BAE Systems comments on Libya

27 August 2009

In our story at the beginning of the week headed Bomber release 'will lead to contracts' we mentioned that BAE Systems could be one of the beneficiaries of the release of convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi as contracts to upgrade Libya's defence equipment began to come into the UK.

We mentioned in the piece that MBDA Missile Systems, partly owned by BAE, was reckoned to have recently signed a contract to supply Libya with anti-tank missiles and that the former chief operating officer of MBDA Guy Griffiths went to Libya with Tony Blair in 2007.

We also mentioned in the piece that we had asked BAE to comment on our story but they had not come back to us. This wasn't to suggest that BAE was avoiding the issue, of course, and indeed it appears the reason we had no immediate response was simply down to key people being away during the summer break.

BAE has now given defencemanagement.com its response and it is as follows:

"Regarding future business with Libya, BAE Systems, like all defence companies, would only consider business within constraints of UK and US defence export licensing policies."