AP News, April 5th, 2007
The State Department's No. 2 official will travel to Libya this month as part of a four-nation African tour designed to ease the humanitarian crisis in the western Sudanese region of Darfur.
Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte will be the highest-ranking U.S. diplomat to visit Libya since Secretary of State John Foster Dulles traveled there in 1953. Other stops on the April 11-19 trip include Sudan, Chad and Mauritania.
In Mauritania, Negroponte will attend the inauguration of President-elect Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikk Adellahi and meet with African leaders.
Chad is part of Negroponte's itinerary because the civil conflict in Darfur has spilled across the border into Chadian territory, causing widespread suffering.
Libya also has a border with Sudan, and Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi has facilitated delivery of humanitarian relief to Darfur through Libyan territory.
A U.N.-backed plan to dispatch a 22,000-member U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force to Darfur has made little headway since it was approved last fall.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Negroponte will encourage the Sudanese government to accept the plan which, he said, is "fundamental to providing security and greater stability in Darfur."
Gadhafi's decision in 2003 to dismantle his nuclear weapons program was a major breakthrough in U.S.-Libyan relations. Midlevel U.S. officials have visited Libya but, because of continuing disputes, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has not agreed to Libyan wishes that she travel there.
One purpose of a Rice visit would be to inaugurate officially the new U.S. Embassy in Tripoli. The embassy opened last year, but there was no ceremony to mark the occasion.
One dispute with Libya involves its refusal thus far to make the final payment on the $270 million in compensation it promised to families of the victims of the 1988 Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland.
Also, Libya has ignored U.S. demands it release five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who have been sentenced to death after being convicted on charges that they deliberately injected hundreds of Libyan children with AIDS virus. The case is under appeal.
Last week, Gadhafi displeased U.S. officials when he derided Arab leaders attending a summit in Saudi Arabia by accusing them of following American orders.
