Cameron meets with Wall Street CEOs in NYC after rebuffing calls for Lockerbie inquiry
By APWednesday, July 21, 2010
Cameron meets with Wall Street CEOs in NYC
NEW YORK — British Prime Minister David Cameron met with Wall Street CEOs on his first official visit to New York on Wednesday, pressing the case for doing business in the United Kingdom.
The closed meeting included top executives at JPMorgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Citigroup Inc. and Morgan Stanley. The British consulate said the discussions focused on prospects for more trade and investment with the UK.
Cameron, who took office 10 weeks ago, also planned talks later with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
He arrived Wednesday afternoon after a visit to Washington, where he met with President Barack Obama and discussed the war in Afghanistan at the Pentagon with U.S. officials, including Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn.
Cameron was greeted in New York by Mayor Michael Bloomberg at a street corner just after he arrived. The pair grabbed hot dogs from a street vendor but ignored questions from reporters while they ate. Cameron did flash a thumbs-up when asked about his lunch.
He and Bloomberg planned to wrap up the day with another meal together — a more refined private dinner on the Upper East Side.
Cameron had hoped his first U.S. visit as prime minister would focus on trade and troop involvement in Afghanistan, but it has been overshadowed by questions of whether oil giant BP swayed Scotland’s decision to release the Lockerbie bomber.
Libyan Abdel Baset al-Megrahi was convicted for the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people, most of them American and many from the New York area. Last year the Scottish government released the cancer-stricken al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds.
The matter has received new attention because of accusations that BP helped influence the release of al-Megrahi as part of efforts to seek access to Libyan oil fields.
BP has acknowledged that it urged the British government to sign a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya but says it never specified al-Megrahi’s case.
The four U.S. senators from New York and New Jersey met with Cameron on Tuesday to press for a new investigation.
In a solo appearance Wednesday, Bloomberg said that while al-Megrahi’s release was a “miscarriage of justice,” he said he had no plans to press the case further with Cameron.
“That’s a federal issue and there’s no reason why I would bring it up,” he said.
