“WE HAVE soft spots for asylum-seekers,” says a spokesman for Uganda's president, Yoweri Museveni. If Colonel Muammar Qaddafi wants to move to calmer quarters, he would be welcome there. His Western foes might applaud the offer. Anxious for a swift conclusion to the war in Libya, they are apparently scouting for a foreign bolthole for the colonel.

Like Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, and Syria's Bashar Assad, Colonel Qaddafi is among a bunch of rulers that many would like to see shuffle into exile. But the list of cosy havens for deposed dictators has shrunk in recent years. Waterloo (in Belgium) used to be popular with retired despots and plenty were happy swanning about the French Riveria. Now a plethora of international laws and treaties, and the rise of the International Criminal Court (ICC) have made safe spots scarce.

In the past countries such as France and Belgium argued that offering tyrants an escape route prevented bloodshed and eased transitions in their homelands. Today most countries that ex-dictators would regard as liveable are bound by extradition treaties and human-rights conventions to bundle the big and bad back home or off to a trial in The Hague. Not that staying put is much safer. Egypt's Hosni Mubarak retreated to Sharm el-Sheikh after being ousted but is now in police custody in hospital and may face charges on a host of crimes.

But the Libyan ruler has other options. Idi Amin, Uganda's odious tyrant, and Colonel Qaddafi's fellow Arab autocrat, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia, both fled to Saudi Arabia. The kingdom has long felt a religious obligation to beleaguered Muslim rulers, no matter what their crimes. Although Amin never gained official asylum, he was allowed to perform an extended pilgrimage, involving 23 years mostly in hotels and villas in Jeddah. Alas for Colonel Qaddafi, accusations that he once plotted to assassinate the then crown prince, now king, Abdullah, mean he is unlikely to be offered succour by the House of Saud.

Notable foes of the West, such as Hugo Chávez and Daniel Ortega, have expressed their support for Colonel Qaddafi. But anti-imperialist solidarity only goes so far: domestic outrage has prevented either man from offering him a definite invitation. Mengistu Haile Mariam, the overseer of Ethiopia's Red Terror in 1977-78, has been an official guest of Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe since 1991; an Ethiopian court convicted him of genocide in 2006. Belarus is under suspicion of supplying weapons to Libya in February; it might offer the colonel refuge. (Given his own dictatorial tendencies, the Belarusian leader, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, may require similar favours in years to come.)

The political cost of playing host to ousted autarchs may be outweighed by their riches. Critics say Mr Ben Ali's wife scooped up 1.5 tonnes of gold as she fled Tunisia (worth about $71m today). But much of the colonel's assets are frozen—and with that, his attractiveness.

Some say countries that welcome such grimy guests are offering a public service. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, a professor of politics at New York University, argues that organisations such as the ICC and the European Human Rights Commission, along with the governments that support them, need to rethink their stance.

Mr Bueno de Mesquita, whose book “The Dictator's Handbook” will be published in September, suggests a compromise: faced with an uprising, if dictators refrain from slaughtering their citizens, international law could provide some kind of exit. Such an approach, he says, could have tempted Saddam Hussein out of Iraq. Mr Assad might be more readily eased out of Syria if something more appealing than a tribunal at The Hague were on offer.

If Mr Assad and Mr Saleh want to start considering their options, Riccardo Orizio, who has interviewed a clutch of exiled dictators, recommends they look at breakaway statelets that almost no one recognises, such as the self-proclaimed republic of Transdniestria (nominally part of Moldova). Such places come with most of the trappings and comforts of a state, but few of the niggling international obligations.