolved mass murder. Here we have a witness. Here we have (it is suggested) “abuses of our representative and municipal systems”. Here we have certain subservient protocols attendant to a treaty of Union. Still, one would wish to at least detain the witness, surely?

We get a legal letter instead. The indefatigable Brian Fitzpatrick writes, in timely fashion, to the oldest daily newspaper in the English-speaking world with a note of support, it seems, for a public inquiry into the Lockerbie atrocity.

Or rather, one from the Faculty suggests, there might be “scope” – Cockburn would have flinched – “for laying to rest some of the more egregious claims of the tribe of Lockerbie conspiracy theorists – those who have made a life’s work of the now unravelling assertion that somehow Libya and its senior operatives, including Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, were not to blame".

Send lawyers, as the song used to go, guns and money.

The brief then goes on to lavish praise on pillars of our legal temples. He suggests that the Camp Zeist trial was terribly hard – unpaid? – work for those who allowed security spooks to infest the well of the court. He overlooks the Socratic wisdom that entertained the bribing ($3 million to a pair of those crucial Maltese witnesses) of participants by American “authorities”. He does not trouble himself with forensic difficulties.

But, first and foremost, this lawyer nowhere mentions the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC). It counts as a significant omission. It makes no odds to me whether “Gaddafi did it” or not. I just want to know what went wrong with Scots law, why the SCCRC found six reasons – after years of work, and 800 pages – for doubting the conviction of al Megrahi, and why the rest of us, we sometime citizens, are barred from knowledge granted as pub gossip to every lawyer in the land. And then told to forget about it.

“Conspiracy theorists” is neat. It suggests that anyone who might wonder about the habits of our legal-political establishment has problems – a ticklish inversion – with reality. It is meant to shut down argument. The conviction is as safe, it seems, as all those blasted, bloodied Lockerbie houses that no longer stand.

The real mistake was to believe that Gaddafi’s fall would give oxygen to the truth. Instead, in the blood and the mire, there’s a big carpet being unfurled, and a lot of sweeping going on. On this point, I am liable to sound repetitive: why isn’t Moussa Koussa under arrest?

More particularly: why has he not been taken into custody by officers from Dumfries & Galloway? Students of the Treaty of Union may take another view, but I had thought – certainly in the case of al Megrahi – that Scots law held sway. So why has our Crown Office been “negotiating” with the Foreign Office over this witness, of all witnesses?

Saif Gaddafi, heir to idiocy, says there are no secrets. Washington and London, he tells the BBC, know all there is to know about Lockerbie. Scotland’s lawyers, some of them, know exactly what he means. But Scotland’s people have been given no such advantages.

What was asked of Moussa Koussa? That’s not a complicated, nor legally compromised, question. Having won London’s sanction – ignoring questions of jurisdiction – what followed? Just state the question, or the area of inquiry: we have a right to know. Disclosure is in no sense be prejudicial to a possible trial, far less to a public inquiry.

The obvious fact is this: “Gaddafi did it” is not the point. The safety of a conviction, and the suborning of a legal system by security services is another, bigger, deal. Cockburn wouldn’t have sat still for it. Brian Fitzpatrick prefers a lesser prose.

You have to ask yourself: why does it still matter, and matter so much, to those who promenade around Parliament Hall? Why does it still, after all these years, infect every party? You might have thought, if naive, that an SNP government would be rushing to settle the Lockerbie business, if only to discomfit Labour placemen and Tory hacks. No chance.

Three hundred and odd strollers in the Faculty count for more, in Scottish public life, than any other constituency. Which is odd. Lockerbie wasn’t their doing. They did not infect the evidence. They didn’t nobble the politicians, or write the editorials, nor do a squalid deal in the desert. They were just legal cabs for hire.

Henry Cockburn saw them coming. I don’t even know if Memorials of His Time is in print. Still, the good judge had witty things to say about small countries and the profession of principle. The reason we don’t know about Lockerbie is this: the lawyers don’t like it. And they respond to argument by any means necessary.

How come? What worries them so much? Why has there been no public inquiry? Who – pace Fitzpatrick – would be harmed? Why isn’t Moussa Koussa under close arrest? Why does the government of Scotland, another party to the safety of an absurd conviction, fail to assert the rights of an independent legal code?

So: is Brian Fitzpatrick supporting a properly independent public inquiry into all that befell the Lockerbie prosecutions? He doesn’t quite say as much. Why not? Instead, he seems to believe that anyone in doubt over the independence of our judiciary has fallen in with “a tribe”.

I’d be interested in a test case. What would one propose, tomorrow, as a paid defence strategy – with an SCCRC judgement to hand – for Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi? And how would the betting go, up at the courts, around the dockets, or by the Shirra’s seat, for that one?

Cockburn said: “In the abuses of our representative and municipal systems alone, our predecessors have left us fields in which patriotism may exhaust itself”. Two hundred and seventy were murdered, and still we fail them.

Solution to Lockerbie impasse in sight

[The following are two snippets from the Libya: News and Views website on this date in 1998:]

Libya's justice minister said a Libyan legal team intended to hold a new round of talks with the United Nations legal counsel for additional clarification on a trial in the Netherlands of two suspects in the 1988 bombing of a U.S. airliner. ''Preparations are going on for a new round of talks between the Libyan legal team and the UN counsel aimed at clarifications so that the trial would be fair and honest without the interference of any ambiguity or hidden intentions,'' Mohamed Belgasem al-Zwai told the Libyan Congress. [Reuters]

South African President Nelson Mandela predicted on Tuesday that a solution may be in sight to the impasse between Libya, the United States and Britain over the trial of two Libyan suspects in the Lockerbie plane bombing. Mandela addressed a press conference in Abu Dhabi, where he spoke at the opening session of the annual summit of the Gulf Co-operation Council.

He said he had spoken in the last few days to US President Bill Clinton and to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and planned to speak to Libyan leader Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi once he returned home. "Things are moving in a satisfactory manner," Mandela said. He said Britain had agreed to remove the problem created by the lack of Libyan diplomatic representation in London by permitting the establishment of a Libyan office in Scotland, where the two suspects will serve their sentences if they are convicted at a trial set to take place in Holland. [ANC-SAPA]

[RB: A Libyan consulate was established in Glasgow after Megrahi was convicted. The consul, Abdel Rahman Swessi, was amongst the Libyan diplomats expelled from the UK in April 2011.]

UN Secretary General meets Gaddafi over Lockerbie

[What follows is the text of a United Nations press release issued on this date in 1998:]

Secretary-General Kofi Annan left the Tunisian island of Djerba for Libya on the morning of Saturday, 5 December, and was greeted in Tripoli by Libya's Ambassador to the United Nations, Abuzed Omar Dorda. The Secretary- General then flew to Sirte where he was met by Libya's senior foreign affairs official, Omar Mustafa Al-Muntasser.

He and Mr Muntasser then went to a government guest house in the Sirte conference centre, where they had lunch together and held a working session with their delegations for more than an hour. The meeting was described as positive and friendly. The Libyan side raised a number of remaining issues of concern regarding the Lockerbie suspects, and the Secretary-General sought to reassure them that all the governments concerned were dealing in good faith.

Before lunch, during his previously unscheduled visit to the Libyan capital, the Secretary-General had a private meeting with the President of Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaore, current President of the Organization of the African Unity (OAU), who was visiting Libya.

At about 7 pm, the Secretary-General left the Sirte conference centre for a meeting with Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Al-Qadhafi which lasted for about an hour and a half. On his return to Tripoli, the Secretary-General gave a press conference in which he described as "a step forward" his efforts to bring to closure the matter of the transfer of the Libyan suspects to a court in a third country. He said he expected the issue to be taken up at a meeting of the Libyan People's Congress in the coming week.

The Secretary-General arrived back in Djerba at around midnight on Saturday night, and departed the following morning for the United Arab Emirates, to participate in the meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

“The evidence against him is very weak”

[Le Figaro on Saturday, 8 December 2007 published a lengthy interview with Colonel Gaddafi's son, Saif al-Islam. Here is what he had to say about Lockerbie:]

Le Figaro: Quelle est votre position sur Abd el-Basset al-Megrahi, le responsable des renseignements emprisonné en Écosse pour l’attentat de Lockerbie, et qui a obtenu le droit à faire appel?

Saif: Nous pensons qu’il est innocent, et nous nous battrons jusqu’au bout pour qu’il rentre chez lui. Les preuves contre lui sont très faibles. Elles ont été manipulées.

Le Figaro: S’il est innocenté, la Libye demandera-t-elle le remboursement des compensations qu’elle a versées aux familles?

Saif: Je ne sais pas.

[RB: The full interview can be read here. An English translation, courtesy of Google Translate, can be read here.]

Concerns over Crown Office

[What follows is a brief excerpt from an article by Chris Marshall headlined Prosecution service has its own case to answer that appears in today’s edition of The Scotsman:]

In a series of written submissions to the justice committee, bar associations have warned that fiscal deputes are being forced to proceed to trial in cases involving domestic abuse or hate crime because of national policy rather than their own professional judgment.

Bar associations representing lawyers in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen all raised the issue with MSPs, describing it as a “serious concern”.

In its submission, Edinburgh Bar Association said: “The leeching away of the discretion of the procurator fiscal depute in court to take decisions on the prosecution is the greatest enemy to efficiency and effective management by COPFS”.

Then came a further warning last week from an anonymous fiscal depute citing “grave concerns...of cases proceeding to trial without there being sufficient evidence”.

The prosecutor warned of an “ever-increasing gap between management and frontline staff” and said serious and complex cases were being indicted for trial without “any prospect” of sufficient evidence.

Lord Advocate James Wolffe currently has plenty on his plate, not least spearheading the Scottish Government’s Article 50 case at the Supreme Court. There is also the soon-to-be concluded police investigation into criminal allegations against the Crown and others over its handling of the prosecution of the man later convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.

But there is also now plenty to suggest there is much to concern the Lord Advocate within the prosecution service itself.

The guilty verdict was unreasonable

[What follows is excerpted from an article by John Ashton headed Eight inconvenient truths about Lockerbie, which the media and authorities are ignoring:]

The prosecution case, which was accepted by the Scottish judges who convicted Mr Megrahi, was that on the morning of 21 December 1988, while travelling under a false name, he managed to smuggle a brown Samsonite suitcase containing a bomb onto an Air Malta flight from Malta to Frankfurt. An expert in airline security and alleged senior intelligence officer, Megrahi was said to have labelled the case for onward transfer to Pan Am flight 103A from Frankfurt to London Heathrow and Pan Am 103 from Heathrow to New York.

He supposedly bought clothes for the suitcase at a small Maltese shop called Mary’s House on an earlier visit to the island on 7 December. The shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, who was the prosecution’s star witness, told the court that Mr Megrahi resembled the man who had bought the clothes. The Malta link was confirmed by baggage records from Frankfurt airport, which appeared to show that a suitcase from the Air Malta flight had been forwarded to Pan Am 103. (...)

3. It’s official – the court judgment was unreasonable

In 2007, following a four-year review of the case, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (the official body responsible for examining alleged miscarriages of justice) referred Mr Megrahi’s conviction to the appeal court on no fewer than six grounds. He abandoned the appeal in 2009 when terminally ill with cancer in the belief that it would help smooth the way for his release from prison on compassionate grounds.

Crucially, one of the SCCRC’s six grounds was that there was no “reasonable foundation” for the crucial finding that he bought the clothes on 7 December 1988, which was his only window of opportunity. Why did the commission reach this conclusion? Because Mr Gauci was clear that, as he was leaving the shop, the clothes purchaser bought an umbrella because it had started to rain. Yet meteorological evidence heard by the court demonstrated that there was no rain on 7 December. If Mr Megrahi didn’t buy the clothes on 7 December, the prosecution case collapses, so the SCCRC had come as close as it legally could to saying that the guilty verdict itself was unreasonable.

Lockerbie: mystery witness 'saw Libyans making bomb'

[This is the headline over a report that appeared in The Independent on this date in 1999. It reads as follows:]

Senior Scottish prosecutors in the Lockerbie bombing case have recently visited the United States to interview a witness who claims to have seen the two Libyan defendants prepare the bomb.

The identity of the mystery witness - a Libyan - is known to The Independent and has been protected since the man went into hiding in the US in 1992 or earlier. His credibility will be crucial to the full trial, which is expected to begin on 2 February next year. [RB: The witness in question was, of course, Abdul Majid Giaka. His testimony at the trial was assessed by the judges as utterly incredible and unreliable. Further details can be found here.]

The news comes as attention focuses on Camp Zeist, a former US base in the Netherlands, where Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, 47, and al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, 43, will appear tomorrow for the first time in front of a Scottish judge.

Lord Sutherland will hear a challenge from the men's lawyers to the conspiracy charge, which, it will be claimed, should not be presented to a Scottish court. They will claim that since the alleged conspiracy took place outside Scotland, the court is acting beyond its jurisdiction.

Lawyers for the prosecution were yesterday declining to comment on their contacts with witnesses. The Libyan witness's statements are believed to implicate both defendants in a plot which led to the placing of the bomb on Pan Am flight 103 from Frankfurt to New York, via London, in December 1988.

The two men, alleged to be Libyan intelligence officers, deny the charges of murder, conspiracy to murder and breaching the 1982 Aviation Security Act. They were extradited from Libya to Scottish custody in April this year after an eight-year battle. [RB: Megrahi and Fhimah were not extradited: they voluntarily surrendered themselves for trial.]

Lockerbie defence case begins

[This is the headline over a report published on the BBC News website on this date in 2000. It reads in part:]

Lawyers for one of the two Libyans accused of the Lockerbie bombing have begun presenting his defence at the Scottish court in the Netherlands.

They attempted to undermine allegations that a shopkeeper sold clothing, which was packed round the bomb that blew up Pam Am Flight 103, to one of the accused.

Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci had told the court that he sold clothes to a man - whom he identified in court as the first accused Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi - at his shop in Sliema on 7 December, 1988.

He alleged that Mr Al Megrahi had also bought an umbrella because it was raining at that time.

Charred fragments of the clothing were recovered from the wreckage of Pan Am Flight 103 and traced back to Mr Gauci's shop.

The prosecution has alleged that the garments were in the suitcase carrying the bomb which blew the plane apart, killing 270 people.

On day 76 of the trial at Camp Zeist, lawyers for Mr Al Megrahi called retired meteorologist Major Joseph Mifsud who worked in Malta's Luqa airport in 1988.

Mr Mifsud, the 230th person to give evidence at the trial, referred to weather records kept in December 1988.

He told the court that other than some light showers during the morning, there was no rainfall at the airport prior to midnight on 7 December that year.

He said this meant it was unlikely there was any rain in Sliema, 5km away at about the time the clothes were sold.

Defence lawyers also began to concentrate on the activities of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) during October 1988.

They have already indicated that they would produce evidence which would incriminate others, including the PFLP-GC.

FBI agent Edward Marshman read from transcripts of interviews with PFLP-GC member Marwan Kreeshat, who said he had made bombs for the organisation.

Mr Kreeshat was jailed for 18 years in his absence for his part in placing a bomb in a record player on an El Al flight from Rome to Tel Aviv in 1972.

He was eventually arrested by the Germans in October 1988, but released in December that year.

Mr Marshman, 42, told the court that Mr Kreeshat was interviewed at the headquarters of the Jordanian Intelligence Services in Jordan by FBI agents in November 1989.

Mr Kreeshat had explained that he was an agent of that intelligence service and was sent to Europe to infiltrate the PFLP-GC.

The court heard that Mr Kreeshat, who has refused to appear as a witness at the trial, was experienced in building improvised explosive devices (IEDs) within radio cassette recorders.

The PFLP-GC had planted them aboard aircraft using women as "unwitting couriers" to whom operatives would propose marriage after establishing a relationship.

They would then send the woman on ahead and give her an IED package to carry on board an aircraft, according to excerpts from transcripts of interviews with Mr Kreeshat read out in court.

The court heard that in October 1988, Mr Kreeshat was summoned to Germany where he met with colleagues and spent time shopping for electrical components and timers and working on building such devices.

He worked on five devices, the fifth of which went missing from his room after one of his colleagues came in while he was taking a shower.

He assumed his colleague took it away and the court also heard that Mr Kreeshat thought that device was a Toshiba radio cassette recorder.

The prosecution has alleged that the bomb which destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 was hidden in a Toshiba SF16 Bombeat radio cassette recorder and programmed to be detonated by an electronic timer.

However, reading from a transcript of the FBI interviews with Mr Kreeshat, Mr Marshman said: "He Kreeshat said he would not use an SF16 to build into an IED as there is not enough space inside.

"He said he would not remove any parts to get more space as then the radio would not work as it's supposed to.

"It is important it works so such a device would not be detected."

Pan Am ceases operations

[What follows is excerpted from the Wikipedia article Pan American World Airways:]

While a program to refurbish Pan Am aircraft and improve the company's on-time performance began showing positive results (in fact, Pan Am's most profitable quarter ever was the third quarter of 1988), on December 21, 1988, the terrorist bombing of Pan Am flight 103 by Abdelbaset al-Megrahi above Lockerbie, Scotland, resulted in 270 fatalities. Pan Am's iconic image had made it a repeated target for terrorists, resulting in many travelers avoiding the airline as they had begun to associate it with danger. (...)

Pan Am was forced to declare bankruptcy on January 8, 1991. Delta Air Lines purchased the remaining profitable assets of Pan Am, including its remaining European routes and Frankfurt mini hub, the Shuttle operation, 45 jets, and the Pan Am Worldport at John F. Kennedy Airport, for $416 million. (...)

Pan Am ceased operations on December 4, 1991 following a decision by Delta's CEO, Ron Allen, and other senior executives not to go ahead with the final $25 million payment Pan Am was scheduled to receive the weekend after Thanksgiving. As a result, some 7,500 Pan Am employees lost their jobs, thousands of whom had worked in the New York City area and were preparing to move to the Miami area to work at Pan Am's new headquarters near Miami International Airport.

Gaddafi: Megrahi family to sue over prison neglect

[What follows is the text of a report that appeared in the Evening Standard on this date in 2010:]

The family of the Lockerbie bomber is to sue over his "neglect" in a Scottish jail, Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi has said.

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was freed from Greenock prison on compassionate grounds last year after being diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer.

The Libyan was sentenced to life in jail after his conviction for the murder of 270 people in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland.

He returned to his home country where he is said to be "very ill".

Colonel Gaddafi spoke about the bomber to staff and students at the London School of Economics over a video link on Thursday.

According to reports, he told them: "His health was not looked after in prison. He didn't have any periodic examination. I wish him a long life.

"After he passes away, his family will demand compensation because he was deliberately neglected in prison."

The decision to free Megrahi, taken by Scotland's Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, sparked fury in the US and was condemned by President Barack Obama's administration.

Meanwhile a group of campaigners in the UK is calling for an independent inquiry into his conviction.

[RB: No such action was ever raised or, I believe, seriously contemplated.]

Kofi Annan in Lockerbie trial mission

[This is the headline over a report that appeared in The Independent on this date in 1998. It reads as follows:]

Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, is expected to meet Muammar Gaddafi this weekend, amid mounting speculation that the Libyan leader is on the verge of handing over two suspects, wanted for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.

Speaking in Algiers, Mr Annan said he was in contact with the Libyan Government, and "might go" to Libya when he ends a visit to Tunisia.

In fact it is assumed he will go - and, possibly, seal arrangements for Abdel Basset Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah to face trial at a court in The Hague.

With the 10th anniversary of the destruction of PanAm's flight 103 just 18 days away, the Foreign Office is bending over backwards to avoid any impression of a deadline.

Only too aware of Mr Gaddafi's proven capacity for stalling, officials in London merely express encouragement at the "serious engagement" of the Libyans in seeking a resolution of the issue.

Exactly what Mr Annan will do in Tripoli is unclear.

If the end game is at hand, he would be expected to confirm that, once the suspects had been surrendered, the UN's sanctions against Libya would be lifted.

But during a phone conversation last week with Mr Annan, the Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, made it clear that there could be no negotiation.

The ball, Britain insists, is firmly in the Libyan court. The hope is, as one official put it, "that Annan's going there will be a peg for Gaddafi to make an announcement."

But the Libyan's intentions are as mysterious as ever. Years of total deadlock were broken in August when the US and Britain, fearful that UN sanctions aimed at isolating Libya were slowly dying by default, abandoned their long standing insistence that the two men's trial be held in Scotland or America.

In return, Tripoli seemed to agree in principle to hand over the suspects.

Nonetheless, prevarication over the details had continued, before the waters were further muddied last week by reports from Tripoli of the trial and imprisonment of three senior Libyan security officials, allegedly on the grounds of "dereliction of duty" over the bombing, in which 270 people were killed.

That step was interpreted in some quarters as a sign that the crucial breakthrough was at hand, and that by jailing three key witnesses who would otherwise have been called to testify in The Hague, the Libyans were seeking to make it hard, if not impossible, to convict Megrahi and Fhimah.

Other analysts however maintain that the three - one of them the brother- in-law of Mr Gaddafi himself - are so senior that their belated "imprisonment", if such it is, may presage a definitive refusal to deliver the two men accused by the West of actually planting the suitcase bomb which blew the PanAm Jumbo jet apart.

According to this theory, the Libyan president would argue that the individuals who had plotted the crime had been punished and justice done, so that no grounds any longer existed for a trial of the mere foot soldiers in Britain's worst ever terrorist outrage.

Libyan lawyers set up fund for defence of Megrahi and Fhimah

[The following are two snippets from the Libya: News and Views website on this date in 1998:]

A Libyan lawyers' union has created a fund to help pay for the defense of two Libyans charged in the 1988 Pan Am bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people. Mohammed al-Ellagi, head of the Libyan Lawyers' Union, was quoted as saying that a number of Arab lawyers have volunteered their expertise or pledged money to help defend the suspects, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Lameen Khalifa Fhimah. Al-Ellagi did not say how much money the union hoped to collect. The union is licensed by the Libyan government. Libya has accepted in principle a joint US-British offer to try the Libyans in the Netherlands under Scottish law and with Scottish judges. [Spokane.net]

Libyan leader Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi said the United States and Britain must drop their conditions if they want a trial of two Libyan suspects in the Lockerbie bombing take place in the Netherlands, the official Libyan news agency JANA reported Monday. "We challenge America and Britain not to set conditions which are bound to be firmly rejected, for holding that (Lockerbie) trial and if they wanted it be held and solve this issue,'' the agency, monitored in Tunis, quoted al-Qadhafi as saying. Al-Qadhafi, who was talking at a banquet in the Libyan coastal town of Sirte, some 280 miles east of Tripoli, in honor of visiting Gambian President Yahya Jammeh, did not say to which US and British conditions he was referring to. [Reuters]