Libya Welcomes Visit by U.S. Officials
By Abdelaziz Barrouhi
TUNIS (Reuters) March 23 - Libya on Thursday welcomed a planned visit by U.S. consular officials who will help decide whether to lift the ban on travel to the North African country by U.S. citizens.
``We welcome this delegation...This is an important step we hope will be followed by others,' Hassouna Chaouch, Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, told Reuters in a telephone interview.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright authorized the trip by four State Department officials to see whether it is safe for U.S. citizens to travel in Libya.
``This is an important visit and it is possible to build on it for a resumption of relations between Libya and America based on dialogue and understanding and on the development of cooperation and shared interests,' Chaouch said.
``It is America who severed ties with Libya. For us, America is an important and fundamental state... The present U.S. administration has realized the importance of Libya, of its position, of its economic and mineral potential, as well as its role in Africa and for peace...,' he added.
``We consider that the negative chapter in our relations is over,' he said, recalling the 1986 bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi by the U.S. air force to punish what the Reagan administration called Tripoli's support for world terrorism.
``We never supported terrorism. All we did was to help freedom fighters in Africa and the Middle East whose leaders were later received at the White House,' Chaouch said, referring to former South African President Nelson Mandela and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.
Diplomatic ties between Washington and Tripoli were severed in 1981. The United States, accusing Tripoli of supporting world terrorism, froze Libya's assets and imposed a trade embargo on it in January 1986.
U.N. sanctions imposed on Libya in 1992, after the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie in Scotland, were suspended after Libya handed over two suspects last year for trial in the Netherlands under Scottish law.
But no high-level official contacts between the U.S. administration and the Libyan government have been reported since then, though former State Department Deputy Secretary Herman Cohen made an informal visit to Tripoli last year.
U.S. Visit Angers Lockerbie Victims' Relatives
The planned consular visit, due to start on Saturday, has angered relatives of the 270 people killed in the Lockerbie bombing, who asked Albright to cancel the trip.
The official Libyan news agency JANA reported on Thursday that Libya had postponed the trial in absentia of nine former U.S. officials for the 1986 bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi.
JANA, received in Tunis, said the trial had been postponed from Wednesday to June 28 at the request of the public prosecutor, to allow more time for the ``arrest' of the eight accused who are still alive.
Libya said the U.S. bombing raid killed some 40 people, including a girl adopted by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi whose house in the Azizia barracks in Tripoli was destroyed.
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