captain cab wrote:
Alex Salmond has been personally linked to the "trade for terrorists" row after it emerged that a major Arab oil state raised the fate of Lockerbie bomber during talks with the Scottish first minister on bilateral trade deals.
Salmond is in talks with the Qatari government about investment links and is believed to have discussed substantial Qatari loans to fund flagship projects such as a new £2bn Forth road bridge, major subsea electricity cables and other capital programmes under the Scottish Futures Trust funding body.
It has now emerged that the Qatari minister for international cooperation, Khalid bin Mohammed Al-Attiyah, personally pressed Salmond over the fate of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi at a meeting on 11 June to discuss possible investments.
The minister then asked for Megrahi to be released on compassionate grounds in a further letter in July in which he also represented the Arab League, the powerful umbrella body for Middle Eastern and north African oil states.
Salmond, facing the first direct questions about trade links to Megrahi's release, after similar allegations were levelled against the UK government, strenuously denied there was any connection. Minutes of the meeting in June showed that he had told the Qataris that Megrahi was solely a matter for MacAskill.
"As a government we will always look to encourage trade – from America, Europe, from anywhere in the world. But as a government, we took decisions [on Megrahi] based on judicial grounds alone," Salmond said. "There's just absolutely no substance in that linkage. None whatsoever."
(I'll post the link to the full article as well, since you chose not to)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009 ... almond-snp
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