Next week Sir Vincent Fean, KCVO, is scheduled to give evidence to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee. Sir Vincent was educated at Saint Theodore’s Roman Catholic High School and the University of Sheffield and speaks Arabic. According to the Oxford Research Group , the retired ambassador is particularly interested in Libya’s future.
On 8 June 2008, he wrote to Tony Blair , re the talks between Libya and the USA, in the following terms:
“HMG is not involved in the talks , although some British Citizens might be affected by them [Lockerbie plus some Northern Irish litigants].
It remains a UK objective to promote the City of London as a safe and profitable place for Libya to invest its Sovereign Wealth Fund through the Libyan Investment Authority, which we hope will open a London office this year.”
He then went on to extol the virtues of selling some arms to Gadafy, a contract worth £400 million to the UK .
When Sir Vincent appears I will be interested to hear him respond to the following questions.
- Having established that Gadafy funded the IRA and provided the Semtex which killed hundreds in the UK, was it OK to be his friend?
- Having known about Gadafy’s human rights abuses, was he satisfied that the money to be invested was not stolen from Gadafy’s subjects?
- When is money the proceeds of crime and when is it legitimate, or does that depend on which arms company is twisting the Ambassador’s arm?
Small chocolate, anyone?
seftonblog 
I would like to think that David ‘call me Dave’ Cameron and William Hague would be called too. These two men who, when in opposition, were full of tough talk and then once they got their feet under their respective tables, the tough talk turned to silence.
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Well, that was a missed opportunity. Not only did the panel not corner Fean over his e-mail to Tony Bliar….they failed to corner him on anything. He was able to slither in and slither out without being put on the spot. And at one point Paisley Jr tried to recruit him, he who couldn’t give a toss about the victims, to work on the victims case! Indeed, when Fean quite crassly said that the victims should be taking a case against sinn fein/ira, no one challenged this. Surely this would have been an excellent opportunity to link the Libya case and the issue of pardons for terrorists….but no, that comment was allowed to slide.
But on the plus side so thought Mr MacKinlay did a fantastic job. It’s just a pity that the committee failed to put any pressure at all on Fean and failed to get answers out of him visa vie Bliar’s interference in the MacDonald case. I actually now hope that the committee don’t call Bliar or Brown as they clearly lack the stones to actually get stuck in. Bliar would make them look like rank amateurs.
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