Gaddafi to make ground-breaking EU visit

Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi will make a ground-breaking visit to the European Union next week in his latest drive to normalise relations with the West, Belgian officials said yesterday.

Gaddafi, a pariah for much of his 34-year rule because the West accused him of terrorism, will meet European Commission President Romano Prodi and Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The trip follows high-level Libyan contacts with London and Washington since Tripoli began coming in from the cold by renouncing a programme of weapons of mass destruction last December and accepting responsibility for two airliner bombings.

A Belgian official, who declined to be named, said the talks between Gaddafi and Verhofstadt were designed to "clear the remaining hurdles on the road to normalisation of Libya's relations with the West".

Prodi has long sought to promote better ties between Tripoli and the international community.

"It is always going to be an interesting outing," said John Palmer, director of the Brussels-based European Policy Centre think-tank.

"The significance lies in the shift of a regime which is clearly in need of international investment and is willing to trade in its oil reserves and its expertise and knowledge of the circles in which the terrorists move," said Mr Palmer.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair travelled to Libya last month and struck an agreement with Gaddafi to fight together against Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.

Libya's isolation mounted when the West held it responsible for attacks such as the bombings of a US Pan Am airliner over Scotland in 1988 and a French airliner over Niger in 1989 in which hundreds were killed.

In 1986, the United States bombed Libya, killing Gaddafi's adopted daughter.

For more than 20 years, Tripoli has faced a range of commercial and political sanctions imposed by the United States, the United Nations and the EU.

UN sanctions were lifted last year after Tripoli agreed to pay compensation to victims of the Pan Am bombing.

The EU is moving towards lifting commercial sanctions on Libya.

But Tripoli's bid to boost ties with the EU and end the sanctions depends on the outcome a dispute between Germany and Libya over compensation for victims of a 1986 nightclub bombing in west Berlin.

The dispute is blocking the lifting of an EU arms embargo imposed in 1986, and could delay Libya from becoming a full member of the EU's partnership with Mediterranean rim nations, where Tripoli has only observer status at certain meetings.

Another issue which could block Libya's membership of the Mediterranean forum is the fate of six Bulgarian medics, detained in Tripoli since 1999 on charges they deliberately infected hundreds of children with the HIV virus.

Libya still faces US sanctions such as a ban on Libyan crude oil dating from 1982 and is on a US list of countries sponsoring terrorism, but Washington has said it could end many of its economic sanctions as early as this week.