Percy Abrams, executive director of the Iroquois Nationals lacrosse team board of directors, shows his Iroquois Confederacy passport during a news conference in New York, 14 Jul 2010
VOA News
15 July 2010
The British government has refused to allow a Native American lacrosse team to enter Britain using passports issued by their tribal federation.
British officials said Wednesday that the Iroquois team would only be allowed into Britain with documents the government considers valid, including U.S. or Canadian passports.
In Washington Thursday, U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said he was not surprised by the decision and that both the United States and Britain believe that the Iroquois must eventually have internationally recognized travel documents....
http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/usa/Britain-Refuses-to-Recognize-Teams-Iroquois-Passports-98531549.html
I mean after all, we are allies. Yes? Maybe Britain wants to fight the war again.
Clinton to look into senators' request on BP, Libya (click title to entry - thank you)
...According to media reports, London-based oil company BP lobbied the British government to support the prison transfer, which may have encouraged Libya to finalize an offshore drilling deal with BP.
Megrahi, convicted in connection with the 1988 bombing of a U.S. airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland that killed 270 people, was released last August on compassionate grounds after doctors said the 57-year-old convict was near death.Nearly a year later, Megrahi, an alleged Libyan intelligence officer, is still alive....
What is IT with Great Britain and Libya?
Mother of WPc Yvonne Fletcher fears Lockerbie bomber deal means she will never get justice
The mother of murdered WPc Yvonne Fletcher fears that the release of the Lockerbie bomber means she may never get justice for her daughter's killing by a Libyan gunman ...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/6073748/Mother-of-WPc-Yvonne-Fletcher-fears-Lockerbie-bomber-deal-means-she-will-never-get-justice.html
...The Libyan killer of a British policewoman will never be brought to justice in Britain after a secret deal approved by Jack Straw.
The Foreign Office bowed to Libyan pressure and agreed that Britain would abandon any attempt to try the murderer of WPC Yvonne Fletcher, shot outside the Libyan embassy in London 25 years ago.
Anthony Layden, Britain’s former ambassador to Libya, said this weekend he had signed the agreement with the Libyan government three years ago, when Straw was foreign secretary. At the time Britain was negotiating trade deals worth hundreds of millions of pounds with Libya.
The deal followed a visit by Tony Blair, then prime minister, to meet Colonel Gadaffi in March 2004 after Libya announced that it was ending its nuclear weapons programme....
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6832361.ece
...Jack Straw was personally lobbied by BP over Britain’s prisoner transfer agreement with Libya just before he abandoned efforts to exclude the Lockerbie bomber from the deal.
The Times has learnt that the Justice Secretary took two telephone calls from Sir Mark Allen, a former M16 agent, who was by then working for BP as a consultant, on October 15 and November 9, 2007.
Having signed a $900 million oil exploration deal with Libya earlier that year, BP feared that its commercial interests could be damaged if Britain delayed the prisoner transfer agreement (PTA) through which the Gaddafi regime hoped to secure the return home of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi.
For six months, talks with Libya were deadlocked as Britain — under pressure from the devolved Scottish government — vainly sought to ensure that the deal would not cover al-Megrahi....
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6820931.ece
...The row over the release of the Lockerbie bomber was reignited last night when Jack Straw, the justice secretary, directly contradicted Gordon Brown by saying Britain had been partly motivated by the need to secure fresh oil contracts when ministers tried, in 2007, to make it easier to release Abdelbaset al-Megrahi....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/05/straw-admits-oil-role-megrahi-talks
