Oil deal "very big part" of Lockerbie bomber release

I'm basically stealing the headline from Green Sheet, which has been all over this story since the beginning.

Justice Secretary Jack Straw said trade, particularly a deal for oil company BP PLC, was "a very big part" of the 2007 negotiations that led to the prisoner deal. The agreement was part of a wider warming of relations between London and Tripoli.

"Libya was a rogue state," Straw was quoted as saying by The Daily Telegraph newspaper. "We wanted to bring it back into the fold and trade is an essential part of it — and subsequently there was the BP deal."

It might have been the pragmatic thing to do, but that won't play very well with the British electorate (and nor will, probably, Gordon Brown's tardy posturing over the issue).