Britain and Libya: a very embarrassing friendship

[Hopeless Romantic]

Britain's close ties with the repressive regime of Libya's embattled dictator Muammar Gaddafi are coming under increasing scrutiny amidst a cacophony of chickens coming home to roost.

This is the regime that once provided a boatload of weaponry, including Semtex high explosive, to the Provisional IRA, and has never brought anyone to book over the callous shooting dead of WPC Yvonne Fletcher from inside Libya's London embassy in 1984.

Britain's recent ties can be traced back to the so-called "deal in the desert" sealed by Tony Blair in March 2004 with a famously cheesy handshake with Col Gaddafi in his home town of Sirte, providing what must now be one of the former prime minister's least favourite photographic mementoes.

The deal infamously overlooked the fact that Libya had plotted the downing of the PanAm jumbo jet over Lockerbie in 1998 - the worst ever terrorist attack on Britain - and had concealed its autocratic nature under the fatuous disguise of the so-called Green Revolution, supposedly ceding power to ill-defined 'Revolutionary Committees'.

Since which time, UK firms have sold Libya an arsenal of crowd control weapons. Those approved for export in 2010 included wall- and door-breaching projectile launchers, small arms ammunition and teargas/irritant ammunition.

Not a single request for a licence was refused.

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Read more: http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/75415,news-comment,news-politics,britain-and-libya-a-very-embarrassing-friendship#ixzz1EhAeFb9E

[SydneyDundee]

1. It's called realpolitik...the French have been doing it for years...can't see the problem