Thursday 28th of November 2024
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"aussie tony" & the value of me .....

"aussie tony" & the value of me .....

Tony Blair waged an extraordinary two-year battle to keep secret a lucrative deal with a multinational oil giant which has extensive interests in Iraq.

The former Prime Minister tried to keep the public in the dark over his dealings with South Korean oil firm UI Energy Corporation.

Mr Blair - who has made at least £20million since leaving Downing Street in June 2007 - also went to great efforts to keep hidden a £1million deal advising the ruling royal family in Iraq's neighbour Kuwait.

In an unprecedented move, he persuaded the committee which vets the jobs of former ministers to keep details of both deals from the public for 20 months, claiming it was commercially sensitive. The deals emerged yesterday when the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments finally lost patience with Mr Blair and decided to ignore his objections and publish the details.

News of the secret deals fuelled fresh accusations that Mr Blair is 'cashing in on his contacts' from the controversial Iraq war in what one MP called 'revolving door politics at its worst'.

They will increase concerns that Mr Blair is using his role as the West's Middle East envoy for personal gain.

The revelations also shed fresh light on his astonishing earnings, which include lucrative after-dinner speaking, consultancies with banks and foreign governments, a generous advance for his forthcoming memoirs, as well as the pension and other perks he enjoys as a former Prime Minister.

Tony Blair's secret dealings with South Korean oil firm UI Energy Corp

BP = blairish petroleum...

The tortuous saga of BP, the Gulf of Mexico, the Lockerbie bombing and an America which feels itself badly wronged took another turn yesterday when it emerged that the oil company is about to start drilling at an even greater depth in, of all places, Libyan waters.

And, as that information was being absorbed, there came an announcement that Jack Straw, the former justice secretary, had declined an invitation to attend the upcoming US Senate hearing into possible links between BP and the release last August of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who was convicted of the murder of 259 passengers on Pan Am Flight 103, and 11 Lockerbie residents. Megrahi, who was diagnosed with cancer, was put on a plane back to Tripoli after doctors said he had only three months to live.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is investigating allegations that the release, officially on compassionate grounds, was ordered in return for economic co-operation, including access to oil and gas fields. Tony Blair, former prime minister and "friend of Gaddafi", has also become embroiled in the affair.

US backed Lockerbie bomber's release....

Britain's Sunday Times has published leaked documents which show that the Obama administration was prepared to accept the conditional release of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.

The US government has condemned the Scottish government's decision to release Libyan national Megrahi last August, amid questions about what role lobbying by oil giant BP played in the decision.

Scottish authorities say the decision was made on compassionate grounds because Megrahi was suffering from terminal cancer. Scottish authorities at the time said he was expected to have only three months to live, but he is still alive nearly a year later.

Now The Sunday Times has obtained a letter from the US embassy to Scottish first minister Alex Salmond, written a week before the release, which appears to show that Washington was prepared to accept at least a conditional release.

While wanting Megrahi behind bars, the letter says a conditional release would be "far preferable" to a prisoner transfer to Libya.

The embassy wrote that making Megrahi live in Scotland would mitigate a number of strong US concerns.

So far there has been no response to the leak from the White House.