By Prensa Latina,
Tripoli : US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in this capital on Friday for an official visit to Libya that she regarded as historical, since it is the first visit by a US top official in 50 years.
Rice has scheduled two days here to talk to Libyan President Muammar Al-Gaddafi, said a television station on Friday.
Shortly after her arrival, Rice met her Libyan peer Abderrahmane Mohamed Shalgam, and later she toured the buildings of the new US Embassy to Tripoli.
Before her trip to Libya, Rice stated in Lisbon, Portugal that her visit was in a historical time and said Libya as a country that is changing, and said she wished to discuss how those changes are made.
US Department of State spokesman Sean McCormack said this was a trip to symbolize the opening of a new era in the links between the Uited States and Libya, possessor of one of the largest crude oil reserves in Africa.
Different sources agreed in saying the visit has a clear objective on energy, because it takes place amid growing interest of US companies in the Libyan market, to which European firms were able to access some years ago.
Libyan crude oil proven reserves have the ninth place in the world, with 39 billion barrels and vast unexplored areas for new deposits.
Rice is the first US Secretary of State that has visited Libya since John Foster Dulles did it in 1953.
The US highest government official visiting Libya was Richard Nixon as Vicepesident in 1957.
The official agenda said that Rice would sign a bilateral agreement for trade and investments, discuss agreements on education, security and culture, and US sources said that she would try to pressure Tripoli to implement an agreement signed in August, to create a humanitarian fund to compensate victims of attacks that have been attributed to the Libyan government.
The agreement also includes White House compensation to Libyan victims of the US attacks on Tripoli and Benghazzi in 1986.
The Libyan-US relations have improved since 2003, after Libya gave up to the pressure by western countries to dismantle its arms program, which led a year later to lift the sanctions imposed by the United Nations.