by JEEVAN VASAGAR and RAJEEV SYAL
A deepening row over the London School of Economics and its dealings with the Gaddafi regime has claimed the career of the university’s director. Sir Howard Davies resigned after fresh revelations that the institution had been involved in a deal worth £2.2m to train hundreds of young Libyans to become part of the country’s future elite.
An independent inquiry headed by Lord Woolf, a former lord chief justice, will examine the LSE’s relationship with Libya and with Muammar Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam. It will also establish guidelines for international donations to the university.
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Davies’s resignation came as a US consultancy admitted mishandling a multimillion dollar contract with Libya to sanitise Gaddafi’s reputation in the west. Monitor Group, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, organised for academics and policymakers from the US and UK to travel to Tripoli to meet the Libyan despot between 2006 and 2008, as part of a $3m (£1.8m) contract. They included Francis Fukuyama, professor of international political economy at Johns Hopkins University and author of The End of History and The Last Man, as well as Richard Perle, a prominent neocon who advised the Bush presidency on the Middle East.
Guardian for more
(Thanks to Salim Amersi)