Bush 'passes on letter to Gaddafi'

Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi received a letter from US president George Bush during the highest-level diplomatic meeting in more than 20 years, it was reported.

The claim came from Libya’s official Jamahiriya news agency yesterday.

The United States has no diplomatic relations with Libya, a state it lists as a sponsor of terrorism, but the US Embassy in neighbouring Egypt said US Assistant Secretary of State William Burns’s talks with Gaddafi on Tuesday were “very constructive”.

They reflected “the gradual, step-by-step normalisation in our bilateral relationship that has been made possible by Libya’s historic steps to eliminate its weapons of mass destruction … and to adhere to its renunciation of terrorism”, the US Embassy in Cairo said in a statement written by the US State Department.

In his meeting with Gaddafi and other Libyan officials, Burns, the highest US official to visit Libya since 1980, discussed plans to establish a US liaison office in Tripoli and trade and investment, the US statement said.

Burns reiterated to Gaddafi that President Bush welcomed Libya’s steps to “repudiate weapons of mass destruction”, the statement said.

In December, Gaddafi agreed to dismantle Libya’s nuclear programme under US, British and United Nations supervision.

Earlier last year, Libya accepted responsibility for the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, and agreed to pay compensation to the families of the 270 victims. The decision led the United Nations Security Council to abolish its sanctions against the country.