US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will make a landmark trip to Libya this week.
She will be the first top US diplomat to visit the country in more than half a century, the State Department announced today.
Her trip is a tangible sign of warming US-Libya relations, which first began to thaw when Tripoli gave up its weapons of mass destruction program in 2003.
Ms Rice, who is expected to meet Libyan leader Col Muammar Gadafy during her brief trip to Tripoli, will also visit Maghreb nations Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco and stop over in Lisbon, Portugal, before returning to Washington on Sunday.
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Former U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was the last top US diplomat to visit Tripoli and he made the trip in May, 1953.
Reuters