LONDON: Britain on Saturday rejected any suggestion that it had struck a deal with Libya to free the Lockerbie bomber — questions that arose when Muammar Qaddafi publicly thanked British officials as he embraced the man convicted of killing 270 people in the 1988 airline bombing.

Qaddafi praised Prime Minister Gordon Brown and members of the royal family by name for what he described as influencing the decision to let the terminally ill Abdel Basset Al-Megrahi return home to die. Thousands greeted Al-Megrahi at the airport as he arrived in Tripoli after being freed Thursday from a Scottish prison.

But British officials insisted they did not tell Scottish justice officials what to do. “The idea that the British government and the Libyan government would sit down and somehow barter over the freedom or the life of this Libyan prisoner and make it form part of some business deal .... it’s not only wrong, it’s completely implausible and actually quite offensive,” Business Secretary Peter Mandelson told reporters in London.

Qaddafi met Al-Megrahi on Friday, embracing him and getting a kiss on the hand in return. The beaming Libyan leader expressed gratitude to Brown and Queen Elizabeth. “This step is in the interest of relations between the two countries ... and of the personal friendship between me and them and will be positively reflected for sure in all areas of cooperation between the two countries,” he told Libyan TV.

His son Seif Al-Islam went further, saying that whenever he had met British officials to discuss business, the issue of Al-Megrahi’s release was a condition of any deal being struck. Mandelson said he had met Qaddafi’s son twice in the past year and the issue of the Lockerbie bomber had been raised both times, but his release was not tied to business deals.

Britain has walked a fine line on the issue as the government in London must distance itself from local affairs in Scotland. While outraged at the jubilant reception Al-Megrahi received in Libya, British leaders have refrained from criticizing the decision to free the man convicted in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, a decision made in Edinburgh under Scotland’s separate judicial system.

Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill decided to release Al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds because the Libyan has prostate cancer and was given only months to live by top British doctors. Compassionate leave for dying inmates is a regular feature of Scottish justice.

In Washington on Saturday, FBI Director Robert Mueller blasted MacAskill for allowing the Lockerbie bomber to return home, saying the decision gave comfort to terrorists around the world. “Your action,” he wrote MacAskill, “makes a mockery of the grief of the families who lost their own on Dec. 21, 1988.” President Barack Obama earlier called the decision “highly objectionable.”

Most of those killed were Americans, and their families have been scathing in their criticism of the Libyan’s release.