London: Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister, will face questioning by MPs about his ties to the fallen Libyan regime of Muammar Gaddafi, a report said on Sunday.
Blair has also agreed to appear before Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee in December, The Independent said. The select committee is investigating British foreign policy towards Libya since Blair’s infamous 2004 “deal in the desert”.
The agreement allowed Gaddafi to stay in power and develop diplomatic ties with the West in return for giving up weapons of mass destruction. Signed in Libya a year after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, it was hailed as a major diplomatic coup.
But it also sparked fierce condemnation in both the UK and US because of the Libyan government’s role in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988, with the loss of 270 people.
After Gaddafi was ousted and killed in 2011, evidence emerged of Britain’s apparent involvement in the rendition of terror suspects to Libya for questioning, piling further pressure on Blair, the chairman of the foreign affairs committee, Conservative MP Crispin Blunt, said that the UK’s policy on Libya had been set by Blair.
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