Libyan Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa arrived in Britain on Wednesday to seek refuge after quitting the government in protest against leader Moammar Gadhafi's attacks on civilians.
"He has told us that he is resigning his post. We are discussing this with him and we will release further detail in due course," a British Foreign Office spokesman said, adding that "his role was to represent the regime internationally — something that he is no longer willing to do."
British officials urged Gadhafi's other supporters to desert him.
"We encourage those around Gadhafi 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," the Foreign Office statement said, indicating that discussions with Koussa would be ongoing.
Noman Benotman, a friend and senior analyst at Britain's Quilliam think tank, said Koussa "wasn't happy at all. He doesn't support the government attacks on civilians."
"He's seeking refuge in Britain and hopes he will be treated well," Benotman said.
Koussa was one of Gadhafi's closest allies and the architect of a dramatic shift in Libya's foreign policy that brought the country back to the international community after years of sanctions.
Tunisia's TAP news agency earlier Wednesday said he had taken off from the Tunisian airport of Djerba for London.
Libyan airspace has been closed to all aircraft since the enforcement of a United Nations mandated no fly zone earlier this month.
Koussa served as intelligence chief for 20-plus years before Gadhafi elevated him to his current post in 2009. He had a reputation as a ruthless and bloody loyalist to Gadhafi.
Koussa was known as Gadhafi’s “envoy of death” during the 1980s, when his intelligence service was working with other terrorist groups — including Abu Nidal and the Irish Republican Army — and engaging in assassination attempts against Libyan dissidents around the world, some of which were successful. The British Foreign Office expelled him from the Libyan embassy in London in 1980 after he approved the killing of two U.K.-based dissidents.
But in later years, as Libya turned back toward the West, he was seen as having been been instrumental in helping the CIA fight al-Qaida and unravel the A.Q. Khan nuclear smuggling network.
In the current conflict, there were indications that Kusa served as a “back channel” that the West and United Nations used in talking with the beleaguered Libyan government.
About 64 years old, Kusa is well-educated, having received a master’s degree in sociology from Michigan State University in 1978. Well-dressed and familiar with the American idiom, he is far removed from his boss’s reputation as a bizarre — perhaps unstable — figure.
NBC News' Robert Windrem contributed to this report from Reuters.
