Pay Rommel's Debt, Gadafy Tells Schröder

President Muammar Gadafy yesterday embarrassed his latest high-profile western visitor, the German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, by demanding compensation for thousands of landmines left in the Libyan desert during the second world war.

During talks in Tripoli, Mr Gadafy complained that dozens of Libyans were still being injured and killed by the anti-tank mines, which were buried by Erwin Rommel and his retreating army more than 60 years ago.

Mr Schröder's trip is the first by a German chancellor to what until recently was a rogue state. It came after Libya agreed in August to pay $35m (about £19m) in compensation to the non-US victims of a 1986 disco bombing in west Berlin, which killed three people and injured 230. The bombing was widely blamed on Libyan agents.

The visit also follows the EU's decision on Monday to lift sanctions, and a similar trip to Tripoli by Tony Blair in March.

Yesterday, however, German officials confirmed that the notoriously unpredictable Libyan leader had suggested over an impromptu three-hour banquet that Germany should pay compensation. Libyans were still dying from mines left by the Germany army, he said.

He also showed Mr Schröder maps of where the mines had been buried.

Mr Schröder replied that it was in the interests of both countries to put the past behind them.

As many as 18m landmines litter Libya's western deserts, especially around the town of El Alamein, where in 1942 the British army under Bernard Montgomery decisively defeated Rommel's Afrika Korps, in one of the war's most crucial battles.

Not all of the mines are German: many are British and Italian.

They continue to explode, wounding and injuring bedouin tribes and children. German officials in Berlin appear to have been caught off guard by Mr Gadafy's demand and yesterday said merely that both sides would work on the issue. There appears to be little prospect, however, of compensation.

During discussions held in Mr Gadafy's famous tent, the Libyan leader also praised Germany and France for their key role in opposing last year's US-led invasion of Iraq.

Mr Gadafy suggested that Arab states and Europe should work together to defeat American influence - a suggestion Mr Schröder politely failed to endorse.

The trip follows the Libyan leader's announcement last year that his country was to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction programme, and his agreement to pay com-pensation for the 1988 Locker bie bombing in which 270 people died.

But the visit is as much about economics as politics. Twenty German executives have travelled to Tripoli with Mr Schröder, who yesterday flew to an oasis south of the capital to open a German-run oil well.

The chancellor suggested that one motive for his visit was to ensure that Germany got ahead in the surge of western economic interest in Libya.

The country's "enormous resources" mattered to German industry, he said.

He called Mr Gadafy's political change "really remarkable", adding that Germany "could only welcome that". He said Libya's new course deserved "every support".

But Mr Schröder conceded the two countries still had "differences of approach" towards the United States, for instance. And German government officials said Mr Schröder would raise concerns about human rights in Libya in his talks with Mr Gadafy, who has kept a tight control over politics since he seized power in a military coup in 1969.