Leader: MacAskill does not have the answers senators seek

In MATTERS of international relations, protocol counts for much, diplomacy a great deal but integrity most of all.

The US senators who have sent out requests for Scotland's justice secretary Kenny MacAskill to appear before them in their inquiry into the Megrahi affair might usefully have borne this in mind.

Why expect Mr MacAskill to respond positively when the former UK prime minister Tony Blair has not been so summoned? It was Mr Blair who was in the tent with Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi when a Prisoner Transfer Agreement (PTA) was discussed. It was Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi who was behind the plot to blow up the Pan Am jet with the callous slaughter of life over Lockerbie. It was both Col Gaddafi and Mr Blair that BP addressed in their lobbying over oil interests in Libya. As the First Minister Alex Salmond has made clear in his reply to the senators, "if your committee is concerned about BP's role or the PTA ,then it is BP and the previous UK administration that should be the focus of your inquiries". Quite.

The Scottish Government, publicly and by letter to the senators, has made clear the independent status of Scots law, the grounds under Scots law and the circumstances of Megrahi's release on compassionate grounds. It has also emphatically stated that at no time was it lobbied by BP on this matter.

Perhaps the senators felt that it would be unseemly to be seen to interrogate a former British prime minister who has been honoured by Congress. Perhaps concerns over breach of protocol have stalled their draft letter to Mr Blair. Jack Straw, the former UK foreign secretary, has been invited and only yesterday chose to decline. Whatever the reason for the senators' actions, it is surely Mr Blair and Mr Straw, not Mr MacAskill, who are more central to the course of their inquiries. Requesting Mr MacAskill but not Mr Blair is at best asymmetric. But it smacks of an easy gesture to the gallery and also leaves the impression, unintended we are sure, that the Scottish justice secretary would be the easier to fry in the public pan.

While there is a wholly respectable case for Mr MacAskill to have accepted the senators' invitation and taken the opportunity to explain Scotland's legal system and put their concerns over its independence at rest, the senators have made it difficult for him to do so while not appearing to be a substitute for inquiries best addressed elsewhere.

In other circumstances Scottish ministers would have been happy to make their position plain to an American audience understandably outraged by an act of wanton terrorism and understandably appalled if Megrahi's release was the result of what has become widely known as "the deal in the desert". Equally, the administration shares the concern that Megrahi has outlived the medical prognosis at the time of his release. With hindsight, human history could be rewritten. In this particular case, US senators have a right to inquire about the nature and extent of BP's involvement in any negotiations with Libya. But that is not an issue to which Mr MacAskill can be a relevant witness.