UK 'set for record Libya arms sales'

The UK is on course to achieve record arms sales to Libya this year, the Liberal Democrats claimed today.

Foreign affairs spokesman Edward Davey said the British people had been left "ashamed" by the Government's actions on the international stage.

In a keynote speech at the party's conference in Bournemouth, Mr Davey condemned Gordon Brown for his actions to support Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gadaffi's regime.

Despite tensions between the UK and Libya being raised by the release of the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, Mr Davey said sales of military equipment were booming.

He said: "My research team calculate that by the end of this year, Britain is set to have had its best year ever for arms exports to Libya.

"It is one thing rebuilding relations with a previously rogue regime.

"It is quite another asking Britain's SAS and senior policemen to train Gadaffi's security forces.

"It's not just the harbouring of the killer of PC Yvonne Fletcher. It's not just Lockerbie. It's not even the IRA's semtex.

"But if Gordon Brown and David Miliband haven't noticed, Colonel Gaddafi still runs a brutal, human rights-suppressing authoritarian regime."

Mr Davey attacked the Government's record on foreign affairs.

"From the disaster of Iraq to the quagmire of Afghanistan. From the allegations of British complicity in torture to this summer's soap opera of revelations of British craven capitulation to the demands of Colonel Gadaffi.

"Shabby deals done. British lives lost.

"The British people want to feel proud about how our country behaves in the world – but they've been left embarrassed at best ashamed at worst.

"Gordon Brown's 'moral compass' has been pointing in the wrong direction."