Al Qaeda suicide bombers – equipped with chemical or biological weapons that came from Colonel Muammer Gadaffi’s massive arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. Libya was also closer than Syria and Iran – and Saddam – in producing a nuclear bomb.

But last week in a carefully orchestrated announcement giving up the weapons, In ten secret sites, Libya produced “tens of thousands” of germ bombs and rocket heads filled with a range of poisons.Libya was also closer than Syria and Iran – and Saddam – in producing a nuclear bomb. But last week in a carefully orchestrated announcement giving up the weapons,

Gadaffi received unstinted praise for his “statesmanship and courage” from Tony Blair and George Bush. Not only was he welcomed back on to the world stage – but his past help to Osama bin Laden would never be officially alluded to.

“It was a sweetner deal like no other. Gadaffi’s links to terrorism are air-brushed. He starts with a clean slate. We get the hard job – following up all the leads he let us have”, said a senior British intelligence officer.

What Britain’s intelligence chiefs learned has already led to all the country’s major stores and shopping malls being put on high alert. Air and sea port security has also been intensified.

In Washington, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge warned there is “credible intelligence of a possible terrorist attack which could rival or exceed September 11”.

The source of that intelligence was Musa Kusa, Libya’s wily intelligence chief. For several hours, he sat in a leather armchair in a backroom in the stately luxury of the Travellers Club in London’s Pall Mall and revealed to Sir Richard Dearlove, director-general of MI6, and Eliza Manningham-Buller, director of MI5, Libya’s long-time links with Al Qaeda.

In what one intelligence officer later called an “extraordinarily detailed debrief”, Kusa, sipping endless cups of mint tea, revealed:

• Al Qaeda use middle-men to obtain their weapons. • One is a Brazilian arms dealer, Suekdew Siew, travelling on an Australian passport. He used an alias, David Sunkar, and an address he gave on his passport application as 31 Stringybark Ramble, Willeton, Western Australia 6155. That was in 1994. His passport number was K2402113.

A former CIA operative, David Dastych, told the Sunday Express he had afterwards met Siew in Paris “to explore his plan to import some nuclear materials. But before this could go anywhere in terms of counter-intelligence, he disappeared”. Dastych, who now lives in Poland, said that Siew had been accompanied by two men travelling on Norwegian passports. Their details have been passed on to the Australian security service and the Norwegian intelligence service.

• Kusa said all three had made contact with Libyan agents at the Hotel Zentral in Wiesbaden, Germany. • Siew spoke fluent Arabic and carried a letter of credit from the Baltic Bank of Reconstruction and Development in Riga, Latvia. • Other Al Qaeda weapons purchasers were from the former KGB. One described himself to Kusa as “a gun for hire”. • Some weapons were flown out under diplomatic seal to Balkan airports on Libyan airlines. From there, they were transported to Afghanistan. • Other weapons were taken out of Libya through the Sudan and eventually by Arab dhows, small boats, to the Yemen. • Kusa said he had “reliable information” that Al Qaeda had also stockpiled chemical and biological weapons in the Balkans. • He confirmed MI6 suspicions that there was a well established route used to smuggle Al Qaeda operatives into Britain. The same route could be used to bring in biological and chemical weapons for suicide bombers. • Kusa also revealed Libyan intelligence placed the number of Al Qaeda terrorists and supporters in Britain at “around 500”. The figure is higher than previous MI5 estimates. • MI5 are now urgently checking on names and addresses Kusa provided.

Last week, further details came from Mossad’s deep-cover agents in Libya who confirmed that Al Qaeda operatives had made regular visits to Libya’s chemical, biological and nuclear facilities at Kufra, close to the border with Egypt, and Rabta and Targunab, near the country’s capital, Tripoli. Further evidence of Libya’s links with Iraq, Iran and North Korea were provided last week by a Washington-based arms dealer, Richard H Babayan.

In a sworn affidavit lodged with a Florida court, a copy of which the Sunday Express has obtained, Babayan reveals how Libya had acquired top-secret software called “Promis”.

Developed by Inslaw, a specialist US computer company, as “a powerful intelligence gathering tool for the CIA”, Babayan states that Libya had acquired a copy of the software – and sold it to Iraq and North Korea.

The CIA are urgently trying to trace how the software ended up in Libya and in the hands of two of the other remaining rogue states.

But not until Dearlove sat down with Kusa did “the fine print of Al Qaeda’s links to Libya” become clear”, said an intelligence source.

Kusa admitted that Libya had continued dealing with Al Qaeda after Gadaffi had issued an “international arrest warrant” for Osama bin Laden two years ago. “That was dismissed as a stunt by Gadaffi to try and get sanctions lifted”, said one of the team of MI6/CIA intelligence officers who accompanied Foreign Office negotiators to Tripoli last October to begin the months of negotiations that culminated in Kusa’s revelations.

Kusa – a leather-skinned brown-eyed man with a liking for sharply-cut Italian suits – escorted them to Libya’s secret sites. The MI6 officer later told Dearlove that “it has to be the best bus tour in intelligence history”. But at the time, Kusa dodged all questions about Al Qaeda.

Over the past months, the MI6 officer has returned to Libya to meet Kusa. The two men became close, spending several nights out in a tent under the desert stars. Trained by the KGB and the Stasi, former East Germany’s once equally formidable security service, Kusa is regarded by MI6 as probably the Arab world’s best intelligence officer.

Last March, as the war with Iraq started, the MI6 officer – acting on Dearlove’s orders, which had come from Downing Street via John Scarlett, head of the Joint Intelligence Committee – bluntly told Kusa that Libya’s weapons of mass destruction would have to go. Or else Libya would also be attacked. Within a week, Kusa was in London. The negotiations to persuade Gadaffi to surrender his arsenal accelerated. Libya’s ambassadors in Rome and London – both skilled negotiators – joined Kusa. The British team was led by William Ehram, director of defence and intelligence at the Foreign Office.

Kusa had argued that Gadaffi would never agree to be publicly indentified with his past links to bin Laden. He presented Libya’s weapons of mass destruction as “purely defensive”.

“Like Britain has its Porton Down, we have our CBW site”, Kusa told his listeners. Dearlove suggested a compromise. Any reference to bin Laden would be kept out of the formal announcement of Libya giving up its weapons – and Blair and Bush would still warmly endorse the Libyan leader for his “courage and statesmanship”. There was one proviso. Kusa would brief Dearlove and his MI6 team on Libya’s links with Al Qaeda. Kusa agreed.

The MI6 team learned about the threat from those Libyan weapons that Gadaffi, the pariah tyrant turned statesman, had once provided to Al Qaeda. After being debriefed, Musa Kusa said he wanted to go and buy gifts for his family and for Gadaffi’s two wives and their seven children.

Accompanied by MI6 minders, he was taken to Harrod’s and Selfridges in Oxford Street. As they drove through the crowded streets, Kusa said to one of his minders he hoped he had helped to try and make sure nothing would happen to disturb their shopping. “I think he really meant it”, said a minder. Gordon Thomas LINK