Libyan minister could trigger other defections - analysts

The defecting Libyan Foreign Minister Mousa Kousa could hold the key to persuading other key regime figures to turn their back on Muammar Gaddafi, analysts said today .

But they warned that the Libyan leader's close-knit inner circle of family and clan members is unlikely to be brought down by the defection of a handful of ministers.

Kousa apparently surprised Libya and the West when he touched down at Farnborough Airport southwest of London on Wednesday and announced he was resigning his role.

The man seen as a close confidante of Gaddafi is now reportedly being debriefed by British intelligence agents at a safe house.

He has not been seen in public and there has been no indication of how long he intends to stay or why he chose to come to Britain.

The interviews with Kousa, a former head of Libyan intelligence who is described as Gaddafi's "black box" by opposition groups, are being conducted in the utmost secrecy, although his state of mind is said to be fragile.

But government sources have indicated to the media that he is helping Britain to persuade other Libyans to defect, possibly because any hopes he may have of a safe exile himself depend on the Gaddafi regime collapsing.

There are reports that up to 10 senior figures are in talks with the British government over defecting, although the significance of a visit to Britain of an envoy to one of Gaddafi's sons has been played down.

Dr Alia Brahimi, Global Security Research Fellow at the London School of Economics, said Kousa's defection will show others "that people very close to Gaddafi have made the judgement that this is a sinking ship and it's time to defect now."

Brahimi said high-profile figures such as Kousa who were involved in bringing Libya back into the international fold in the last decade will conclude that he has deserted the Libyan leader because he sees a grim future even if the regime defeats the rebel insurgency.

"We can assume there would be number of those people around him that would perhaps make a similar judgement: that even if Gaddafi wins, Libya would go back to the years of isolationism when life was very, very hard," she told AFP.

British Prime Minister David Cameron claimed the minister's arrival was proof that a "rotten regime" was "crumbling".

However, Kousa's defection has coincided with a series of reverses for the rebels, who have been forced into retreat as the better-organised pro-Gaddafi forces have fought back despite coming under continued Western air strikes.

Shashank Joshi, an associate fellow at London-based military think-tank, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), said that while the defection is significant, it does not necessarily follow that the regime is falling apart.

"This sends a long-term signal and it will make other Arab countries who may have been backing Gaddafi think twice," he told AFP.

"But Libya is highly clan-based and family-based. At the core of it is a connection between Gaddafi and his clan, like a spinal cord."

The regime is now focused on the war, Joshi said, "and so the defection of an oil minister would not be the end of the world".

"I don't think it is a linear progression towards the toppling of the regime if a few ministers step down," he said.

Today, Arab League sources said veteran Libyan diplomat Ali Treiki, a former foreign minister, had resigned.

Treiki, who was UN General Assembly president up until December 2010, has quit his official duties as an adviser to Gaddafi but did not pledge allegiance to the rebels, a League source said.

Oliver Miles, a former British ambassador to Libya, questioned why Britain had not made more of Kousa as a key propaganda tool to denounce Gaddafi and to encourage more ministers to defect and more troops to desert.

"The most important thing Mousa Kousa could do is issue an appropriate statement about why he defected and how ghastly the regime is. It will undermine the morale of Gaddafi's forces," Miles told the Sunday Telegraph.

He said Kousa "should be denouncing Gaddafi and branding him a murderer".

"(He) should be used to undermine military support for Gaddafi. He should be highlighting Gaddafi's use of African mercenaries to kill Libyan civilians," Miles added.