[This is the headline over a report published late yesterday evening by the news agency Reuters. It reads in part:]
The Libyan
government will allow British police to go to Libya to investigate the
1988 Lockerbie bombing and the unsolved 1984 killing of a policewoman in
London, a British minister said on Thursday.
Foreign Office Minister
Alistair Burt, who held talks with Libyan ministers in Tripoli last
week, said the Libyan government had given permission for British police
to carry out fresh investigations into the two shadowy episodes that
occurred under the rule of late strongman Muammar Gaddafi.
"I
have absolute confidence that the police from Dumfries and Galloway (in
Scotland) and the Metropolitan Police (in London) will be going back to
Libya to get their investigations going again and they will be given a
positive opportunity to do so by the Libyan authorities," Burt told
Reuters in a telephone interview.
Burt, the Foreign Office minister responsible
for North Africa and the Middle East, said no date had been set yet for a
police visit, noting that Libyan authorities had a lot of other issues
to deal with in a turbulent post-Gaddafi transition.
But
he said that in his talks with Libyan Interior Minister Fawzi Abd al
All and Foreign Minister Ashour bin Hayal, both had recognised the
importance of the so-called "legacy" issues.
[Why Reuters is featuring this story a week after the rest of the media (see here and here) is a minor mystery. It has now been picked up on the Libya TV website.]
I do wish the media would stop referring to the NTC as the Libyan Government and start asking when the National Transitional Council intends to hold democratic elections.
ReplyDelete