THE TELEGRAPH: Tony Hayward, the outgoing chief executive of BP, is refusing to appear before a US Senate hearing which is examining whether the oil giant played any part in the release of the Lockerbie bomber.
The refusal of Mr Hayward, who announced his resignation on Tuesday, to travel to Washington was attacked by senior senators who said the company was already on "thin ice with the American people".
Senators are to continue pushing for Mr Hayward to appear, saying they wanted to question him over whether BP "advocated trading blood for oil".
The firm is also refusing to allow Sir Mark Allen- a former MI6 official who helped negotiate a valuable Libyan oil contract for BP with Colonel Gaddafi – to appear at the hearing.
BP has admitted that Sir Mark, an adviser to the firm, also spoke to Jack Straw, the former Justice Secretary, about Britain introducing a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya.
BP announced that it would instead send Peter Mather, the company's head of UK operations to appear before the Senate hearing. It is not clear whether this will be acceptable to the senators.
Robert Menéndez, a Democratic senator from New Jersey, said: "I would have thought that a company on thin ice with the American people for devastating the Gulf Coast would want to fully co-operate with our effort to fully understand the release of a terrorist who murdered 189 Americans". >>> Robert Winnett in Washington | Tuesday, July 27, 2010
What was that they used to speak about back in the good ol' days? It was something like ‘special relationship’. Hum! I wonder if that’s it? – Mark
