A senior British government minister has admitted in a newsaper interview that trade and oil played a "very big part" in the decision to include the Lockerbie bomber in a prisoner transfer deal.
Abdel Basset al-Megrahi was freed early from a Scottish jail last month on humanitarian grounds because he was terminally ill with prostate cancer.
British justice secretary Jack Straw has told the Daily Telegraph that trade and the BP oil company's exploration deal with Libya were factors in the prisoner deal.
"Libya was a rogue state. We wanted to bring it back into the fold," the newspaper quotes Mr Straw as saying. "And yes, that included trade because trade is an essential part of it and subsequently there was the BP deal."
A spokesman for Mr Straw told the BBC the minister had always made clear that wider considerations such as trade and normalising relations with Libya played a part in the negotiation of the prisoner transfer agreement.
The spokesperson accused the press of an absurd and offensive level of innuendo over the issue.
Earlier this week the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown insisted there was no conspiracy, cover-up, or deal on oil over the release.
Megrahi is the only person to have been convicted over the killing of 270 people in the bombing of a Pan Am passenger plane over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988.
