The US Senate has postponed hearings on the release of Libyan Abdelbasset al-Megrahi, convicted for bombing a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, due to key witnesses’ refusal to testify.
Many famous Brits were invited to the US Senate hearings. Among them, former Prime-Minister Tony Blair, outgoing BP boss Tony Hayward, former UK Justice Secretary Jack Straw and Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill. The three latter ones declined to go to Washington, prompting accusations of stonewalling from Senator Robert Menendez.
The US Senate is now looking into the complicated Lockerbie case and, first of all, whether BP was involved in al-Megrahi’s release from prison. Earlier, BP was accused of lobbying the Libyan’s release to win favours from Tripoli. The Scottish government, which released al-Megrahi in August last year, denies it had contacts with BP before deciding to free him. For the USA it is extremely important to complete the investigation because out of 270 people, who died in that tragedy in the sky over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, 189 were US citizens.
The dead people’s families demand that Barack Obama’s administration should get down to the bottom of those events and punish those responsible for the explosion on board the Pan Am flight in December 1988.The British key witnesses’ of the Lockerbie case refusal to attend the hearings in the USA came as a real shock for Washington. Americans in general are not used to this kind of treatment. Communicating with the rest of the world, Americans, as a rule, use force and do not take no for an answer. And this time they faced genuine sabotage by a number of people connected with the Lockerbie case which is very important for the USA.
The UK representatives were to be the key witnesses at the Senate hearings, the UK being America’s main partner and ally in Europe and the whole world. Washington never expected this insubordination and even effrontery on the part of the UK, and in that situation the US Senators had to postpone the hearings of the Lockerbie case. The USA emphasizes it is postponement and not cancellation.
Hard to say, how the British witnesses’ declining to take part in the hearings will affect the US-British “special relations”. But it is clear that London, obviously, decided to show its “elder partner” that it is not going to be “Washington’s poodle” any more, as it was during the time of President George Bush the Junior and Prime-Minister Tony Blair, and from now on, on some points, London is going to take an independent stand.
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