Senators believe inquiry could still take place after talks with PM
British Embassy: There WILL be a probe if new evidence emerges
Cameron agrees Megrahi should have died in jail in Britain
Obama: We are disappointed and angry, release was 'heartbreaking'
David Cameron today insisted he was not being forced into concessions by the U.S. as he held out the possibility of a new inquiry into the controversial release of the Lockerbie bomber.
The Prime Minister risked anger by describing Britain as the 'junior partner' in the special relationship with America - but denied this meant he was being bossed around.
'I'm not being pushed into any concessions by anybody,' Mr Cameron told Sky News. 'I want to make sure we handle this in the right way.'
Mr Cameron spoke out after meeting four U.S. senators last night to discuss Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi's release and reassuring them a further investigation was still a possibility.
The senators have vowed to keep up the pressure for a full probe, undeterred by Mr Cameron's promise to hand over explosive secret documents about the case.
He repeated today: 'I'm not currently minded to hold an inquiry because I think it is clear that the Scottish Executive made the decision - a bad decision - in the correct way.
'For me to go to the Cabinet Secretary and say "Go back through the paperwork and check to see whether we should be publishing more documents", I think that's a very reasonable step to take.'
British Embassy spokesman Martin Longden said Mr Cameron would reconsider holding a UK inquiry if new evidence emerged.
Indications are that due process was followed but 'if evidence comes to light that casts any doubt on that, then the prime minister's clear - it should be properly investigated,' he said.
British officials had initially told the senators the Prime Minister would not have time to meet them but Mr Cameron overruled them after arriving in the U.S. and appreciating the strength of feeling.
The four, from New York and New Jersey where many Lockerbie victims lived, spent 45 minutes with the Prime Minister at the British Ambassador's residence in Washington late last night.
Immediately afterwards, Senator Chuck Schumer, said there was 'too much suspicion to brush this aside'.
'The only way to restore the integrity of what happened and to continue the integrity of the British government is to do a full and complete investigation,' he said.
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New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand added: 'This is about how we fight terrorism. We cannot have a convicted terrorist be told that he had three months to live and released and sitting in the lap of luxury for up to 10 years.
'That is not justice served and, when we are trying to be able to be effective in fighting terrorism worldwide as allies, we cannot tolerate a convicted terrorist going free on the basis of evidence that may well have been fraudulent.'
Mr Cameron today denied he was being bounced into taking action. 'I'm not being pushed into any concessions by anybody. I want to make sure we handle this in the right way,' he said.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is leading calls for a fresh British probe into the murky circumstances surrounding the decision to send Megrahi home to Libya last year.
A long-running inquiry could deal a hammer blow to beleaguered BP, which has admitted lobbying the Labour government for a prisoner transfer deal with Libya while in discussions with the country about a lucrative oil contract.
Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond today said he did not regret sending Megrahi home despite the diplomatic furore it created, arguing the move was 'with due process and in good faith'.
'If you take a decision in good faith, you don't regret it,' he declared. 'We have had absolutely no doubts about the deep feelings and huge, huge hurt about such an atrocity,' he said.
THE U.S MEDIA'S VERDICT
'British Prime Minister David Cameron aspires to greatness and is capable of it. But standing with President Obama, Cameron did just about everything he could to sidestep a full accounting of how Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi got freed from prison last August.'
Joshua Greenman, New York Daily News
'Britain's high-octane Prime Minister'
ABC News
'It was not quite the Tony Blair-Bill Clinton love fest of 1997, but President Obama and the newly minted British prime minister, David Cameron, appeared game to do everything they could on Tuesday to take some of the recent chill out of the relationship between their countries. Standing side by side in near-identical dark blue suits and blue ties in the East Room at the conclusion of Mr. Cameron’s first visit to the White House as his nation’s leader, the two fortysomethings systematically papered over the few areas of daylight between the United States and Britain.'
Helene Cooper, New York Times
'After 10 weeks in office, Mr. Cameron, who met with President Obama in Washington on Tuesday, has emerged as one of the most activist prime ministers in modern times, rivaling in some respects even Margaret Thatcher, the 'Iron Lady' who as the Conservative leader in the 1980s attacked unions and government bloat while privatizing national industries and vigorously pursuing free-market policies.'
John F Burns in New York Times
But he insisted: 'Not all the relatives have the same position. Some, though not all, of the British relatives concerned were in favour of the release of Mr Megrahi.'
Mr Salmond turned his fire on Tony Blair for negotiating a 'deal in the desert' with Libya in 2007 for a prisoner transfer agreement that cleared the way for BP to land a £550billion contract to drill for oil.
He also told Newsnight last night that the only two documents relating to Megrahi not to have been released were correspondence between British ministers and the U.S. government Scotland had been forbidden to publish.
Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, the minister responsible for the release, said: 'I stand by that decision as being the right decision for the right reasons.
'We followed the rules and the regulations and it balanced the beliefs and values that the people of Scotland, I believe, seek to live by, which is that we believe that justice has to be served but mercy must be capable of being shown.'
Mr Cameron, who will try to distance himself from the row today as he looks to shift the focus onto trade, yesterday agreed with President Barack Obama that Megrahi should have died in jail.
After the two held their first talks at the White House, President Obama demanded full co-operation from Britain with a Senate inquiry into the affair.
The President described the release of the Lockerbie bomber last August as 'heartbreaking'.
'I think all of us here were surprised, disappointed and angry about the release of the Lockerbie bomber,' he said.
'We should have all the facts, they should be laid out there. I have confidence Prime Minister Cameron's government will be co-operative. The decision ran contrary to how we should be treating terrorists.'
Mr Cameron, speaking at a press conference alongside Mr Obama, said Megrahi's return to Libya 'was a bad decision, it shouldn't have been made. This was the biggest mass murderer in British history'.
Megrahi was the only man convicted of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which crashed in December 1988, killing 270.
He was released last year by Scottish ministers on 'compassionate' grounds after being given just three months to live after being diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Rather than authorise a full inquiry, Mr Cameron - whose first trip to the U.S. as Prime Minister was in danger of being overshadowed by renewed American anger over Megrahi's release, vowed he would publish any relevant documents relating to the affair.
Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell has been ordered to trawl Government paperwork and determine what should be released.
That would require the Government to consult Tony Blair - prime minister at the time of the infamous 'deal in the desert' struck with Libya in 2007 - and Gordon Brown, as constitutional convention dictates.
There is even the prospect of Mr Blair and other key figures in the affair being asked to give evidence to a Senate probe.
BP - already under intense attack in the U.S. over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill - has confirmed it spoke to the Labour government about the 'negative impact on UK commercial interests' caused by the slow progress on a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya.
But it denies any involvement in the decision to release Megrahi.
Key to the Senate probe will be secret minutes of two telephone calls and an unpublished letter between Jack Straw, then Justice Secretary, and former MI6 agent Sir Mark Allen, who helped negotiate the 'deal in the desert' - which cleared the way for BP to land a £550billion contract to drill for oil - and then went to work for the oil company.
Mr Cameron said he was asking the Cabinet Secretary 'to go back over all the paperwork... so there is the clearest possible picture out there of what decision was taken and why'.
'I do not currently think that another inquiry is the right way to go,' he said. 'I don't need an inquiry to tell me what I already know, which is that it was a bad decision.'
The Prime Minister dismissed new calls from angry senators for a moratorium on BP oil drilling in Libya. 'I think that trying to connect these issues up, I don't think that is right, frankly,' he said.
British officials had initially told four senators from New York and New Jersey, from where many of the Lockerbie victims came, that the Prime Minister would not have time to meet them. But Mr Cameron overruled them after arriving in the U.S. and appreciating the strength of feeling.
Senator Schumer, before last night's meeting, had said he would demand Megrahi be brought back to justice.
British sources said they could not conceive of a way the bomber could feasibly be brought back. But the demands will heap pressure on Mr Blair - who paid the latest of a series of visits to Libyan dictator Colonel Gaddafi last month - to at least request his return.
Mrs Clinton urged the British Government to conduct a thorough review of the release.
'Everybody has an interest in making sure this was a decision that was made freely, based on the best information available and did not represent any inappropriate or skewed actions,' her spokesman said.
In a letter to senators, Mrs Clinton said: 'That Megrahi is living out his remaining days outside of Scottish custody is an affront to the victims' families, the memories of those killed in the Lockerbie bombing, and to all of those who worked tirelessly to ensure justice was served.'
Mr Cameron said he believed Megrahi 'should have died in jail' but insisted his release had not been BP's decision.
'It was the Scottish Government that took that decision. They took it after proper process and what they saw as the right, compassionate reasons. I just happen to think it was profoundly misguided.
'He was convicted of the biggest mass murder and in my view he should have died in jail. I said that very, very clearly at the time; that is my view today.'
Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, who authorised the release, said yesterday: 'I followed the rules and laws set down in Scottish statute... and I believe I also adhered to the values and beliefs that we have in Scotland.'
Now Miliband admits release was a mistake U-turn: David Miliband now says Megrahi should not have gone free
The Labour leadership contender and former Foreign Secretary was denounced as 'shockingly opportunistic' for flatly contradicting the stance he took in government.
Mr Miliband said: '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.'
In October last year, just weeks after Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was greeted as a hero on his return to Tripoli, Mr Miliband made clear that Labour had wanted the bomber to go home.
He told MPs that the decision was one for the Scottish Government, but added: 'British interests, including those of UK nationals, British businesses and possibly security co- operation would be damaged, perhaps badly, if Megrahi were to die in a Scottish prison rather than Libya.
'Given the risk of Libyan adverse reaction we made it clear to them both that as a matter of law and practice it was not a decision for the UK government and as a matter of policy we were not seeking Megrahi's death in Scottish custody.'
Yesterday Tory MP Douglas Carswell, commenting on the U-turn, said: 'It's shockingly opportunistic. When he was a mandarin's puppet in government he was happy to regurgitate the party line. Now he
wants to be seen as a credible Labour leadership candidate he's busy telling people what he thinks they want to hear. He's taking us all for fools.'
A Scottish Government source said: 'It was David Miliband's own government that did the deal in the desert and Miliband was Foreign Secretary when the UK signed the Prisoner Transfer Agreement with Libya with the clear intention of sending Megrahi back to Libya.'
An SNP source added: 'This ludicrous about-turn by Miliband will damage his credibility and do him absolutely no good, either in his party or anywhere else.'
The Scottish Government had been asked to consider two applications last year - one for compassionate release on medical grounds and one through the prisoner transfer agreement.
Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill granted his compassionate release from Greenock prison after seeking medical advice, a decision which was met with anger, particularly among victims' relatives and politicians in the US.
Mr MacAskill, speaking on a visit to a Scottish jail yesterday, said he had followed the rules.
The Scottish Nationalist said he was 'surprised' that the shadow foreign secretary had condemned the release.
He also pointed out that Mr Miliband was part of Tony Blair's government that struck the desert deal to return Megrahi to Libya under the separate agreement.
Stop picking on BP warns defiant PM David Cameron mounted his staunchest defence yet of BP last night as he issued a public warning to Barack Obama over his pursuit of the firm.
The Prime Minister said it would be unacceptable for the U.S. to pass legislation specifically targeting BP or to try to make it pay compensation for damages that have nothing to do with the Gulf oil spill.
Proposals that have emerged from the U.S. Congress include a moratorium on drilling for firms that have seen more than ten workers killed in an accident - a figure that only applies to BP.
Others have suggested the firm must not only pick up the bill for the direct consequences of the spill, but even the impact of a temporary ban on oil operations in the Gulf for other firms. Mr Cameron said he did not want to engage in a 'war of words' with the U.S. over the issue.
But he insisted: 'I think there are some areas where we need to be clear about what BP's responsibility is: cap the well, yes, clear up the mess, yes, make compensation, yes absolutely, but would it be right to have legislation that independently targets BP rather than other companies?
'I don't think that would be right. Would it be right to say that BP has to pay compensation for damages that were nothing to do directly with the spill? I don't think that would be right.
'We have to be clear about what BP's responsibility is and those are discussions obviously that BP has to have with the U. S. administration.'
He said he was 'very angry' about the spill, which has caused an anti-British backlash across America: 'I want BP to sort it out, and they are sorting it out.' The Prime Minister said he had held regular meetings with BP executives over the issue.
Concerns that BP moved too soon to shut off the Gulf of Mexico oil spill were allayed last night.
Scientists discovered that an oil seep on the sea floor was unconnected with the BP well, raising hopes that the cap will prevent any more oil from gushing into the ocean.
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