Cameron agrees to review bomber case

British leader David Cameron bowed to mounting pressure for a review of the decision to release the Lockerbie bomber yesterday as the affair cast a shadow over his talks with President Barack Obama at the White House.

The Prime Minister resisted calls by United States politicians for a full-scale inquiry but asked Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell to review whether the Government should release any secret documents relating to BP's alleged role in the return of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi to Libya.

Cameron was caught in the crossfire between US politicians, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who want an inquiry, and BP, which allegedly lobbied for Megrahi to be sent back to Libya to help the oil giant land a £550 million ($1.1 billion) oil exploration deal in his home country.

Megrahi, the only person convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, which killed 270 people, was released by the Scottish Government almost a year ago on the grounds that he had only three months to live. He is still alive.

Charles Schumer, a New York senator who met Cameron in Washington, called for Megrahi to be brought back to spend the rest of his life in a Scottish jail. He urged Cameron to order "a complete investigation and bring Megrahi back to justice".

Passions are running high over the case in the US, where BP is public enemy No 1 because of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Cameron is reluctant to agree to a new inquiry as it could weaken BP's share price when the company is already on the ropes. "It was not the decision of BP. It was the decision of Scottish ministers," he said yesterday.

Later the Prime Minister made a concession in an attempt to cool the row. He announced: "I am asking the Cabinet Secretary to go back over the paperwork to see if there is anything else that should be released, so that there is the clearest possible picture of what decision was taken and why."

He rejected calls by senators for a moratorium on BP's operations in Libya. The documents under review are believed to include telephone and letter contacts between Jack Straw, then Justice Secretary, and Sir Mark Allen, a former senior MI6 officer who was involved in talks on a prisoner-transfer agreement with Libya and went on to work for BP.

Cameron promised Britain would co-operate fully with a Senate inquiry into the affair, due to start on July 29.

The Megrahi controversy has eclipsed Cameron's first visit to the White House since becoming Prime Minister. He held more than an hour of one-to-one talks with Obama in the Oval Office before they had a working lunch with their advisers.

David Miliband, who was Foreign Secretary at the time of Megrahi's release, admitted yesterday: "It was clearly wrong because it was done on the basis he had less than three months to live and it's now 11 months on."

But Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish Justice Minister who released Megrahi, blamed Miliband and the Blair Government.

- INDEPENDENT