The account of the murder of WPC Yvonne Fletcher in Dr Kevin Bannon’s letter (19 May) is misleading in several respects.
As ambassador in Tripoli I passed on the warning, conveyed to me by the Libyans the night before, 16/17 April 1984, and their demand that the planned demonstration outside the People’s Bureau (embassy) in London should be cancelled. There was no mention of trouble involving firearms. From papers I have seen since declassified under the 30-year rule it is clear that the warning conveyed by the People’s Bureau to the Foreign Office in London was no different.
The idea that the shooting made closure of the People’s Bureau inevitable is fanciful. It soon became clear to me that the Libyans were astonished and dismayed by our decision to break off diplomatic relations – they had assumed that our relations with them were far too valuable to us for that. They made every effort to persuade us to restore relations.
The Libyans who took part in the demonstration, some of whom were injured in the shooting, were not involved in violence. There is no reason to believe that they “had agents inside” the People’s Bureau.
Oliver Miles
Oxford
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