Despite Lockerbie bomber's release row, Brown to meet Gaddafi

London, Sep. 21 (ANI): British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is all set to meet Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi this week. The meeting is likely to add more fuel to Britain's controversial decision to free Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Al Megrahi last month.

The reports of the meeting come as new figures suggest that 2009 will be Britain's "best year ever" in terms of arms exports to Libya, The Telegraph reports.

According to figures obtained from the Foreign Office's strategic export controls reports, in the first quarter of 2009, equipment worth 9.4 million pounds was supplied to Libya, compared with 14.4 million pound for the whole of 2008.

"If Gordon Brown hadn't noticed, Colonel Gaddafi still runs a brutal, human rights-suppressing authoritarian regime," the paper quoted Liberal Democrat Ed Davey, as saying.

Recently, Brown faced fierce criticism for allegedly engineering Megrahi's release to get oil from Libya. However, the Government strongly denied it.

Victims of IRA bomb attacks have urged Brown to raise the issue of compensation when he meets the Libyan leader.

"I would hope he doesn't miss this opportunity. I wish that Gordon Brown would say to Libya 'come on now, let's play fair, if you want to move into the international community, you have got to address your past'," Jonathan Ganesh, who was injured in the Docklands bomb in 1996, said.

Colin Parry, who lost his 12-year-old son in the Warrington bomb in 1993, called for Brown to "do the decent thing" by raising the issue with Gaddafi.

Colonel Gaddafi, who was an international pariah until recently, is being welcomed into the diplomatic mainstream after abandoning in 2003 Libya's nascent attempts to acquire Weapons of Mass Destruction.

He will attend the UN General Assembly for the first time on Thursday. (ANI)