Clik here to view.
Prosecutors make formal request to speak to former Libyan minister as US lifts financial and travel sanctions against him
Scottish authorities investigating the Lockerbie bombing are expected to meet Libyan defector Moussa Koussa in the coming days.
Police and prosecutors have met Foreign Office officials after making a formal request to speak to the former Libyan minister.
The news came as the US lifted financial and travel sanctions against Koussa, which it imposed last month.
The US Treasury department said that it had dropped Koussa from a blacklist of Libyan officials banned from travelling to America and whose assets in US jurisdictions had been frozen.
The department said it had taken the step to reward Koussa for his decision last week to cut ties with Gaddafi and encourage other members of the Libyan leader's inner circle to follow suit.
Koussa, who arrived in Britain last week, is now expected to be questioned by Scottish police over the 1988 bombing in Lockerbie, which claimed 270 lives.
A Crown Office spokesman confirmed officers from Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary had spoken to Foreign Office officials to discuss access to Koussa.
"It was a very positive meeting and steps are being taken with a view to arranging a meeting with Koussa at the earliest opportunity in the next few days," the spokesman said.
Earlier, William Hague, the foreign secretary, said Koussa would be encouraged to co-operate with investigators.
He told the parliament: "These investigations are entirely independent of government. They should follow the evidence wherever it leads them and the government will assist them in any way possible."
Koussa was head of Gaddafi's feared intelligence agency from 1994 and was a senior intelligence agent at the time of the December 1988 bombing.
He is believed to have played a key role in securing the release of the only man convicted over Lockerbie, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.
The inquiry has remained open. The Boeing 747 was en route from London to New York when it was blown out of the sky over the Dumfriesshire town, killing 243 passengers, 16 crew and 11 residents.
Debris from the aircraft was spread over 845 square miles between Lockerbie and the North Sea.
Al-Megrahi was convicted at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands in 2001 but released from jail in August 2009 on compassionate grounds after doctors treating him for prostate cancer gave him an estimated three months to live.
