A top Libyan official once expelled from Britain for plotting the deaths of exiled dissidents rode to the defence of the British Government over Lockerbie yesterday.

In one of the few interviews he has given, Musa Kusa, the Libyan Foreign Minister and long-time member of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s inner circle, told The Times that he was astonished by the controversy over the release of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber.

“Where is the human rights, the compassion and mercy? The man is on the verge of death,” Mr Kusa said in a midnight conversation in his plush, chilled office in the centre of baking Tripoli.

He flatly denied any link between al-Megrahi’s release and British commercial interests in his oil-rich state and said that Libya was grateful to the British and Scottish governments for their humanity. “You should not do an injustice to the British Government. It was nothing to do with trade,” he said. “If we wished to bargain we would have done it a long time ago.”

Mr Musa, likewise, said that the row over al-Megrahi’s rapturous reception at Tripoli airport was the result of a cultural misunderstanding: such greetings were a Libyan custom. “I can’t say to [al-Megrahi’s] friends and tribe, ‘Don’t go there’,” he said. Not one Libyan official went to the airport, he added, and the reception was, by Libyan standards, “low key”.

He emphasised that Libya was eager to strengthen its relationship with Britain despite the present friction.

Mr Kusa, the Libyan foreign intelligence chief for 15 years before becoming Foreign Minister, is the embodiment of his country’s transition from rogue state to something approaching international respectability.

In 1980, when he was head of the Libyan diplomatic mission in London, he was expelled from Britain for allegedly organising the killing of exiled opponents of Colonel Gaddafi’s regime. In later years he was accused of complicity in the 1998 Lockerbie bombing, the destruction of a French airliner over Niger in 1989, the Berlin disco bombing that led to the US bombing of Tripoli in 1986 and much else besides. He was high on the British and US terrorism blacklists.

Today Mr Kusa is received at the highest levels in London and Washington. He negotiated the conditions of Libya’s $2.7 billion compensation payment to families of the Lockerbie victims. In the refined surroundings of the Travellers Club in Pall Mall, he negotiated the dismantling of Libyan weapons of mass destruction. He co-operates with British and American intelligence agencies in their fight against a mutual enemy — Islamic terrorism.

Tall, trim, with well-groomed silver hair and an immaculate suit, he is a daunting man to interview. The Times received a late-night summons to his ministry. His greeting was cool, his features inscrutable, his tone faintly menacing. He did not offer the customary tea and made clear his disdain for the Western media. Nor would he make any concessions. Asked about his past, he replied: “Don’t believe what you hear. Sometimes it’s just rumour.” Top British and US officials met him today because “they know the truth now, not false allegations”.

He flatly denied that al-Megrahi or Libya was responsible for the Lockerbie bombing. “Libya is a victim ... It’s a preconception of the Western media that Libya was the one,” he said. Of his own alleged role he observed: “I was not called to stand before a court.”

Despite all his years as intelligence chief, he professed to have no idea who carried out the bombing.

He also denied, despite evidence to the contrary, that Libya supplied the IRA with Semtex during the Troubles. “Who said so?” he asked. “The media has this false idea. We have nothing to do with this issue.”

Asked whether, in return for al-Megrahi’s release, Libya would identify the killer of Yvonne Fletcher, the British policewoman shot during a demonstration outside the Libyan Embassy in 1984, he deadpanned: “I have no background on this issue.”

He did forcefully complain that the West had not adequately responded to Libya’s overtures in recent years, particularly its renunciation of WMD. It had not offered technology transfers or training. “Regrettably, the West didn’t make use of the Libyan example. Western nations didn’t reward Libya. That’s why other countries [pursuing] nuclear weapons didn’t follow our example,” he said, citing the case of North Korea.

Asked why the West had not reciprocated, he replied: “This is a question for the Americans and British. We have done our duty.” Could it be because the West still regards Libya as a repressive police state? That, too, Mr Kusa denied. Dissidents were free to come home, Libyan citizens could criticise Colonel Gaddafi and there were “no political prisoners whatsoever”, he insisted without trace of irony.

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