Blair kept colleagues in the dark over Libyan deal

Edinburgh, 13 Jan-(ANA)-Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair failed to tell two of his most senior cabinet colleagues about secret plans to include the Lockerbie bomber in a prisoner-for-trade deal with Libya, Scottish first minister Alex Salmond has said.

The first minister suggested that Lord Falconer, one of Blair's most trusted political friends, and Jack Straw, the justice secretary, believed that the UK would block Libya's demands for Abdelbaset al-Megrahi to be included in a new prisoner transfer treaty.

But the ministers were not "in the loop" with Blair's plans to include Megrahi in that treaty in his controversial "deal in the desert" with Muammar Gaddafi in May 2007 – plans that were eventually agreed with the Libyans by Gordon Brown in December 2007.

Salmond today told the Scottish affairs select committee at the Commons that, throughout the summer of 2007, Falconer and Straw had repeatedly reassured the Scottish government, both in letters and in face-to-face meetings, that Megrahi would be excluded from the treaty.

Salmond told the committee that the Scottish nationalist government in Edinburgh had consistently opposed the proposal to allow Megrahi to be included.

Giving evidence immediately after Salmond, the Scottish justice secretary, Kenny MacAskill, told the committee he had no regrets about his decision to release Megrahi on compassionate grounds, as he is dying from terminal cancer.(ANA)

FA/ANA/13 January 2010----