US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hosted Libya's foreign minister yesterday the first visit by the top Tripoli diplomat since 1972 - in a sign of warmer ties between the former foes.
Rice met with Foreign Minister Mohammed Abdel-Rahman Shalgam days after Libya took over the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council, another milestone in the North African country's shedding of its pariah status in the West.
US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Rice would discuss Washington's 2008 goals on the council and bilateral issues, including human rights and unresolved cases from the 1980s bombings in which Libya was implicated.
Ties between the two countries, which re-opened full embassies in each other's capitals in 2006 after a 25-year break, were "changing in a positive way", but there was still much to be done, McCormack told reporters.
"There's still a lot to be done with respect to instituting basic freedoms within Libya. There's still some outstanding issues with respect to claims by US citizens," McCormack said.
US-Libyan ties have warmed since Libya abandoned support for terrorism and gave up weapons of mass destruction in 2003 in a disarmament example Washington has urged North Korea and other states with nuclear weapons ambitions to follow.
But relations have been held back by the absence of any final settlements resolving the 1988 Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, as well as the 1986 bombing of a German disco. Americans were killed in both attacks.
Libya was implicated in both incidents and it had agreed to pay the families of Lockerbie victims $10 million per victim, but has not made the final payment. It has also not paid compensation for US victims of the La Belle disco bombing in West Berlin.
Human rights activists and relatives of jailed Libyan dissidents have pressed the US to live up to its stated aim of promoting democracy in the Middle East.
Analysts said yesterday's talks could build on Rice's and her predecessor Colin Powell's previous meetings with Shalgam at the UN that featured candid discussions.
"We, at least now, have a much more normalized relationship with Libya in the sense that, like with any country where we have differences, we are trying to settle them through regular diplomatic dialogue," said David Mack, vice president of the Middle East Institute and a retired US diplomat.
Source: China Daily/Agencies
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