Word: gaddafi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Conservative Party leader David Cameron, calling for an inquiry into the affair. Brown angrily rejected that interpretation of events: "On our part, there was no conspiracy, no cover-up, no double-dealing, no deal on oil, no attempt to instruct Scottish ministers, no private assurances by me to Colonel Gaddafi." (Watch a TIME video with Gordon Brown...
...Megrahi died in jail - the alarmist phrase also emerges in the minutes of the March 2009 Glasgow meeting. Ministers in Westminster duly conveyed these threats to Edinburgh. Labour and the Scottish Nationalists are fierce opponents. "The British government have a better relationship with [Libyan leader Colonel Muammar] Gaddafi than they do with Scotland," says Ed Owen, a former special adviser to Straw. But Scottish politicians could not ignore the overlap between Scottish and U.K. interests. Instead, they devised a plan to release al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds, rather than as part of a prisoner-transfer agreement that had been drawn...
...Three years ago, Gaddafi opted to invest his excess oil revenues in a sovereign wealth fund called the Libyan Investment Authority, which has rocketed in value thanks to soaring oil prices on the world market. The fund has about $65 billion in capital, part of which Libya has used to build five-star resorts in African capitals and to run Afriqiyah Airways, which crisscrosses the Mediterranean to European cities...
...though they have little free speech and no democratic elections. Health care and education are free, and the prices of staple foods are controlled. Unlike Libya's neighbors, Egypt and Algeria, the country has "no big urban proletariat with very little money," says Dalton, who sees little threat to Gaddafi's continued rule, despite his astonishingly long reign. (See pictures of Africa...
...that reason, Libyan officials seem almost indifferent to the West's ire over al-Megrahi. In fact, on Aug. 31, Minister of International Cooperation Siala told reporters in Tripoli that Libya thinks now is a good time to ask Britain to investigate an assassination plot several years ago against Gaddafi - a plot which British officials deny ever existed. For its part, Britain wants Libyan officials to divulge information about the murder of British police officer Yvonne Fletcher, who was shot outside the Libyan embassy in 1984. What happens next between Britain and Libya could reveal whether al-Megrahi's release...