Where is high-level Libyan ‘defector’ Moussa Koussa?

There is still no sign of a public appearance from Moussa Koussa, Libya's former foreign minister, prompting speculation as to how the government plans to use the high-profile arrival in Britain.

Koussa is believed to in an MI6 safe house in the south of England, where he is being treated with "courtesy" according to the Sunday Times. But the government has stressed that he will not be offered immunity from prosecution.

Koussa, described as Colonel Gaddafi's "black box recorder" by Libyan rebels, is implicated in a number of inquiries in the UK, France and the US, and there are many people who would like to talk to him.

Scottish detectives investigating the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, carried out when Koussa was a senior figure in Libya's intelligence agency, though not yet its leader, will fly to London tomorrow. They will discuss the possibility of interviewing Koussa with Foreign Office officials.

Meanwhile, Koussa has just been named in US court documents as the man who equipped the IRA with weapons and explosives used to carry out bombings in London and Warrington in the 1990s. Jonathan Ganesh, a survivor of the 1996 Docklands blast, said he would meet lawyers this week to discuss the possibility of issuing an international arrest warrant for Koussa.

And as The First Post reported last week, the French have an interest in Koussa, who at least one judge believes was involved in the bombing of a DC-10 over the Sahara desert in 1989, in which 170 lives were lost.

A former UK ambassador to Libya, Oliver Miles, told the Sunday Telegraph he was disappointed that the government was not using Koussa to "undermine military support for Gaddafi" by having him make a public appearance to denounce the Libyan leader. Miles added: "Koussa should be denouncing Gaddafi and branding him a murderer."

While there is no expectation of any such public appearance, an unnamed source told the Sunday Times that Koussa had been given the use of a telephone and had called 15 senior figures in Gaddafi's regime, asking them to withdraw their support from him.

The latest UK government utterances on Koussa stress that he has not defected. A government source told the Sunday Telegraph: "He is not a defector, he has not joined the [Libyan] opposition and he has not joined us.

"He is somebody who has left Col Gaddafi's government after a lifetime working for him. It was an enormously life-changing decision for him."

According to many observers, the government is taking a 'softly, softly' approach. The message that Koussa is "not a defector" and has "not joined us" is aimed squarely at other Libyan officials who might be teetering on the edge of turning their backs on Gaddafi's faltering regime.

In other words: you don't have to be a traitor to forsake Gaddafi but it helps (us). ·