Blair and Gaddafi pledge to fight al Qaeda

8.00am

TRIPOLI - Britain's Tony Blair has sealed Libya's return to the international fold with an historic handshake for Muammar Gaddafi and an agreement to fight al Qaeda together.

After more than an hour of talks on Thursday, the prime minister said Libya's rejection of banned weapons and rapprochement with the West could act as a template for other Arab nations to turn their back on Islamic extremism.

"We are showing by our engagement with Libya today that it is possible for countries in the Arab world to work with the United States and the UK to defeat the common enemy of extremist fanatical terrorism driven by al Qaeda," he told reporters.

"It is a very, very important signal for the whole of the Arab world."

On the first visit to Libya by a British leader since 1943, Blair was whisked to a ceremonial tent outside Tripoli to meet the Libyan leader, once condemned by former US President Ronald Reagan as the "mad dog of the Middle East".

There, the pair symbolically shook hands for the cameras before vowing to work together to oppose militant Islamism.

"You are looking good, you are still young," Gaddafi told Blair, 50, speaking in English.

Blair said Gaddafi recognised "a common cause with us in the fight against al Qaeda, extremism and terrorism, which threatens not just the western world but the Arab world also".

The UK leader pledged not to forget the pain caused by the 1988 Lockerbie bombing which killed 270 people but said Libya should be welcomed back into the international fold.

"In reaching out the hand of partnership today, we do not forget the past," he said. "But we do try in the light of the genuine changes happening to move beyond it."

Gains to British business from the diplomatic thaw were notched up even before Blair arrived. Oil giant Royal Dutch/Shell won a US$200 million ($310.65 million) gas exploration deal with Libya.

Blair also announced that defence contractor BAE Systems would also clinch a major Libyan deal shortly and that a trade mission would visit Tripoli in April.

But experts said the major spoils may go to the United States. "Gaddafi knows the only game in town is Washington, so there will be a big slice of Libyan oil for the Americans," said Fred Halliday of the London School of Economics.

The leaders of Spain and Italy have also met Gaddafi in recent months, and earlier this week Assistant Secretary of State William Burns became the highest-level US official to go to Libya in more than 30 years.

Tripoli announced in December it would abandon efforts to acquire chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in a bid to further mend ties with the West after agreeing to pay damages for the Lockerbie bombing.

London played the leading role in persuading it to renounce banned weapons. "It is remarkable progress, given where we have been," said Blair, who is the first British leader to visit Libya since Winston Churchill.

He said Gaddafi had convinced him that steps he had taken were "irrevocable".

Foreign Minister Mohamed Abderrhmane Chalgam said Libya, like the West, opposed Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.

"They are a real obstacle against our progress, against our security...against any change in our region," he told reporters.

Britain's opposition Conservatives said the visit was "highly questionable", coming a day after Blair attended a memorial service for this month's Madrid rail bombing victims -- Europe's biggest terror attack since Lockerbie. But many relatives of the Lockerbie victims say they support the diplomatic milestone.

- REUTERS