Lord Trefgarne of the Libyan British Business Council says the relationship brought many benefits.

“They handed over their weapons of mass destruction, handed over their WMD program, they gave an undertaking not to support any form of international terrorism in the future,” he added.

The fact that Mr. Gadhafi now appears to be using lethal force against his own people has brought further accusations of hypocrisy for the British government. Many Western countries have sold arms to Libya. British companies shipped sniper rifles to Tripoli as recently as November.

Kaye Stearman is spokesperson for the Campaign Against Arms Trade.

“The European picture, of course, is that everybody is trying to sell to Libya – they’re a very, very rich country and it’s opened up enormously in the past few years,” Stearman said. “So there, I think you’ll find the Italians, the French, the Germans are very much competing with the British to sell things. Even tiny Malta has sold I think about $120 million worth of weapons to Libya.”

The brutal suppression of the protests has led to calls from many European governments to impose trade sanctions on Libya.

Scotland, meanwhile, says it will pursue any new lines of inquiry that become available in relation to the Lockerbie bombing.