PM under fire over Lockerbie bomber

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First Minister Alex Salmond said he wanted an answer "forthwith" to a letter he had written to the Prime Minister over the deal.

Mr Salmond has protested to Mr Blair over last month's "memorandum of understanding" signed between Britain and Libya.

The First Minister suggested this could lead to the transfer of the Lockerbie bomber and complained that Scotland was not consulted in advance.

The row took a new twist when former First Minister Jack McConnell, whose Labour administration was ousted by the SNP in the recent Scottish elections, said he had vetoed moves to transfer Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi.

Megrahi is serving life in a Scottish jail for his role in the Lockerbie bombing in which 270 people died when a US jumbo jet was blown up over Scotland in December 1988. Mr McConnell was asked by Edinburgh radio station Talk107 if the transfer of Megrahi to Libya would ever be acceptable.

"I was involved in discussions with this as First Minister," said Mr McConnell. "Much of what happened in those discussions has to remain private. But personally I was always very keen to retain the right of veto that we had in Scotland as a devolved government over any prisoner transfers."

He went on: "I think you can see from the fact that Mr Megrahi is still in Scotland what the outcome of any of those discussions were."

Mr Salmond has told the Scottish Parliament it was "clearly unacceptable" that the memorandum had been signed without any advance consultation with the Scottish administration.

But Downing Street has insisted the memorandum of understanding - signed last week during Tony Blair's trip to Libya - did not cover the case of Megrahi, and it repeated that insistence.