(NSI News Source Info) WSAHINGTON, U.S. - July 21, 2010: British Prime Minister David Cameron Tuesday rejected an inquiry into Scotland's release of the Lockerbie bomber, and said BP did not sway the decision, as he met US President Barack Obama.Cameron however told his top civil servants to assess whether new information needed to be made public on the release last year of terminally ill Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi.
"I don't need an inquiry to tell me what was a bad decision," Cameron said, but also rejected suggestions that a lobbying effort by energy giant BP helped win the release of Megrahi, who remains alive nearly a year after he was freed.
"That wasn't a decision taken by BP -- it was a decision taken by the Scottish government."
Obama and his visitor carefully picked through raw political sensitivities surrounding the release of Megrahi, and over British-based BP's pariah status in the United States following the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster.
And both leaders insisted that war strategy in Afghanistan was correct, and said plans to hand over the country largely to Afghan forces by 2014, endorsed by an international Kabul conference on Tuesday, were realistic.
In their first White House meeting, they also both pledged fealty to the US-British "special relationship" as Obama attempted to stamp out suggestions he did not value the long alliance in the same way as his predecessors.
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