Rice to visit Libya in first such US trip in 55 years

Top US diplomat Condoleezza Rice will make a landmark trip to Libya this week, the first by a US Secretary of State in more than half a century, the State Department announced yesterday.

Her 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 stop," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack. "It certainly does mark a new chapter in US-Libya relations," he told reporters in announcing the trip.

Dr Rice, who is expected to meet Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi during her brief trip to Tripoli, will also visit Maghreb nations Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco and stopover in Lisbon, 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.