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A senior State Department envoy will visit Libya next week to lay groundwork for a visit to the North African country by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. A Rice visit would highlight the dramatic improvement in relations that began when Libya renounced weapons of mass destruction in 2003. VOA's David Gollust reports from the State Department.State Department officials say Rice has decided in principle to make the ground-breaking Libyan visit, and that Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Welch will discuss specific plans for the trip when he goes to Tripoli next week.U.S.-Libyan relations went into a tailspin after Muammar Gadhafi took power in 1969 and they were formally severed in 1980 amid charges the Gadhafi government was supporting terrorism.The recovery began in 2003 when Libya,after secret talks with the US and Britain,announced it was abandoning weapons of mass destruction programs.It also accepted responsibility for the 1988 bombing of a U.S. Pan Am jumbo jet over Scotland that killed nearly 300 people,and agreed to pay nearly $3 billion to families of the victims. Bilateral relations were fully normalized more than a year ago, though some problem issues relating to Pan Am compensation and other matters remain.A senior U.S. diplomat who spoke to reporters here said Libya's release last month of six Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian docto-held for eight years on disputed charges of infecting Libyan children with the HIV/AIDS virus-"changed the atmosphere" of international dealings with Tripoli, and influenced Rice's decision to visit.To read more go to:
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