Qaddafi son says regime has nothing to hide

LONDON - The British-educated son of Libya's leader said Tuesday the country's former foreign minister has no new information to offer authorities questioning him about the Lockerbie bombing.

British officials are debriefing Moussa Koussa, who fled to the U.K. and resigned from Muammar Qaddafi's government last week. The officials also are encouraging Koussa to answer questions from Scottish police and prosecutors over the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people — most of them Americans.

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Qaddafi's son, Seif al-Islam, repeatedly called Koussa "sick and old" in an interview with the BBC that was broadcast on Tuesday and suggested Koussa might resort to making up "funny stories" about Lockerbie and his father in exchange for immunity.

"The British and the Americans ... they know everything about Lockerbie so there are no secrets" Koussa can reveal, Seif said.

British officials have declined repeated requests to comment on the information Koussa might be sharing with them, saying the discussions are too sensitive.

But Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague has repeatedly said that no member of Qaddafi's inner circle — including Koussa — would be offered immunity from prosecution for past crimes.

He reiterated that point on Monday and said Koussa is voluntarily talking to British officials — "he is not detained, he is not under arrest, he is free to go where he wishes."

The U.S. Treasury Department said Monday, however, that it has removed Koussa from a blacklist of Libyan officials who had been banned from traveling to the United States and whose assets in U.S. jurisdictions had been frozen.

The department said it took the step to reward Koussa for his decision last week to defect and encourage other members of Qaddafi's inner circle to follow suit.

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Hague said the European Union will open talks this week on lifting restrictions imposed on Koussa.

Seif al-Islam on Tuesday brushed off any suggestion that his father's inner circle was crumbling, saying that "of course" there were going to be defections among senior members of the regime, who are worn down from two weeks of sustained bombings.

"They are old people, they are not young like us," he told the BBC.