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WORLD / America |
US Rice plans to visit Libya before leaving office(AP)
Updated: 2008-02-23 09:53 WASHINGTON - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says she still plans to visit Libya during the last 11 months of the Bush administration, and she does not expect easy discussions when she goes. After more than three decades of enmity between Moammar Gadhafi's Libya and the United States, Gadhafi renounced terrorism and his weapons of mass destruction programs and Libya was removed from the US list of terror-exporting states in 2005. Full diplomatic relations were restored, although the United States has been unable to persuade the Senate to confirm an ambassador to head the embassy. "I still expect that I will go to Libya," Rice said Friday. "I expect that we'll continue to have to talk about difficult things: human rights, terrorism." Still, she told reporters at the State Department, "when you have a major strategic shift of the kind that Libya has made, you want there to be some affirmation of the importance of having done that." That is coming through increased participation in Libya by US and European companies, she said. |
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