Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has urged Scotland's justice secretary not to release the Lockerbie bomber from prison.
Clinton said Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi should serve out his life sentence in Scotland.
Megrahi's lawyers revealed yesterday that the Libyan, who has terminal prostate cancer, is dropping his appeal against his conviction in 2001.
It has been speculated that the Scottish justice secretary Kenny MacAskill is considering releasing Megrahi within days on compassionate grounds.
The Libyan government has applied for Megrahi to be transferred to Libya to serve the rest of his sentence.
If Megrahi's request to drop his appeal is successful it will make it easier for him to be returned to his home country because there will be no unfinished legal business.
A spokesman for the U.S. Department of State confirmed Clinton said the department is opposed to Megrahi's release.
"The secretary of state spoke to the justice minister in the last day and expressed again fairly strongly our view that Megrahi should serve out his entire sentence in Scotland," said the spokesman.
Mergrahi is serving life with a minimum of 27 years after being convicted in 2001 of the 1988 bombing on board a Pan Am flight which killed 270 people.
One member of Scottish parliament said pressure had been put on Megrahi to drop his appeal.
Scottish parliament member Christine Grahame, who has met Megrahi in Greenock prison, said a leaked e-mail from an official in the Scottish Justice Department warned that senior Scottish officials were exerting undue pressure to have Megrahi drop his appeal, but they appear to have been successful.
The claims were fiercely denied by the Scottish government.
"Nothing that the Scottish government has done or said suggests pressure on anybody to do anything," said Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond.
"What Megrahi does with his appeal is a matter for him and his advisors, not for the Scottish government," said Salmond.
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