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U.S: Rice leaves for milestone Libyan tour
Fri. September 05, 2008 02:55 am.- By Bonny Apunyu. -
(SomaliNet) U.S state department has announced that Condoleezza Rice left for a landmark trip to Libya this week, the first by a United States secretary of state in more than half a century.
Media reports say Condoleezza’s trip is a tangible sign of warming US-Libya relations, which first began to thaw when Tripoli gave up its weapons of mass destruction programme in 2003.
"It is a historic step," said state department spokesman Sean McCormack. "It certainly does mark a new chapter in US-Libya relations."
Rice, who was expected to meet Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi on her trip, would also visit Maghreb nations Tunisia, Algeria and Morrocco and stop over in Portugal, before returning to Washington on Sunday.
Former US secretary of state John Foster Dulles was the last top US diplomat to visit Tripoli and he made the trip in May 1953.
"If you think about this expanse of time and what has happened in that period of time - we have had a man land on the moon, the Internet, the Berlin Wall fall and we have had 10 US presidents," McCormack said.
McCormack said the decision to visit Libya was also "tangible evidence" the United States did not harbour permanent enmities and served as an example to nations such as Iran, which has refused to give up its sensitive nuclear work that the West believes is aimed at building a nuclear bomb.
"Libya is an example that if countries make a different set of choices than they are making currently, they can have a different kind of relationship with the United States," McCormack said.
He reiterated that Rice had offered often to meet her Iranian counterpart if Tehran abandoned its nuclear work. - Reuters
News Category: World
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