Five years ago Norman Lamb, Lib Dem MP for North Norfolk was raising concerns about why a debt ridden county like Tanzania where a sizeable part of the population was starving, was spending millions of pounds on a military air traffic control system, the specifications of which were far too high for the countries own needs.At the time, Norman asked why £28 million was being spent on this and why it was personally approved by Tony Blair. Now The Times and The Telegraph highlight corruption claims regarding this deal.
The Telegraph reports that The MOD and Fraud squad are "looking into allegations that BAE paid "backhanders" to Tanzania's government for the £28m military air traffic control system".
Whilst the Times quotes Norman Lamb as saying "It is extraordinary that this should get the Prime Minister’s support given his stated commitment to Africa and it is a relief that we may now get to the truth of how this export ever took place.”
If this is what Labour's much vaunted ethical foreign policy was all about, then it stinks. Well done Norman Lamb for getting answers to some important questions.
1 comment:
Heh! I can tell you a bit about Tanzanian Air Traffic Control.
At least thirty seven years ago, when we lived in Iringa in the south of the country, ATC consisted of two things mainly.
You'd sometimes see one of the East African Airlines DC3s come in to land at Iringa, where the runway was just over the brow of a hill from the terminal "building" and suddenly rev his engines and fly round again. Inevitably when questioned as to why he had done this, the answer from the former Belgian Airforce in-exile WWII pilot was "antelope on the runway".
As to weather radar and the like - if the coffee hit the roof of the cabin you had hit turbulence....:)
Post a Comment