( CNN ) -- Conflicting reports hit the international media this week about whether Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi was negotiating a deal with the opposition for a guaranteed safe exit if he relinquished power . Speculation percolated again Wednesday after few details were available about a private Libyan aircraft that landed in Cairo , Egypt . But two questions remain : Will Gadhafi ever step down , and if he did , where would he go ? Gadhafi is sure not to go down easily . He has defiantly vowed to die a martyr on Libyan soil and declared on state television , `` I am Libya . '' At the moment , he has leverage , said David Pollock , a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy . Those who have studied the strongman 's megalomanic ways agree that he would probably not retreat from his revolution or his country without a fight to the end . Analysts have raised the grim prospect of a protracted , bloody war in the vein of Somalia . `` The tipping point was n't reached quickly enough , '' Pollock said . `` Now , this has turned into something that got stuck . It 's grim . Very grim . '' But if it came to a do-or-die scenario , Gadhafi , despite his bravado , would look for a way out , Pollock said . There is no possibility of power-sharing , so if the opposition were to oust him , Gadhafi would have to leave the country , as U.S. President Barack Obama and others have already urged him to do . But few would be willing to welcome a man with such a tarnished reputation , reinforced in recent weeks by the bloody crackdown on unarmed protesters , analysts said . Saudi Arabia 's name pops up in discussions of this nature ; after all , Tunisia 's ousted President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled into exile in the Gulf kingdom . And there were rumors at one time that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak would do the same . But Gadhafi is another matter . His relationship with Saudi King Abdullah is , to put it mildly , strained , especially after the Saudis accused Libyans of an assassination attempt on the king several years back . `` I would be extremely surprised if he went to Saudi Arabia , '' said Christopher Boucek , a Saudi Arabia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace . Boucek suggested that Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe might be more amenable to taking in Gadhafi . The Libyan leader 's adoption of pan-African solidarity drew him closer to the Zimbabwean dictator . The relationship between the two nations blossomed also from the leaders ' shared anti-colonial fervor and a realpolitik bond of being isolated nations , according to Boucek . Others have suggested that Gadhafi could find a home in Cuba or Venezuela . President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is considered Gadhafi 's main ally in Latin America , a love born , again , from a mutual distaste for Western `` imperialism . '' When the uprising began to escalate in Libya last month , rumors surfaced that Gadhafi had already fled to Caracas , the Venezuelan capital . Pollock listed one more possible future home for the Libyan strongman : Sudan . Reva Bhalla , an analyst with the global intelligence company Stratfor , said Gadhafi has reportedly sought friendship from Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and tried to shore up that alliance . But even the Syrians , said Bhalla , are less than enthused . European nations , Bhalla said , would suit Gadhafi 's sons just fine but not the eccentric leader , who has been famously known to travel with female bodyguards and sleep under a tent , even when he came to New York to address the United Nations . After all , she said , Gadhafi remains a hardcore Bedouin . And for the moment , it seems , he will remain in his Bedouin homeland , unwilling to let go of 40 years of power .
There has been talk about Gadhafi making an arms deal . But the strongman is as defiant as ever . If he were to flee , he would have few options on where to go . Cuba , Venezuela and Sudan could take him in .