Clinton meets Libyan FM for first time

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met for the first time on Tuesday with her Libyan counterpart, Mussa Kussa, at a conference in Morocco, her spokesman said.

"They sat for about fifteen minutes," said Philip Crowley, aboard the airplane bringing Clinton to Cairo, where she is to meet Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to discuss the paralysed Middle East peace process.

"They talked about Sudan, Darfur, cooperation about terrorism and the possibility of advancing our relationship."

Crowley said the two did not discuss the matter of Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi, the man convicted of the the 1988 bombing of an airliner over the Scottish town of Lockerbie that killed 270 people.

Megrahi, who is 57 and suffering from cancer, was released from a Scottish prison in August on compassionate grounds because he was said to have only three months left to live.

"The issue of Megrahi did not come up," Crowley said, but "the Libyans understand our concerns about Megrahi very very well."

Following his release, Megrahi returned home to a warm welcome, triggering fury from the US administration and American relatives of Lockerbie victims.

Relations between the United States and Libya, which Crowder described as a "country we have an emergent relationship with," warmed after Tripoli renounced the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction in 2003 and agreed to pay 270 million dollars in compensation to Lockerbie relatives.