It was a scene almost unimaginable just a few short years ago. America’s top envoy welcomed by the one-time “Mad Dog of the Middle East”, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, breaking his Ramadan fast at a lavish dinner beneath Beduin canvas and the desert stars.

Condoleezza Rice flew into Libya yesterday to hail the West’s reconciliation with the one-time pariah state, becoming the first US Secretary of State to visit in half a century. “Quite frankly I never thought I would be visiting Libya so it is quite something,” Dr. Rice told the travelling press corps as they walked through the unfamiliar hallways of Tripoli airport. “It is a beginning, it is an opening, it is not, I think, the end of the story.”

America’s final act of rapprochement with its former bitter enemy comes nearly three decades after it broke off relations with Libya, placing it on its list of states that sponsor terrorists. The Libyan leader, dubbed a “mad dog” by President Ronald Reagan, was forced further into isolation after the Pan-Am bombing over Lockerbie in 1988.

Years of secret negotiations with the British over compensation for the victims followed but it was not until Colonel Gaddafi’s dramatic announcement, in December 2003, that his country was renouncing its nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programmes that its rehabilitation truly began.

Dr Rice arrived in Tripoli yesterday afternoon for meetings with her Foreign Ministry counterpart before joining Colonel Gaddafi and his coterie of female bodyguards in his Beduin tent for the traditional Iftar dinner marking the end of the day’s fasting.

The Secretary of State is keen to send a message to other rogue states such as Iran and North Korea that a similarly warm embrace could greet them and old animosities be buried should they chose, like Libya, to abandon the race for weapons of mass destruction. Her trip, she said, was testament to the fact that the US “has no permanent enemies”.

All the signs were that Colonel Gaddafi has an equally warm reception planned himself. In an interview with al Jazeera last year, he showered her with praise, declaring: “I support my darling black African woman.” The Libyan leader, who began his ideological life as a militant pan-Arabist, has matured into an enthusiastic African nationalist, aligning his country’s future with the continent.

He continued: “I admire and am very proud of the way she leans back and gives orders to the Arab leaders. Leezza, Leezza, Leezza . . . I love her very much. I admire her, and I’m proud of her because she’s a black woman of African origin.”

Dr Rice said her visit was a “historic moment” symbolising Libya’s rejection of terrorist tactics, but spoke too of the “suffering” the country’s former posture had caused. Her visit comes only two months after a final agreement was struck over Libyan compensation for the Lockerbie victims.

American officials had hoped that by the time Dr Rice arrived, Libya would have deposited millions of dollars in compensation in a bank account set up for the purpose, but it was said to remain empty.

Dr Rice’s conversation will include development in the oil sector as America seeks to diversify the sources of the increasing amounts of energy on which its economy depends. But the Secretary of State said that the conflicts in Darfur and neighbouring Chad would also be raised to see what support Libya could give in putting pressure on the Sudanese Government.

The self-styled “brother leader and guide of the revolution” welcomed the end of his regime’s long estrangement from Washington as he prepared to welcome his visitor. “The whole business of the conflict between Libya and the United States has been closed once and for all, there will be no more wars, raids or acts of terrorism,” he said.

Mindful perhaps of his important economic relations with Russia and China, he emphasised that Libya was not desperate for American friendship, adding: “All we want is to be left alone.”

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