British hypocrisy: Gaddafi is a foe

Britain has been a close trade partner of Libya over the past years, yet what London is doing now is hypocritically condemning Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi rather than apologizing for the partnership.

Britain’s trade with the Gaddafi regime stood at an estimated £1.5 billion last year – most of its oil imports from Libya — and London kept its diplomatic ties with Gaddafi well into 2011 after the revolutionaries began fighting against his regime.

Notable examples of such diplomatic relations were the visits by Queen Elizabeth’s second son Prince Andrew to the Libyan capital of Tripoli that clearly showed the deep friendship between the British and Libyan governments.

The latest such visit was paid on March 19 this year one month after the Gaddafi regime began its atrocious suppression of demonstrations in Libyan cities killing hundreds of protesters and wounding thousands of others.

The details of Andrew’s visit were not disclosed yet his position as London’s special trade ambassador was revealing enough in the context of former British partnership with the Gaddafi regime.

Britain has been the biggest European arms trade partner of the Gaddafi regime since the EU lifted its arms embargo on Libya in 2004.

Britain exported £51.85 million worth of weapons in every major category, including planes, missiles, and tear gas to Libya in the seven-year period.

This comes as back in 2007, Blair signed a £350 million military agreement with Gaddafi to help his regime build up its military might.

In effect, Britain has been the major country that has provided Gaddafi with the weapons he used to kill his own people and resist against the revolutionaries, whom British Prime Minister David Cameron now claims Britain “can be proud that we played our part” in their victory.

Cameron said earlier this week that his country helped revolutionaries “avert” the “massacre of thousands of innocent people” by Gaddafi.

He did not care to point out his country armed Gaddafi and helped him out of the international isolation it experienced before 2003 while offering it lucrative trade deals both for Britain and Libya to enable him run his dictatorship.

More than 150 UK-based firms have been operating in the North African country including industrial machinery and engineering services suppliers like Biwater, AMEC, JCB and Mott MacDonald and most of them entered Libya after former PM Tony Blair’s 2003 “Deal in the Desert” with Gaddafi.

BP signed an oil exploration deal with Libya worth at least £550 million back in 2007 while Blair secured two other oil and gas contracts with the Gaddafi regime in 2004 and 2007 totaling £1.4 billion.

Meanwhile, Libyan revenues from oil and gas exports were funneled into British economy after Libyan Investment Authority, the world’s 12th biggest sovereign wealth fund with an estimated wealth of £80 billion set up an office in London.