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| Africa North |
| Blair met Qaddafi before Lockerbie bomber freed |
| 2011-09-19 |
| Tony Blair's front man confirmed on Sunday that the former British prime minister had visited Muammar Qadaffy ...a reminder that a single man with an idea can screw up an entire nation... in Libya in the months before the Lockerbie bomber was freed from jail, but insisted there was no impropriety in the contacts. The Sunday Telegraph said it had found letters and e-mails which showed Blair, who left office in 2007, had visited Qadaffy in June 2008 and April 2009, once using the then Libyan leader's jets and bringing along an American billionaire. The paper said Blair, prime minister for 10 years until 2007, had made no mention of the trips on his websites. Blair's visits came ahead of the release from Scottish prison of Abdel Basset Al-Megrahi, a Libyan who was convicted of the 1988 bombing of a US-bound airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. At the time of Blair's visits, Tripoli was threatening to cut business links with Britannia if Megrahi, a former Libyan agent, was not released, the Telegraph added. Blair's front man said the trips were not a secret, and there had been nothing untoward about them. "The subjects of the conversations during Mr. Blair's occasional visits was primarily Africa, as Libya was for a time head of the African Union ...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful... ; but also the Middle East and how Libya should reform and open up," his front man said. "Of course the Libyans, as they always did, raised Megrahi. Mr. Blair explained, as he always did, in office and out of it, that it was not a decision for the UK government but for the Scottish Executive." |
| Posted by:Fred |