Condoleezza Rice visits Libya next week
WASHINGTON (AFP)
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will embark on a historic visit to Libya next week, a US official told AFP Tuesday, the first such a trip to Tripoli Libya by a secretary of state in more than 25 years.
Her visit comes less than one month after a U.S.-Libyan agreement to compensate American victims of Libyan attacks and those of U.S. reprisals from the 1980s.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not give a precise date for the trip, saying it would take place "next week."
U.S.-Libya relations were restored in early 2004 after Libyan leader Colonel Moamar Gaddafi confirmed that Tripoli was abandoning efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
In 2006, the United States announced a full normalization of ties, dropping Libya from a State Department list of state sponsors of terrorism and raising diplomatic relations to the level of ambassadors.
The compensation accord, signed August 14, was one of the final pieces of the diplomatic puzzle allowing the full normalization of U.S.-Libya relations.
The deal will see compensation paid for families of the victims of the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people, and a Berlin disco bombing that killed two Americans.
Victims of U.S. reprisal attacks will also be compensated.
Libya was subjected to several U.S. air strikes on Tripoli and Benghazi on April 16, 1986, in which 41 people were killed, including an adopted daughter of Gaddafi.
Rice said on August 14, during a visit to Tbilisi, said she would go to Libya soon after compensation deal was signed.
"A lot of this is coming to completion after a good deal of work and I look forward to go to Libya" ... I hope to go soon," Rice said at the time.