WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama on Friday called the elaborate Libyan homecoming for the freed Lockerbie bomber "highly objectionable."
Obama commented before leaving the White House for a weekend at Camp David, the presidential mountain retreat north of Washington.
Asked after issuing a statement on Afghanistan's elections for his thoughts on the jubilant crowd that greeted Abdel Baset al-Megrahi in Tripoli on Thursday, Obama said: "I think it was highly objectionable."
His chief spokesman, Robert Gibbs, earlier had denounced the homecoming scene as "outrageous and disgusting."
Al-Megrahi is dying of prostate cancer. Scotland released him Thursday on compassionate grounds after he had served eight years of a life sentence for the 1988 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people, including 189 Americans.
Obama had said Thursday that al-Megrahi should not receive a hero's welcome in Libya and should be placed under house arrest.
Both Gibbs and State Department spokesman Ian Kelly deflected questions about whether al-Megrahi's homecoming represented a setback for improving U.S. relations with Libya. Both officials said the administration would be keeping close tabs on Libya in the coming days and weeks to see whether it means what it has said about severing ties with terrorism.
"Celebrating this man who was convicted in a court of law as a terrorist would, of course, cause us to question that indeed they do want to move to a new phase in our relationship," Kelly said. He said he would not say that a "single event at an airport" will cause the U.S. to "totally reconsider our relationship with Libya, but we will be watching as they go forward how this man is treated."
Kelly said he understood that al-Megrahi has been taken to his home, but that Libya has yet to tell the U.S. what his status is.
