Libya is to send its foreign minister, Abdulrahman Shalgam, to Britain on Monday for the highest-level meeting between the two countries since relations began to deteriorate in 1969.
The Foreign Office confirmed on Thursday that Shalgam was to meet Tony Blair and the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, on Tuesday.
The visit was described by the Foreign Office as a milestone in the move to end Libya’s pariah status.
Most of the contentious issues between Britain and Libya have been resolved since the country’s leader, Colonel Moammar Gadaffi, announced on December 19 that he was to destroy his weapons of mass destruction.
The most significant remaining stumbling block relates to the unsolved murder of the British policewoman Yvonne Fletcher, who was shot from a window of the Libyan embassy in London in 1984 during an anti-Gadaffi demonstration.
Police officers visited Libya two years ago but British officials said on Thursday that authorities there had provided only ”limited” answers to questions about who was responsible for her death.
A spokesperson for the Metropolitan police said the force had been in touch with the Foreign Office and awaited the outcome of ”what we hope will be productive discussions”.
British officials said there was no plan for Mr Blair to visit Libya this year to meet Col Gadaffi, in spite of a recent prediction from the British embassy in Tripoli that such a trip would take place within six months.
Relations between Libya and the rest of the world, however, remain strained.
The United States and the European Union have yet to lift sanctions against the country.
The EU is concerned about six Bulgarians — five nurses and a doctor — who have been held in jail for five years in Benghazi after being accused of infecting 400 children with Aids on behalf of the CIA and the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad.
The British government is to urge its Libyan counterpart to resolve the case and consider the damaging impact of similar situations on its international reputation.
Officials from the US state department, led by Bill Burns, the assistant secretary, will join British and Libyan representatives in London today to discuss progress in the dismantling of Libya’s weapons of mass destruction.
Libya has already handed over documentation and equipment relating to its nuclear programme.
Having made what it regards as serious concessions, the country is expecting reciprocal moves from the US.
Washington, which has no diplomatic ties with Tripoli, has hinted it could begin the process by opening an ”interests section”, a limited form of diplomatic contact. – Guardian Unlimited Â