WASHINGTON (AFP) — Democratic White House hopeful Hillary Clinton and seven Senate colleagues Monday urged Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to ensure Libya fully compensated US victims of "Libyan terrorism."
The eight senators upped pressure on Rice, who has said she plans to visit Libya before long, as Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi visited France.
In a letter to Rice, the senators noted Libya had promised to compensate relatives of attacks on a Pan Am jumbo jet over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988 which killed 270 people and the 1986 bombing of a disco in Berlin which killed two Americans.
"To date, Libya has not fulfilled its commitments to these victims," the senators wrote.
"There are also other cases ... that need to be resolved.
"Congress has made it clear that the US is not ready for full normalization of relations with Libya," the senators wrote.
Washington severed ties with Libya in 1981, two years after radical students ransacked the US embassy in Tripoli.
Following UN pressure, two Libyans eventually stood trial for the Lockerbie attacks at a Scottish court that sat in the Netherlands.
In 2003, Tripoli agreed to pay the families of the victims millions of dollars each in compensation.
Those steps led to the cancellation of UN sanctions and the slow warming of relations with Washington.
As well as Clinton, the letter to Rice was signed by Senators Frank Lautenberg, Robert Menendez, Chuck Schumer, Patrick Leahy, Barbara Mikulski, Norm Coleman and another Democratic presidential candidate, Chris Dodd.
Coleman is a Republican while the rest are Democrats.
Rice would be the highest ranking US official to travel to Libya in more than 50 years.
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