File talk:REUTERS12NOV94.jpg
This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the REUTERS12NOV94.jpg file. |
|
Legibility
The text in the image of this Reuters news agency report dated 12 November 1994 is indistinct and barely legible. To improve the report, I have therefore transcribed and wikified it as follows:
SOUTH AFRICA MINISTER DENIES KNOWING OF
Former South African foreign minister Pik Botha denied on Saturday he had been aware in advance of a bomb on board Pan Am Flight 103 which exploded over Lockerbie in Scotland in 1988 killing 270 people.
The minister confirmed through his spokesman that he and his party had been booked on the ill-fated airliner but switched flights after arriving early in
He was travelling with South African officials to negotiate peace in Namibia and Angola.
Botha was reacting to a report in
"Had he known of the bomb, no force on earth would have stopped him from seeing to it that flight 103, with its deadly cargo, would not have left the airport," Botha's spokesman Roland Carroll told Reuters after consulting the minister. "The minister is flattered by the allegation of near omniscience."
Gerrit Pretorius, at the time Botha's private secretary, said the then foreign minister and 22 South African negotiators, including defence minister
Darroll said that South African diplomats in the United States were convinced at the time that Botha and his team were on flight 103. He said the flight from Johannesburg arrived early in London after a
British legislator Tam Dalyell said on Saturday he was going to screen the documentary on the bombing at the House of Commons after it was pulled out of a film festival for legal reasons.
The film by American
It said a former CIA agent says in the film he was asked to set up a 'dirty tricks' operation to implicate Libya in drug running. The paper said the bomb was unwittingly carried onto the flight from London to New York by suspected drug runner Khaled Jaafar, one of the 270 victims.---PJHaseldine (talk) 14:44, 1 November 2008 (UTC)