Mr Mandela said that as early as 1992 he approached the then US president, George Bush, to propose trying the two Libyan suspects in a third country. Mr Mandela said the American president was sympathetic, as was François Mitterrand of France and the Spanish king, Juan Carlos.
But Downing Street was a different matter. Mr Mandela says he told John Major that Britain could not act as prosecutor, judge and jury in the case. Mr Major responded by saying the British government did not have confidence in foreign courts.
'I came across a stone wall. He said this trial must be in Scotland. That blocked the process for a long time. The man who moved this forward is Blair,' he said.
Mr Mandela said that despite his eventual success in mediating over Lockerbie he is determined now to retire into obscurity.
'I don't want to reach 100 years while I'm still trying to bring about a resolution in some complicated international issue,' he said.
Mr Mandela spoke yesterday as he celebrated five years as president and his forthcoming retirement with a ticker tape parade on board an open-top bus through Johannesburg. Bagpipes, a brass band and thousands of people hailed the 80-year-old statesman.
Mr Mandela also revealed that he had initially resisted becoming South Africa's first black president. He said he had not wanted to be the African National Congress's candidate in the country's first all race elections in 1994, but was persuaded by colleagues.
Similarly, he said he had not favoured the man almost certain to succeed him as president, Thabo Mbeki, as his running mate five years ago. He said he was concerned that the ticket would be perceived as dominated by one ethnic group. Both he and Mr Mbeki are Xhosas from the Eastern Cape.
The president defended Mr Mbeki, despite criticisms that he lacks Mr Mandela's concern for reconciliation between whites and blacks.
'Thabo has been running this country for a couple of years. He has been the de facto president. I have been the nominal president,' he said. 'Mbeki has all the wisdom one needs to run this country.'
Mr Mandela said he was aware of the 'perception that I am so obsessed with pacifying whites' but said that many whites had given invaluable support to the government.
Although conceding that the government had made mistakes, Mr Mandela defended his administration as better than any since colonisation.
'We have confounded the prophets of doom. Serious political analysts predicted there would never be a peaceful transformation in the country. They said there would be civil war. We proved them wrong,' he said.
'There has been tremendous progress. Whites have run this country for three centuries and no government throughout this period has achieved as much as this one. We have been able to transform South Africa from a polecat of the world.'
At his final breakfast for journalists as president, Mr Mandela sought to allay fears that Mr Mbeki's well-known dislike of the media is a threat to press freedom.
'We have made repeated statements that we regard a free press as a pillar of democracy and that we have no intention whatsoever of restricting a free press. [Mbeki] has no way of changing from that policy. It is the established policy of the organisation,' he said.
But Mr Mandela said white domination of the media, in ownership and editing, had to end.
'We cannot be satisfied with a media which is dominated by one population group, a group which has controlled things for three centuries. To have the media controlled by that tiny minority is totally unacceptable,' he said.
Mr Mandela retires on June 16. He said: 'I would like to return to my village and be able to walk around the valleys and the hills and the little stream where I grew up.
'But I have 27 grandchildren and more are coming. They are in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban. I will have to visit them,' he said.
