Rice Schedules First Libya Visit by US Secretary of State in 55 Years | Voice of America - English
The U.S. State Department says Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will visit Libya later this week, the first visit of its kind since 1953. Rice will be in Libya on Friday as part of a broader trip to North Africa and Portugal.
The Rice visit and planned meeting with Libyanleader Muammar Gadhafi will climax a process of rapprochement thatbegan in 2003, when Libya accepted responsibility for acts of terrorismand agreed to scrap its weapons of mass destruction and missileprograms. U.S.-Libyan bilateral relations, which were broken offin 1972, have been rebuilt step-by-step. The final hurdle to Rice'svisit was cleared last month when the two sides agreed on a financingmechanism to clear away remaining claims from terrorism cases, notablythe 1988 bombing of a U.S. Pan Am jetliner over Scotland that killed270 people. Announcing Rice's travel plans, State DepartmentSpokesman Sean McCormack called the impending visit to Tripoli historicand said it signifies a new chapter in a relationship. McCormacksaid Rice will go to the meetings in Libya with what he termed a"healthy sense of history" about Libya's terrorist past, but he saidshe is not a captive to that history and that restoring a normalrelationship has bipartisan support in Washington. In a talkwith reporters, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern AffairsDavid Welch, a key go-between with Libya in recent years, said Ricelooks forward "with great interest" to meeting a Libyan leader oncecharacterized by former President Ronald Reagan as "the mad-dog of theMiddle East." "We don't refer to Colonel Gadhafi in those termstoday. This is a relationship that has had a troubled past. But now,it is on a much firmer foundation. He, as leader, has undertakencertain decisions which have really changed things. It's important torecognize that. Those are very much in America's national interests. I would argue also in Libya's national interests," he said. Welchsaid one aim of the Rice mission is to "reach out and try to encourage"Libyans interested in further economic and political reforms. Hesaid the Secretary of State intends to discuss human rights with Libyanofficials, but he would not say whether she would raise the specificcase of leading Gadhafi critic Fahti al-Jahmi, who has been jailedsince 2004 after calling for elections and a free press. Theal-Jahmi case has been championed by the New York-based monitoringgroup Human Rights Watch. Its deputy director for the Middle East, JoeStork, says Rice should serve notice on Libya that there can be nofurther improvement in relations without satisfactory resolution of theal-Jahmi case, among others. "There are a number of verycourageous political dissidents who have been imprisoned, sentenced tolong prison terms, or else detained without even the courtesy of aprison term, simply for speaking out publicly, critically, about thegovernment. We know about people who have simply been 'disappeared,'people who have been unaccounted for since they were arrested manymonths, even years ago. These should be definitely at the top of herlist," he said. Rice will begin the four-day trip in Lisbon fortalks with Portuguese leaders before going on to Libya, Tunisia,Algeria and Morocco. Welch said he expects human rights to bediscussed at each North African stop, along with counter-terrorismefforts and regional issues, including the recent military coup inMauritania, the status of Western Sahara and Darfur. The lastU.S. Secretary of State to visit Libya was John Foster Dulles of theDwight Eisenhower administration, who went there in 1953. Then-VicePresident Richard Nixon also paid a visit, four years later.