Will Gaddafi be forced to flee to Equatorial Guinea?

While Colonel Gaddafi is busy protesting that he will never leave his native Libya, rumours are circulating that, secretly, he is willing to step down from power and go into exile.

With the Arab Spring showing no signs of slowing, no Middle Eastern country would be willing to host Gaddafi for fear of provoking further anger in their own country.

Even Saudi Arabia - a popular choice for out-of-favour dictators, from Uganda's Idi Amin to Tunisia's ousted Zine al-Abindine Ben Ali - is said to have refused to take him.

Gaddafi's links with the African Union, a body he has invested heavily in, should mean that several African countries would be willing to take him. Many have suggested that South Africa might be a possibility, pointing to Gaddafi's friendships with current president Jacob Zuma and former leader Nelson Mandela.

However, matters are complicated by the fact that the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant last month for both the Libyan leader and his son, Saif, on charges of war crimes. Any country harbouring the two men would effectively be acting in defiance of the ICC.

One of the few countries not signed up to the ICC, conveniently, is also the country whose leader currently heads up the AU - Equatorial Guinea, ruled by the fearsome despot, Teodoro Obiang Nguema.

Obiang, the second longest serving African leader after Gaddafi, has an even more formidable reputation for being uncompromising. He is rumoured to eat the testicles and brains of opponents who cross his path, and is the man Old Etonian mercenary Simon Mann was trying to overthrow when he was arrested in Harare in 2004.

Mann later spent a short time in prison in Malabo, capital of Equatorial Guinea, before being released in November 2009.

Gaddafi still maintains that nothing will make him go. In a speech yesterday to the city of Zawiya - newly recaptured from the rebels - he said: "They're asking me to leave. I will never leave the land of my ancestors or the people who have sacrificed themselves for me."

But according to the Sunday Times, European officials have cooked up a plan to banish him to Malabo. "It's a question of Equatorial Guinea making him a serious offer," a source told the paper. "We think that he might accept it."
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