Once in a while something happens to a newsman on television in the middle of a live television interview that in a split second tells you a thousand truths. So it was on Monday night when I was interviewing one of Libya’s deputy Foreign Ministers. Just before going on air, we had heard a reasonably well sourced rumour that Moussa Koussa – his boss – had defected via Tunisia.

In the course of my interview, I challenged the Deputy with this information. Even though we were connected by little more than a jumped-up video phone, his face – two foot high in the studio wall in front of me – was clear. I saw in that very moment, a flicker, a flicker I could well have missed had we been face to face. The flicker, together with a miniscule pause and change in the timbre of his voice told me I had hit home. “He has been in Tunisia, he is back, he is in a meeting later tonight,” the Deputy told me. Oh yes? Our informant had talked of Koussa having travelled to Tunisia in a road convoy…if he really were back, it would have to have been by plane, at night, under bombardment from the enforcement of the no-fly zone. I rapidly concluded, Moussa Koussa: no fly. Moussa Koussa had defected!

But I could not prove it. All I could do was to Tweet my strong sense that Koussa had defected, and await developments. Koussa is well known to MI6 who were pivotal to engineering a channel with him in the reopening of dialogue over Megrahi, the accused Lockerbie bomber. Koussa’s defection via Tunisia and Farnborough airfield has all the hallmark’s of their cloak, and their sheathed dagger.

But one Koussa, does not itself a Gaddafi fall signal. There have been rumours of tensions in the past – he is supposed to have been ‘struck’ by one of Gaddafi’s sons. He is not, and was not a military man.  Top level diplomatic defections have been two a penny. This is indeed the most top level yet, and may prove useful. But the harsh realities in Libya lie in the carnage and bombardment littering the coastal towns of North Eastern Libya. The military stranglehold on Tripoli and on the relatives of other potential ‘high value’ officials in Gaddafi’s regime is complete. Koussa’s defection may prove to be a hairline fracture, even a potentially noisy one. But for genuine splintering – a military or Gaddafi familial defection would be needed.

My own limited exposure to dictators suggest that the greatest danger  to them resides, not in defecting Foreign ministers, but in the hidden hand of the close friend or relative ‘behind the arras’. The talk is of exile for Gaddafi. It is not talk that I find consistent with the Gaddafi I have met and reported. My sense is that the Colonel will be disposed of by his own – sooner, or later. How soon – I don’t know, I need another two foot high face in the video wall and a pointed question perhaps, to find out.

What an odd thing Libya is. In all the warring adventures of the last two interventionist decades, Libya must rate the oddest. And what a strange event today in London – a full-blown international summit – 35 nations attending in one form or another, discussing an entity which will not itself be present – Libya.

I first went there in 1978, lured by the Colonel’s already rich reputation for eccentricity; he was courting the odious Ugandan Dictator Idi Amin. Yet in those days we were also slightly taken with his Little Green Book – given that Mao’s Little Red one was causing so much stir further East. Given the exploitation and inequality of other regimes in the region, Gaddafi’s Green option appeared at the time to spread Libya’s wealth more equitably. The average per capita income ranged around $7,000. Even today its up around $15,000 a year – twice that of Tunisia to the West, three times that of Egypt to the East. Hence, so many knuckled down beneath his absurd regime.

Gaddafi has never changed. In those early days he balanced the spread of wealth with the spread of fear. Both were eased by his abolition of national institutions and empowerment of local village committees. Gaddafi as an individual was weird to encounter. He didn’t make eye contact. He mooched about whilst he talked and about 55 per cent of what he said, sort of stacked up, the other 45 per cent was, how can I put it? Extraterrestrial?

Read more in the Channel 4 News Special Report on Libya

He had oil – has less after the last few days. He had isolation too, and grubby expatriate hangers-on. It was easy to be taken in by him. Exotic in a way. But I never imagined that sustaining relations could be made with him. Libya has wondrous visual treasures – one of the most complete and beautiful Roman amphitheatres in the world amongst them.
About seven or eight years ago, I became aware of the son in London, Saif. I was invited one late night to his modernist black marble-laden no-expenses-spared London home. Relations were stony cold. I got nothing from him – he seemed a refined chip off the old ruffian’s block.

I find it hard to believe anyone has a comprehensive idea of who the ‘rebels’ are. A good number were Gaddafi loyalists – but that was an easier thing to be, than not. The coalition of nations meeting today have a problem. They could have a very odd entity indeed on their hands, even if it is not present at their table. I wouldn’t want to trade places with them as they try to work out what they have already done and where it takes them. Nowhere simple…Gaddafi has already seen to that.

We are back where so many of us have been before.

“Humanitarian disaster” – have we heard those words before? We heard them of Kosovo before the Nato intervention went ahead without UN approval. We are hearing them again now of Libya. The navies and airforces of the West are jostling in the Med for potential action. Yet what is happening in Libya is a very Libyan development – just as Egypt‘s Tahrir Square was a very Egyptian affair. The infection may have been triggered by Tunisia but the manifestations have been peculiar to each country. None more peculiar than Libya, and it was ever so.

I first went there around thirty years ago – Gaddafi had already been in power for a dozen years. His methodology was odd, his behaviour still more so. His Little Green Book was no mimic of Mao’s red one. It was about dispersal of power to the villages of Libya – kind of peasant empowerment. Yet it all seemed to end up with all power centralised upon Gaddafi himself. As the years went by his hold became murkier and more eccentric than ever. His influences in the outside world moved in and out of assorted individuals, companies, and movements. A bank here, an oil company there, an LSE there.

Saif Gaddafi first arrived in London an apparent breath of fresh air seven or eight years ago. Westernised, supposedly. I found myself once in his Belgravia apartment trying to secure an interview. What a grand place – ultra modern, loads of stone and black marble – cutting edge. But he was odd. He was somehow inexpressively moody, dark, yet somehow also available. He clearly wanted his country reengaged with the outside world, but without questioning the role of his father in Libya’s disengagement.

Neither Saif nor his father will go easily, as they are proving. They have a stranglehold on the power system in Tripoli and can potentially hold out for months, if not years. The West would be ill-advised to attempt physically to speed the process up. That way lies a violation fo Libya which many rebels will rejoin Gaddafi in resenting. This is a Libyan affair for the Libyans to resolve. At its end, Gaddafi and his son will die in Tripoli. They regard themselves as indistinguishable from Libya. They are convinced that they are Libya, Libya is them.

The most likely scenario remains that Gaddafi will be taken out by one of his own, not by us.

Across the Arab world, there is little real sign that any of these revolutions is running smoothly. Vast “people power” is both heavenly, and fearful, to behold – however, it does not change either a country or a system overnight. The upheavals across the Arab world may take many years to resolve. Tunisia‘s revolt is apparently marginally in reverse. Egypt’s is still many more words than tangible action. But the work is begun. It is up to us to let it take its course. I never met one Arab revolutionary who wished for outside intervention or interference.

Whilst we obsess about Gaddafi’s hold – as we have for more than a generation, other movements challenge our interests in the region. Yemen, teeters on the edge of total disintegration. Oman is becoming nastier, with a very British underbelly of ex-army officers at its security core. Jordan remains hard to forecast and far from happy. Kuwait and Saudi rumble uneasily. Sudan festers. Morocco grumbles. Algeria may hold on. It’s a litany of repression and rebellion in unequal mix in which none of our hands are clean.

Dropping bombs, knocking off Gaddafi, doing any more than sheer isolation of unpopular leaders (freezing assets and outside interests is popular) will almost certainly end in Saddam like tears. Revolution will have to take its course. The world has few other viable options, and war is not one of them.