Col Gaddafi invites Bush to Libya Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has invited US President George W Bush to visit Libya, a top US senator says.

Senator Richard Lugar was in Libya as the US and Tripoli begin to rebuild ties after decades of hostility.

The US began to ease sanctions on Libya last year after Col Gaddafi abandoned a nuclear weapons programme and paid compensation for the Lockerbie bombing.

Speaking as Mr Lugar's two-day visit ended, Col Gaddafi's son called for a process of national reconciliation.

Mr Lugar is the highest-ranking US official to visit Libya in decades.

He said the US was working towards opening an embassy in Libya, 24 years after it withdrew its ambassador.

The US opened a liaison office - a lower-level diplomatic post - in Tripoli in 2004.

Different reality

Col Gaddafi's son Seif al-Islam Gaddafi said any possible past human rights violations in his country should be investigated.

Speaking on the al-Jazeera television network, he called on Libyans living abroad to return home, saying past injustices would be compensated.

If anyone lost his life unjustly or was harmed as a result of human rights violations in the past, why are their cases not looked into?
Seif al-Islam Gaddafi

He was speaking in his capacity as president of the Gaddafi International Foundation for Charity Associations.

He said there was now a different reality and a different future in his country, and the time was ripe to reopen the files to investigate any possible human rights violations.

Such a move, he said, was not unprecedented.

"There was something like this in South Africa and Latin American countries," he said.

"If anyone lost his life unjustly or was harmed as a result of human rights violations in the past, why are their cases not looked into and why does no reconciliation take place?"

Seif al-Islam Gaddafi also called on dissident Libyans living abroad, whose money and property had been confiscated, to return home and restore their rights, saying they could be re-integrated into society.

He said his foundation was trying to contact Libyans abroad.

Changing image

Libya has been trying to improve its international reputation following years out in the cold in the wake of the Lockerbie and Niger plane bombings and an attack on a Berlin discotheque, blamed on Tripoli.

The foundation which Seif al-Islam Gaddafi heads was involved in negotiations to agree compensation for some of the victims of those attacks.

But Libya's latest attempt to rehabilitate itself is not just aimed at the West, the BBC's Barbara Miller says, but also at improving its standing in the eyes of its own people - particularly of dissidents abroad, who Tripoli now appears to want back.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/africa/4170168.stm

Published: 2005/08/21 07:05:25 GMT

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