Foreign Office: ‘No British deal with Libya’

BRITAIN’S complicated relations with Libya returned to centre stage yesterday as Foreign Office diplomats took the unusual step of denying a newspaper report about a secret deal with Moammar Gaddafi’s regime.

The officials said there was no truth to a front-page Sunday Times article alleging that British diplomats had made a secret deal with Libya three years ago that would prevent the killer of a British policewoman from going on trial in Britain.

The newspaper said British officials seeking to make trade and oil deals with Libya secretly agreed that the person responsible for killing policewoman Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan embassy in London 25 years ago would not be brought to trial in Britain. The report said even her family had been kept in the dark.