Libya may bar UK police from visiting to investigate Lockerbie bombing

[This is the headline over a report just published on the website of The Guardian.  It reads in part:]

Interior minister says Britain should answer questions about its relationship with Gaddafi before UK police are allowed to visit

Libya has all but closed the door on allowing British police to travel to the country to investigate the Lockerbie bombing and the killing of the police officer Yvonne Fletcher.

The interior minister, Fawzi Abdel A'al, said there was no treaty allowing UK police to visit Libya, and any agreement at some future date might depend on whether Britain answered questions about its past involvement with Muammar Gaddafi's regime.

"There is no treaty between Britain and Libya to allow such a thing," he said in an interview with The Guardian and Agence France Presse. (…) [RB : The AFP report can be read here.]

Discussing Lockerbie and the release of the convicted bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds, he said: "Didn't America and Britain accept millions of dollars from Gaddafi as the price to end this case? Who let Abdelbaset al-Megrahi go? Did we? (…)

He said Britain needed to explain the reasons for the rapprochement between Britain and the Gaddafi regime in 2004, sealed when the former prime minister Tony Blair visited Libya.

"Why did the British government improve its relations with Gaddafi? Something happened in this case between the former Libyan regime and the British government to end this dispute. Didn't the former British prime minister Tony Blair visit Libya more than one time? Saif al-Islam [Gaddafi's son] came out one time in a statement to say that Blair was an adviser to his father. Blair was an adviser to Gaddafi after he left the government."

Abdel A'al, a former Misratan district attorney who is seen by diplomats as a high flier in Libya's cabinet, was appointed to the job in November and has access to tens of thousands of files detailing the Gaddafi regime's dealings with foreign powers.

He said he might consent to an investigation by Libyan authorities without the involvement of UK police.

"We see that the best way to solve this now is that the British government ask the Libyan authorities to open an investigation inside Libya, and for the Libyan side to hand in all the information they have on this case so the Libyan authorities can start investigations."

His statement is likely to be viewed as a setback to both the Metropolitan police, investigating the 1984 killing of Fletcher by shots fired from the London Libyan embassy, and Scottish police wanting to pursue the bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie in 1988.

In December the minister for the Middle East, Alistair Burt, met Abdel A'al in Tripoli and announced that Libya had agreed to allow UK investigators to visit Libya.

Instead, Libya's authorities seem to have decided against it, although the governing National Transitional Council is due to hand over to an elected government in elections expected in June.