US Tests the Air in Reformed Libya

With the words "United States Navy" emblazoned on its side, a plane touched down in Tripoli yesterday carrying six US congressmen on a goodwill mission: the first such visit since Colonel Muammar Gadafy came to power in 1969.

"We are extremely excited about the direction your leader has taken in recent months," one of the visitors, Curt Weldon, told the Libyan officials who greeted them.

"We want to be friends with the Libyan people and work together with them on common concerns."

It was a dramatic change from the visit made by US warplanes in the 1980s, when they bombed Col Gadafy's home and killed one of his daughters.

"We are here to say thank you to the leader of Libya for moving the country in a new direction," Mr Weldon, a Pennsylvania Republican, said. "We are very impressed also with the son of your leader, Saif al-Gadafy. His face is well known in America and I look forward to meeting him again."

Following its decision last month to renounce weapons of mass destruction, Libya is pressing the US to lift the remaining economic sanctions and remove it from the state department list of countries that support terrorism.

It has said it will double its compensation to victims of the Lockerbie bombing if the US meets its demands by May 12.

But Mr Weldon hinted yesterday that the US would not be stampeded. "The sanctions will be lifted on a time frame determined by our president and our secretary of state," he said, adding that further steps were needed to achieve normal relations.

Behind the scenes the US is preparing for normalisation. It is represented now by Belgium, but its first diplomat is already in Tripoli and two more are expected soon. This week Britain will receive the Libyan foreign minister in London and British and Libyan sources say Tony Blair will make his first visit to Tripoli in three to six months.

Libya's sudden and unilateral rapprochement with the west has infuriated many of its Arab neighbours, and the west is now obliged to reward it handsomely to encourage others to follow the same path.

The first hint of a possible hitch came yesterday when Saif Gadafy said that Libya must be reimbursed for the cost of the nuclear equipment it had bought to develop weapons, which is now due to be destroyed.

Mr Gadafy, 32, who has no official status and often insists that he is simply a private Libyan citizen, said the country's water shortage means that it needed nuclear energy to power desalination projects.

He is regarded as a liberal moderniser and a possible successor to his unpredictable father. But a western diplomat said yesterday that it was unclear from his political interventions whether his father was grooming him for power or merely indulging him.

The six congressmen who arrived yesterday came at his invitation. The day before, Tom Lantos, the senior Democrat on the House international relations committee, arrived separately at the invitation of Col Gadafy.