Cairo, Sunday
THE Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has for the first time linked the death of Princess Diana to the Lockerbie case.
He repeated his claim that British intelligence agents arranged the fatal car crash on August 31 of the princess and her friend, Dodi al-Fayed.
Gaddafi has repeatedly rejected British and US demands that the two Libyans implicated in the PanAm bombing over Lockerbie be handed over for trial in the US or Scotland. The bombing killed 270 people.
''Britain has no right to talk about Lockerbie till after these assassins (British agents) are tried before a Libyan court,'' Gaddafi told reporters.
Gaddafi's comments were reported by the Libyan news agency, Jana.
Gaddafi insists that al-Fayed, an Egyptian, is of Libyan origin. An early proponent of a conspiracy theory, Libya openly claims that the British intelligence agency killed him and Diana to prevent a possible marriage that could have embarrassed the British royalty by producing children with Muslim names.
Gaddafi also repeated his old demand that the US turn over the pilots who carried out the April 14-15, 1986 bombing of Tripoli and the port of Benghazi. He has also demanded custody of the officials who planned the attack.
''The situation is made up of 'Locker A' and 'Lockerbie', and 'Locker A' must be solved first,'' Gaddafi said.
Libya said 37 people, including an adopted daughter of Gaddafi, were killed in the attack, which retaliated for the bombing of a Berlin discotheque in which two US servicemen were killed. The US accused disco attackers, who belonged to a Palestinian guerrilla group.-AP.
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