Rice urges Libya to resolve Lockerbie dispute

[stu]

By Sue Pleming

Sat Sep 23, 3:24 PM ET

 

 

 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met Libya's Foreign Minister on Saturday for the first time since the two sides restored full diplomatic ties and urged Tripoli to resolve outstanding issues linked to the Lockerbie bombing.

 

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Rice told Foreign Minister Mohammed Abdel-Rahman Shalgam of the "import" of settling issues tied to the 1988 Pan Am airliner bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, for which Libya has claimed responsibility.

 

Some relatives of the victims of that bombing, which killed 270 people, say Libya has not paid up a final tranche of compensation payments and are outraged the United States has restored full diplomatic ties last May.

 

McCormack said Rice also discussed claims emerging from Libya's 1986 bombing of a disco in West Berlin used by U.S. servicemen in which three people died and 230 were injured.

 

In addition, they covered counter-terrorism issues and Sudan, said McCormack of the meeting. The United States wants Arab nations like Libya to press Sudan's government to accept a U.N. force in its war-torn Darfur region.

 

Rice posed briefly for the cameras and shook hands with Shalgam before the meeting began on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, where the two also met last year.

 

Asked when she planned to visit Libya, Rice smiled and said: "We will let you know our travel plans when we have them." The Libyan minister did not comment.

 

SYMBOLIC

 

Libya, led by one-time U.S. antagonist Muammar Gaddafi, has been awaiting news of a visit by Rice that would be seen as a symbolic gesture of the new relationship.

 

The highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Libya so far was U.S. Under Secretary of State Paula Dobriansky, who led a U.S. delegation on a trip to the OPEC member country last July.

 

While full diplomatic relations were restored between the two countries last May and Libya was later removed from a U.S. list of state sponsors of terror, one senior State Department official said it was taking time to resolve various issues, indicating a trip was not likely soon.

 

"That process (resolving issues) has been very slow but I don't think this is because of a lack of good will," said the official, who asked not to be named because of the sensitive nature of his comments.

 

The United States would also like to see the case of six foreign medics accused of infecting 400 Libyan children with the virus that causes AIDS closed. Washington has said the legal process in that case was flawed.

 

U.S.-Libya relations turned around after Tripoli decided in December 2003 to give up its weapons program.

 

The senior State Department official said the United States viewed its relationship with Libya very seriously, particularly after Gaddafi gave up his country's weapons program.

 

"Those things are of value and the president and secretary of state have no desire to go back to the past," said the official. "It's tedious but if we are patient and careful and one side doesn't get blustery with the other, I am hoping we can work through these things."

 

While restoring diplomatic ties and announcing the opening of an embassy, the United States has still not appointed an ambassador to Libya.

 

One U.S. official said there was no big rush in pushing through a nomination for a new ambassador to the Senate as it was unlikely to go through until after the midterm elections in November.