By Stephen Tall
| Sun 13th September 2009 - 4:00 pm
Yesterday’s Times revealed that Jack Straw signed a secret deal with Libya three years ago guaranteeing the Libyan killer of a British policewoman will never be brought to justice in Britain:
The Libyan killer of a British policewoman will never be brought to justice in Britain after a secret deal approved by Jack Straw. The Foreign Office bowed to Libyan pressure and agreed that Britain would abandon any attempt to try the murderer of WPC Yvonne Fletcher, shot outside the Libyan embassy in London 25 years ago.
Anthony Layden, Britain’s former ambassador to Libya, said this weekend he had signed the agreement with the Libyan government three years ago, when Straw was foreign secretary. At the time Britain was negotiating trade deals worth hundreds of millions of pounds with Libya.
The deal followed a visit by Tony Blair, then prime minister, to meet Colonel Gadaffi in March 2004 after Libya announced that it was ending its nuclear weapons programme. The disclosure will provoke criticism of the government after the row over the early release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the terminally ill Lockerbie bomber.
Lib Dem shadow foreign secretary Ed Davey has condemned the move:
Welcome to the Sunday edition of The Voice’s Daily View. And as it’s a Sunday, it’s also time for a multimedia chocolate extra. But first…
Big Stories
Straw admits Lockerbie trade link
Trade and oil played a part in the decision to include the Lockerbie bomber in a prisoner transfer deal, Jack Straw has admitted.
Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, the UK justice secretary said trade was “a very big part” of the 2007 talks that led to the prisoner deal with Libya.
However, Mr Straw’s spokesman accused the press of “outrageous” innuendo. (BBC)
G20 papers over cracks on bank capital, pay
The G20 made progress on Saturday in toughening up financial rules but vague compromises over bank capital and pay curbs indicate that fundamental issues remain unresolved.
The crash of Lehman Bros that brought the world’s financial system to its knees last September was uppermost in minds at the April G20 meeting, which adopted pledges to make it harder for banks to mess up economies in future.
Translating pledges into concrete action is proving to be more painstaking as vested national interests emerge and economic recovery takes the heat out of pressures to reform.
Still, the mood music at Saturday’s meeting contrasted with the tense summit five months ago when fear stalked the corridors of governments and banks were on tenterhooks as to their fate.
(Both of these posts have been selected from those which appeared on Lib Dem Blogs on Saturday. To read more from other Liberal Democrat blogs, take a look at the Lib Dem Blogs website and to see what Lib Dems have been saying on Twitter, take a look at Liberal Tweets.)
Sunday Bonus
Men eating chocolate. It’s what YouTube was invented for.
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