Blair-Gadaffi Set to Meet

25/03/2004| IslamWeb

Britain's Tony Blair will make an historic visit to Libya today, an important step towards bringing Libya in from the diplomatic cold. Blair will meet Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi in a tent on the outskirts of Tripoli, a senior UK government official told reporters yesterday. He will be the first British prime minister to visit Libya since Winston Churchill during the second World War. "We believe Gadaffi has made important strategic decisions on weapons of mass destruction and on Lockerbie and we want to demonstrate our support for those decisions," the official said. Blair is in Spain for a memorial service for the victims of this month's Madrid train bombings. He then flies on to Portugal for talks. Libya announced in December it was abandoning any efforts to acquire nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in a new effort to mend ties with the West, after agreeing to pay damages for the 1988 PanAm plane bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland. Blair's Conservative opponents, however, condemned the visit. "It's quite odd timing to go from a service which commemorates the victims of the biggest terrorist attack on Europe since Lockerbie, to go straight from there to Libya," Conservative leader Michael Howard told BBC Radio. In Tripoli, the Libyan government said Blair's visit would "illustrate the excellent relations that exist between Libya and Great Britain". Libya said the talks this week between Gadaffi and the highest level US official to visit in more than 30 years were a positive step in building ties of trust between Tripoli and Washington. William Burns, US Assistant Secretary of State in charge of Near East Affairs, met Gadaffi, whose country is still on a US list as a "sponsor of terrorism". Sources said Burns handed Gadaffi a letter from President George W Bush on ways to improve ties, which have thawed a bit since Libya's decision to end weapons of mass destruction programmes. US Secretary of State Colin Powell said Burns visit showed "we are moving ahead with the political road map that we laid out with the Libyans as a result of their determination to give up their weapons of mass destruction". **PHOTO CAPTION*** Tony Blair will help usher Libya back into the international community on March 25, 2004 when he becomes the first British leader to visit Tripoli since Winston Churchill in World War II. (Paul Hackett/Reuters)