Condoleezza Rice to Meet Gadafy As Reformed Libya Reaps Long-sought Reward

The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, is to meet the Libyan leader, Muammar Gadafy, tomorrow in a landmark visit that ends decades of bitter emnity between Tripoli and Washington.

Gadafy, once dubbed a "mad dog" by Ronald Reagan, is reaping the ultimate reward of years of improved behavior, from abandoning terrorism, surrendering the Lockerbie bombing suspects for trial, compensating the victims' families and giving up his arsenal of nuclear and chemical weapons after the invasion of Iraq.

Diplomatic ties with the US have already been restored but a high-level American visit was made possible only after last month's final agreement on the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103, in which 270 people died. Tripoli has also become a valued ally of the US in the "war on terror".

Rice will be in Tripoli tomorrow for what the US state department called a "historic stop" at the start of a brief North African tour that will also take her to Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria.

The last US secretary of state to visit Libya was John Foster Dulles in 1953, when it was still the western-backed monarchy that was overthrown by the young Gadafy and fellow army officers in 1969. "In that period of time, we've had a man land on the moon, the internet, the Berlin Wall fall, and we've had 10 US presidents," said a US spokesman, Sean McCormack.

Reagan sent US planes to attack Tripoli in 1986 in retaliation for the bombing of a Berlin nightclub that killed a US serviceman and was blamed on Libyan agents.

Last month, a Lockerbie settlement with the US was finally reached, although Libya has yet to put cash into the humanitarian fund as agreed. Gadafy's son and likely heir, Seif al-Islam, claimed in a recent BBC TV documentary that Libya accepted responsibility for the bombing only to get UN sanctions lifted.

The US and Libya are working on a bilateral trade and investment deal and Libya has become a magnet for western companies seeking to take advantage of a rapidly liberalizing economy. Its proven oil reserves are the ninth largest in the world, close to 39bn barrels, and vast areas remain unexplored for new deposits.

In an unsubtle message to Iran and others, McCormack said: "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."

Gadafy has already met Tony Blair, Silvio Berlusconi and other western leaders, but there were protests over human rights abuses when he visited Paris earlier this year after freeing six Bulgarian medics who had been falsely accused of infecting children with HIV.