Libya rules out UK visit on Lockerbie

Libya's interior minister on Tuesday ruled out a visit by British police to investigate the 1988 Lockerbie bombing or the killing of British policewoman Yvonne Fletcher almost two decades ago.

"There is no treaty between Britain and Libya to allow such a thing,” Fawzi Abdelali told AFP in a joint interview with a British newspaper, adding that London had some explaining to do on its own dealings with Muammar Gaddafi's ousted regime.

"Why did they shut up about this all these years and bring it up now, when we are in a period of transition and building up our institutions from scratch after decades of dictatorship,” the minister asked.

"Do you remember when Fletcher was killed? We are now in 2012. Where was the British government from 1984 until 2011,” asked the former district attorney, who now has access to tens of thousands of files on Gaddafi's dealings with world leaders.

In a December interview with British daily The Guardian, Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt said the new authorities had agreed to cooperate on the two cases and given the green light for UK investigators to visit the country.

For his part, Abdelali said he wanted allegations to be investigated by the ousted leader's jailed son Seif al-Islam that former British prime minister Tony Blair had acted as a political adviser to his father.

Blair played a key role in repairing diplomatic ties between the two countries and visited the north African nation several times after 2004. (...)