Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi’s regime has sent one of its most trusted envoys to London for confidential talks with British officials, according to the Guardian’s sources.
Mohammed Ismail, a senior aide to Qaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam, visited London in recent days, British government sources familiar with the meeting have confirmed.
The contacts with Ismail are believed to have been one of a number between Libyan officials and the West in the last fortnight, amid signs that the regime may be looking for an exit strategy.
Disclosure of Ismail’s visit comes in the immediate aftermath of the defection to Britain of Mussa Kussa, Libya’s foreign minister and the country’s former external intelligence head, who has been Britain’s main conduit to the Qaddafi regime since the early 1990s.
A team led by the British -ambassador to Libya, Richard Northern, and MI6 British intelligence officers, embarked on a lengthy debriefing of Kussa at a safe house on Thursday after he flew into Farnborough airport, southwest of London, on Wednesday night from Tunisia. British government sources said the questioning would take time because Kussa’s state of mind was “delicate” after he left his family in Libya. The UK Foreign Office on Thursday declined “to provide a running commentary” on contacts with Ismail or other regime officials. However, news of the meeting comes amid mounting speculation that Qaddafi’s sons, foremost among them Saif al-Islam, Saadi and Mutassim, are anxious to explore a way out of the crisis in Libya.
“There has been increasing evidence recently that the sons want a way out,” a Western diplomatic source said.
Although he has little public profile in either Libya or -internationally, Ismail is recognized by diplomats as being a key fixer and representative for Saif al-Islam.
According to cables published by WikiLeaks, Ismail has represented the Libyan government in arms purchase negotiations and acted as an interlocutor on military and political issues.
“The message that was delivered to him is that Qaddafi has to go and that there will be accountability for crimes committed at the International Criminal Court,” a British Foreign Office spokesman told the Guardian on Thursday, declining to elaborate on what else may have been discussed.
Some aides working for Qaddafi’s sons, however, have made it clear that it may be necessary to sideline their father and explore exit strategies to prevent the country descending into anarchy.
One idea that the Libyan leader’s sons have reportedly suggested — which the Guardian has been unable to corroborate — is that Qaddafi give up real power.
Mutassim, presently the -country’s national security adviser, would become president of an interim national unity government that would include the country’s opposition.
It is an idea, however, unlikely to find support among the country’s rebels or the international community who are demanding Qaddafi’s removal.
The revelation that contacts between Britain and a key Qaddafi loyalist had taken place came as the British Prime Minister David Cameron hailed the defection of Kussa as a sign the regime was crumbling.
“It tells a compelling story of the desperation and the fear right at the very top of the crumbling and rotten Qaddafi regime,” he said.
British government ministers regard Kussa’s move to abandon his family as a sign of the magnitude of his decision.
“Mussa Kussa is very worried about his family, but he did this because he felt it was the best way of bringing down Qaddafi,” one source said.
Britain learned that Kussa wanted to defect when he made contact from Tunisia. He had made his way out of Libya in a convoy of cars after announcing that he was going on a diplomatic mission to visit the new government in Tunis.
Britain took seriously reports on Thursday night that Ali al-Treki, Libya’s minister for Africa, had announced in Cairo earlier in the day that he too had abandoned the regime. Officials were checking reports that Tarek Khalid Ibrahim, the deputy head of mission in London, is also defecting.
Cameron, however, insisted that no deal had been struck with Kussa and that he would not be offered immunity from prosecution.
“Let me be clear, Mussa Kussa is not being granted immunity. There is no deal of that kind,” the prime minister said.
Within hours of his arrival in Britain, Scottish prosecutors asked to interview Kussa about the Lockerbie bombing. The Crown Office in Edinburgh has said it is formally asking for its prosecutors and detectives from Dumfries and Galloway police, which covers Lockerbie in southwest Scotland, to question Kussa about the 1988 bombing.
“We have notified the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that the Scottish prosecuting and investigating authorities wish to interview Mr Kussa in connection with the Lockerbie bombing,” it said.
However, UK government sources indicated that Britain does not believe that Kussa was involved in ordering the Lockerbie bombing.
Kussa was at the heart of Britain’s rapprochement with Libya that started when Tripoli abandoned its support for the IRA in the early 1990s.
He was instrumental in persuading Qaddafi to abandon his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program in 2003.
One source said: “Nobody is saying this guy was a saint because he was a key Qaddafi lieutenant who was kicked out of Britain in 1980 for making threats to kill Libyan dissidents. But this is the guy who persuaded Qaddafi to abandon his WMD program. He no doubt has useful and interesting things to say about Lockerbie, but it doesn’t seem he said ‘go and do it.’”
British Foreign Secretary William Hague said he had a sense that Kussa was deeply unhappy with Qaddafi when they spoke on Friday last week.
“One of the things I gathered between the lines in my telephone calls with him, although he of course had to read out the scripts of the regime, was that he was very distressed and dissatisfied by the situation there,” Hague said.
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