FORMER president Nelson Mandela will not visit the Libyan imprisoned for 1988 Lockerbie bombing which killed 270 people, his representative said on Monday.
Denying a weekend report, Zelda la Grange said, however, that Mandela planned to start talks on raising the sanctions that were imposed on Libya in the wake of the Lockerbie tragedy.
The sanctions were imposed after Libya was accused of harbouring the two men suspected of masterminding the bombing.
At the intervention of Mandela, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah were handed over in 1999 after Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi agreed to a compromise. The pair were subsequently tried in the Netherlands before a special Scottish court.
Al-Megrahi is serving a minimum of 20 years in Glasgow, Scotland for planting the bomb while Fhimah was acquitted.
According to La Grange, Mandela hoped to speak to United States President George Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair as well as a Saudi Arabian government representative on the matter of raising the sanctions.
However, this was proving difficult because of the tensions in the Middle East. La Grange also denied that Mandela was suffering from ill health. – Sapa