A top US diplomat arrived in Tripoli on Wednesday for what the local press said were talks aimed at securing compensation for US victims of Libyan attacks.

The visit by assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs David Welch came after both US houses of Congress passed a bill to set up a fund for Libya to compensate US victims of Libyan-sponsored attacks and granting it immunity from lawsuits once compensation has been paid.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said after the bill was passed on August 1 that she looked forward to further improvements in ties with the north African state.

Libyan newspaper Oya said last month that Tripoli and Washington had resumed talks in Abu Dhabi on fully compensating the relatives of US victims of Libyan attacks as well as Libyan victims of US air raids.

Washington wants Tripoli to fully compensate families of the victims of the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am Flight over Lockerbie, Scotland that killed 270 people, and a Berlin disco bombing that killed two Americans.

US-Libyan relations were restored in early 2004 after more than two decades after Libya's leader, Colonel Moamer Kadhafi, announced that Tripoli was abandoning efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

In 2006, the United States announced a full normalisation of ties, dropping Libya from a State Department list of state sponsors of terrorism and raising diplomatic relations to the level of ambassadors.

However, the appointment of a US ambassador to Tripoli as well as approval of funds for a new embassy have been held up in the Senate. Rice has also said she wants to visit Tripoli, but has not yet done so.

State Department officials declined to link removing the final diplomatic snags to a settlement of the compensation issue

[AFP]