Sep 2, 2008 12:00 pm US/Pacific
Rice To Make 'Historic Stop' In Libya During Tour
WASHINGTON (AP) ―
-
-
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice speaks during a joint press conference with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni in Jerusalem on Aug. 26, 2008.
David Silverman/AFP/Getty Images
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will visit Libya this week, part of a dramatic turnaround in U.S. relations with a former pariah nation that has not hosted an American secretary of state in more than half a century.
Rice launches a four-nation tour of North Africa in Tripoli on Friday, meeting with Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and other top officials in what the State Department is calling a landmark trip that will symbolize the opening of a new era in ties between the United States and the oil-rich country.
"It's a historic stop," spokesman Sean McCormack said, noting that Rice will be the first secretary of state to visit Libya since John Foster Dulles in 1953 and the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit since then-Vice President Richard Nixon in 1957.
"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 U.S. presidents, so this truly is a significant, historic visit," he told reporters.
Long deemed a state sponsor of terrorism and targeted by U.S. air strikes in 1986, Libya began to redeem itself in 2003 when Gadhafi, who President Reagan once famously termed the "mad dog of the Middle East," decided to abandon his weapons of mass destruction programs, renounce terrorism and compensate the families of victims of Libyan-linked attacks.
A comprehensive settlement package was approved last month and Libya is expected to begin soon paying hundreds of millions of dollars into a special fund that will distribute payments to the families of victims from the 1988 Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland and the 1986 bombing of the La Belle disco in Berlin.
Some families have objected to Rice's planned visit, arguing that it will give Gadhafi international legitimacy at a time when there are still questions over whether Libya has accepted full responsibility for the attacks. McCormack said Rice and other officials understood the concerns but stressed that the settlement was important to ending the chapter.
"That, by no means, brings back those people that were lost," he said. "But it does provide some measure of closure for those family members and those friends of people who were lost in these acts of terror."
McCormack also hailed the upcoming trip as a sign of the Bush administration's success in dealing with the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
"The fact that Libya made the decision to give up its WMD programs was one of the important steps that led to this particular opening," he said.
McCormack added that Rice intended to raise human rights concerns in Libya as well as in her other North African stops: Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco.
(© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
Click to enlarge
Stumble It!
Comments