WASHINGTON (AFP) — US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will embark on a historic visit to Libya next week, a US official told AFP Tuesday, the first time the top US diplomat travels to the country since 1953.
Washington is eager to show how a country like Libya, which has abandoned its nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs, can benefit from a rapprochement with Western nations -- a clear message to countries like Iran and North Korea, which have nuclear programs.
Rice's visit comes less than one month after a agreement with Libya to compensate US victims of Libyan attacks, and those of US reprisals, from the 1980s.
The US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not give a precise date for the trip, saying it would take place "next week."
No mention was made of Rice's agenda in the Libyan capital, but it is likely she will meet with Libyan Leader Colonel Moamer Kadhafi.
The last US secretary of state to visit Libya was John Foster Dulles, who met with Libya's ruler, King Idris Senussi, in 1953.
US-Libya relations, suspended in 1981 due to Tripoli's alleged support of terrorism, were restored in early 2004 after Kadhafi confirmed that Tripoli was abandoning efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
In 2006, the United States announced a full normalization of ties, dropping Libya from a State Department list of state sponsors of terrorism and raising diplomatic relations to the level of ambassadors.
The compensation accord, signed August 14, was one of the final pieces of the diplomatic puzzle allowing the full normalization of US-Libya relations.
The deal will see compensation paid for families of the victims of the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people, and a Berlin disco bombing that killed two Americans.
Victim of US reprisal attacks will also be compensated.
Libya was subjected to several US air strikes on Tripoli and Benghazi on April 16, 1986, in which 41 people were killed, including an adopted daughter of Kadhafi.
Rice said on August 14, during a visit to Tbilisi, said she would go to Libya soon after compensation deal was signed.
"A lot of this is coming to completion after a good deal of work, and I look forward to go to Libya" ... I hope to go soon," Rice said at the time.
Rice also praised the accord, which she said came after "many, many years of hard work, as well as Libya having made some important strategic choices about its WMD (weapons of mass destruction) in abandoning them, and also in abandoning terrorism."
Rice had often said she wanted to visit Tripoli to show Iran and North Korea the benefits they stood to reap if they followed Libya's lead and curbed their nuclear programs.
"Libya is an important model as nations around the world press for changes in behavior by the Iranian and North Korean regimes ... We urge the leadership of Iran and North Korea to make similar strategic decisions that would benefit their citizens," she said in 2006.
Her travel plans, however, were thwarted by Libya's eight-year detention of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian-born doctor on charges of infecting 438 children with AIDS-tainted blood, which the US government considered arbitrary.
The nurses were released in July 2007, and Rice renewed her hopes: "I actually look forward to the opportunity to go to Libya. I think it will be an important step," she told a year-end press conference at the time.
But her travel plans were once again set back, this time by US Congress pressure on the State Department to settle the festering dispute between Tripoli and the victims of the Lockerbie and Berlin attacks.
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