William Hague insisted that Britain was right to offer shelter to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s former spy chief despite further claims that he had mastermined terrorist acts against the UK.
The Foreign Secretary said he had spoken to Moussa Koussa since his arrival last week, had welcomed his decision to desert Colonel Gaddafi and had urged him to co-operate with the Government.
Mr Hague said that in conversations over the past few weeks with Mr Koussa, his former counterpart, he had formed the impression that he was “very distressed by what was happening in Libya, that he wanted to see a peaceful solution, that he was deeply concerned about what’s happening to the people of Libya”.
He added: “And I think when somebody like that says they want to get out then it would be quite wrong to say ‘No, you’ve got to stay there’.”
The Government has come under pressure to make sure Mr Koussa, who spent a decade as Libya’s head of intelligence, is fully investigated for any possible role he may have played in the Lockerbie bombing.
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Foreign Office officials will speak to prosecutors from the Crown Office in Scotland about how and when they would be able to get access to Mr Koussa to question him.
It was also reported in The Sunday Times that court documents in the US name Mr Koussa as overseeing Colonel Gaddafi’s supply of Semtex to the IRA in the 1980s and 1990s.
Mr Hague, who will make a statement to the Commons tomorrow updating MPs on Libya, said Mr Koussa had not asked for immunity from prosecution, nor was there any deal on offer.
“There is no deal,” he told BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show. “All he asked for was to be able to come here. He chosxe to come to the United Kingdom of his own free will.
“It is a good thing that he has left this despotic, murderous regime because it weaknes that regime.
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“It’s a good thig we’re able to discuss with him the situation in Libya and the Middle East, with all his expierience of it.”
He said Mr Koussa was not under house arrest, but left deliberately vague his precise status.
Mr Hague also spoke up for the anti-Gaddafi rebel leaders, following comments from the US general who heads Nato that there were “flickers of al-Qaeda” in their ranks.
Mr Hague said Washignton also recognised that there was “no substantial evidence” of an al-Qaeda presence.
He said he believed the rebel council was “sincere” in its wishes for a democratic Libya, and urged others to “take them at face value”.
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A Foreign Office spokesman disclosed that a diplomatic team had arrived in Libya yesterday to forge links with opposition forces.
The move follows the embarrassing episode last month when a UK group was briefly detained by rebels after turning up uninvited at dead of night in a helicopter.
The spokesman said: “A further diplomatic team led by Christopher Prentice arrived in Benghazi on April 2 to engage with key figures including the Interim National Council (INC).
“It will build on the work of the previous team and seek to establish further information about the INC, its aims and more broadly what is happening in Libya.”