The judge who will preside over the Lockerbie trial has agreed that relatives of those who died should be able to watch the proceedings on closed-circuit television.

Pictures from inside the courtroom, at a former military base in the Netherlands, will be relayed to two locations in the United Kingdom and two in the United States.

But there is still no agreement on any public broadcasting of the forthcoming trial at Camp Zeist in Holland.

The decision, announced on Friday, fulfils a promise to the families that they would not have to travel to see the court proceedings involving accused, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, 47, and Al Ami Khalifa Fhimah, 43.

Lord Advocate Lord Hardie made a promise to families last August that they would be able to watch the trial, starting on 3 May, from the US and the UK.

But at a preliminary hearing in Edinburgh on Wednesday, it became clear that neither the presiding judge, Lord Sutherland, nor the defence lawyers had endorsed that promise.

A spokesman for the Scottish Executive has now told BBC News Online Scotland that Lord Sutherland had subsequently agreed in private to let relatives watch the proceedings under supervised conditions in Dumfries, London, Washington and New York.

Lord Sutherland's approval does not extend to allowing the trial to be televised more widely and the BBC has said it will be seeking permission for this from another court.

Formal pleas of not guilty have now been entered by the two Libyan men accused of the atrocity.

The allegations follow the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 from Heathrow to New York, which blew up in the skies over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988, killing all 269 people on board and 11 people on the ground.