Libya wants Rice to make historic visit in late October

Libya has suggested that Condoleezza Rice make the first visit there in more than 50 years by a U.S. secretary of state, a senior State Department official said Wednesday.

In a meeting with Rice, Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel-Rahman Shalqam made clear that she would be "very welcome" at an Oct. 27 conference on Darfur, the official said.

Rice, who has previously said she would like to visit Libya soon, said she would try to attend but could not commit given a press of overseas travel in October to prepare for a U.S.-hosted Middle East peace conference, the official told reporters.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a private diplomatic conversation, said Rice would likely send a senior aide to the Darfur conference and plan to visit Libya herself at a later date before the end of the year.

Rice's meeting was her third with Shalqam amid a sea change in U.S. relations with the North African nation that was once considered a pariah.

There are no conditions for the trip, but the official said Rice would like to see progress on two outstanding terrorism-related issues before going or during her visit.

Washington is still pressing Tripoli to complete compensation payments to victims of the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, and resolve similar issues in the 1986 bombing of a Berlin disco.

Rice underscored the importance of dealing with those matters and pointed out she would like her visit to signal a new beginning for U.S.-Libyan ties with all past issues behind them, the official said.

Wednesday's talks followed a recent flurry of diplomatic activity between the two countries.

Last month, the top U.S. diplomat for the Middle East, David Welch, went to Tripoli to discuss arrangements for the Rice trip, which would be the first by a secretary of state since John Foster Dulles in 1953.

He went shortly after Libya released six Bulgarian medical workers who had been imprisoned for more than eight years despite strong international objections for allegedly infecting Libyan children with the AIDS virus.

The release cleared one of the last remaining hurdles for a full restoration of U.S.-Libya diplomatic ties, which were broken in 1980.

Relations have improved substantially since Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi agreed to abandon his weapons of mass destruction programs in 2003. Along with the Lockerbie settlement, that led to Libya's removal from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Those steps also removed U.S., U.N. and European sanctions on Tripoli.

The United States and Libya have since reopened embassies in their respective capitals and President Bush has nominated a veteran diplomat to serve as the new U.S. ambassador in Libya.

The nomination, however, has met resistance from some members of Congress. They vow to block it until Libya completes the Lockerbie restitution payments settles claims from the disco bombing in which two U.S. servicemen were killed.