This article quotes Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel-Rahman Shalqam as saying that the United States and Libya had signed an accord to reassure American investors their properties in Libya would not be nationalized and that the United States had committed to accepting 1,000 Libyan students for education and training. A spokeswoman at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli says that no such accord has been signed, and that the United States has not committed to accepting a fixed number of Libyan students.
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Oil Wealth Fuels Gaddafi's Drive For Reinvention
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The rapprochement faces lingering objections by families of victims of Pan Am Flight 103, blown up over Scotland in 1988 in an attack blamed in part on Libya. Congress has yet to approve President Bush's nominee for ambassador.
But Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel-Rahman Shalqam, in an interview, cited progress. "We sat down together, we succeeded in solving the big problem," he said. "With America, now we have a sequence to follow."
The two governments have signed an accord to try to reassure American investors that their properties in Libya will not be nationalized, Shalqam said. The United States also has committed to accepting 1,000 Libyan students for education and training, he said, a vital step for Libya's unskilled workforce.
In a recording released this past weekend, al-Qaeda pledged to attack Libya for Gaddafi's opening to the West. Gaddafi was serving his "Washington masters," said Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's No. 2 leader. Al-Qaeda and a Libyan armed group announced their alliance in the same recording. "After long years," said Abu Laith al-Libi, the Libyan group's leader, Gaddafi "suddenly discovered that America is not an enemy . . . and is turning Libya into another crusader base."
The first signs of greatly disparate oil wealth in Libya, and the arrival of foreigners with different outlooks, are straining the homespun fabric of a country that its leader calls a "Republic of the Masses."
In the capital, the marble frieze across the front of the country's central bank still declares: "Revolution Forever. Power, wealth and weapons are in the hands of the people." The Ray-Bans, Dior perfumes and diamonds on sale on Tripoli's Galgamesh Street are not.
"Libyans ask us, how can you sell chocolates for 60 dinar?" or $48, said Osama al-Mougrabi, behind the counter at a boutique selling Belgian candy. Most of the customers are foreign oil companies, buying chocolates for Libyans with whom they do business, Mougrabi said.
Average monthly household income in Libya is 300 dinar, or $247.
In Tripoli, crew-cut Americans occasionally appear on the streets, taking their places at cafes on the capital's Green Square next to a gossipy panoply of Russians, Kazakhs, Syrians and others.
"Now we see the world, and the world sees us," said one Libyan man, playing cards and drinking tea past midnight with two friends at tables set on bare ground next to an ancient Roman wall.
The man was cautious in discussing the changes coming to Libya. "All of us have something in our heart we cannot say," he said.
A friend next to him switched from Arabic to French. "There are people listening," he explained. "But listen, there is a family here, and every day that we try to rise, it pushes us down, down," he said, referring to Gaddafi and his relatives.
