Rice to visit Libya, first such US trip in 55 years

Tue Sep 2, 2008 2:34pm EDT

(Adds more details on trip, quotes)

By Sue Pleming

WASHINGTON, Sept 2 (Reuters) - Top U.S. diplomat Condoleezza Rice will make a landmark trip to Libya this week, the first by a U.S. secretary of state in more than half a century, the State Department announced on Tuesday.

Her trip is a tangible sign of warming U.S.-Libya relations, which first began to thaw when Tripoli gave up its weapons of mass destruction program in 2003.

"It is a historic stop," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack. "It certainly does mark a new chapter in U.S.-Libya relations."

Rice, who is expected to meet Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi on her Sept. 4-7 trip, also will visit Maghreb nations Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco and stop over in Lisbon, Portugal, before returning to Washington on Sunday.

Former U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was the last top U.S. diplomat to visit Tripoli and he made the trip in May 1953.

"If you think about this expanse of time and what has happened in that period of time -- we have had a man land on the moon, the Internet, the Berlin Wall fall and we have had 10 U.S. presidents," McCormack said.

McCormack said the decision to visit Libya was also "tangible evidence" the United States did not harbor permanent enemies and served as an example to nations such as Iran, which has refused to give up its sensitive nuclear work that the West believes is aimed at building a nuclear bomb.

"Libya is an example that if countries make a different set of choices than they are making currently, they can have a different kind of relationship with the United States," McCormack said.

He reiterated Rice had offered on many occasions to meet her Iranian counterpart at any place or time to try if Tehran followed international demands to abandon its nuclear work. Iran says its nuclear program is to generate power.

Rice's trip to Libya follows the signing of a deal last month between the two countries to establish a humanitarian fund to resolve compensation cases involving victims of U.S. and Libyan bombings.

The top U.S. diplomat had held back on visiting Libya until this deal was agreed on.

U.S. victims covered include those who died in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people, and the 1986 attack on a Berlin disco that killed three people and wounded 229.

It also covers Libyans killed in 1986 when U.S. planes bombed Tripoli and Benghazi. Forty people died.

McCormack said the fund had not yet started paying out victims. "We expect the money to be in the bank account soon," said McCormack, without providing any specifics. (Reporting by Sue Pleming; Editing by Kristin Roberts and Bill Trott)




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