For the first time since 1953, a U.S. Secretary of State will make a state visit to Libya. Condoleezza Rice is scheduled to visit the North African nation at the end of this week. Libya, a past host of numerous terrorists, settled its outstanding lawsuits with American victims of its state-sponsored terrorism -- including the 1988 Lockerbie plane hijacking and bombing and a 1986 attack on a German disco in Berlin.
"We’re... not captive to history," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack in a news briefing on Tuesday. "We have, as a U.S. Government across administrations – Republican and Democrat – worked to change this relationship and to address... issues related to terrorism. And the final step in that process was taken recently when President Bush signed into law new legislation that dealt with compensation for victims of terror. That by no means brings back those people that were lost. But it does provide some measure of closure for those family members and those friends of people who were lost in these acts of terror.
Five years ago Libyan leader Col. Muammar Qaddafi renounced terrorism and allegedly disarmed the country of its nuclear weapons of mass destruction.