Putin Accepts an Invitation to Visit Libya

Russian President Vladimir V. Putin agreed Monday to visit Libya and was quoted as urging the United Nations to finally lift sanctions against the North African nation.

The foreign ministers of both countries proclaimed a new era of improved ties, including in the military sphere.

Putin’s acceptance of Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi’s invitation followed the Russian president’s visit last month to North Korea and talks in Moscow with the deputy prime minister of Iraq. Like Libya, North Korea and Iraq are Soviet-era Russian allies mistrusted by the West.

“The invitation has been gratefully accepted. The timing of the visit will be determined through diplomatic channels,” said Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov at a joint news conference with his Libyan counterpart, Abdel Rahman Shalgam, who earlier met with Putin.

“This marks the beginning of the restoration of long-term friendly relations, which have always linked our two countries,” Shalgam said in Arabic through a translator.

Shalgam arrived Sunday for three days of talks, in the first visit to Russia by a Libyan foreign minister. He said Putin had also invited Kadafi to visit Russia.

Ivanov said that cooperation in military and technical matters would be developed by the two countries.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Philip T. Reeker declined to say whether the U.S. would approve of a Putin visit to Libya.

But if Putin does make the trip, Washington will expect him to press U.S. demands on the Libyans, Reeker said.

“We would expect Russians to encourage full Libyan compliance with relevant U.N. Security Council resolutions and to encourage full Libyan cooperation with the Pan Am 103 trial, as well as an end to Libyan support for international terrorism and acknowledgment of responsibility for the actions of Libyan officials and payment of appropriate compensation,” he said.

Libya has been emerging from international isolation since the United Nations suspended sanctions against it last year after the government handed over two men indicted in the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am airliner over Scotland.

But the U.N. has not fully lifted the sanctions, meaning they could be reimposed. Putin called Monday for “a definitive lifting of the sanctions,” his aide Sergei E. Prikhodko said.