RESIGNATION:LIBYAN FOREIGN minister Moussa Koussa arrived in Britain last night having dramatically defected from the Gadafy regime, even though it was still insisting he was carrying out urgent diplomatic business.
Mr Koussa, a long-time ally of Col Muammar Gadafy, flew by private jet into Farnborough airport in Hampshire from Tunisia last evening, though the British foreign office statement on his defection was not released until just a few minutes before 10pm.
“He travelled here under his own free will. He has told us that he is resigning his post. We are discussing this with him and we will release further details in due course. Mr Koussa is one of the most senior figures in Gadafy’s government and his role was to represent the regime internationally – something that he is no longer willing to do,” said a foreign office spokesman.
The foreign office spokesman went on: “We encourage those around Gadafy to abandon him and embrace a better future for Libya that allows political transition and real reform that meets the aspirations of the Libyan people.”
Mr Koussa’s arrival in the UK, where he served as Libyan ambassador, is full of ironies, since he was expelled from London in 1980 after he declared his intention to eliminate London-based opponents of Gadafy. Later, he served as the head of the Libyan intelligence agency from 1994 to 2009 when he became foreign minister.
He was one of the leading players in the long-running Libyan effort to have Abdel Basset al- Megrahi, the only man jailed for involvement in the Lockerbie bombing, freed from his Scottish jail, where he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Mr Koussa held multiple rounds of negotiations with London and Edinburgh officials over the release.
He was accused by some of being the architect of the terrorist attack of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103, which killed 270 people, and a subsequent one on a French airliner in central Africa in which 170 people died. French authorities said they wanted to interview him in connection with the latter attack. He was never charged and denies involvement.
