'Hand of partnership' offered to Libya

Tony Blair defiantly offered Libya the "hand of partnership" as he headed for a meeting with Colonel Gaddafi.

The Prime Minister's visit to Tripoli is a fresh mark of the regime's movement back into the international mainstream.

But Tory leader Michael Howard questioned its timing after the PM's attendance at the Madrid rail bombing memorial service.

Speaking in Spain after the state funeral for the 190 dead, Mr Blair said states turning their back on terror should be aided.

However, suggestions that this will include military training could cause fresh alarm.

US Assistant Secretary of State William Burns became the most senior American to visit since the 1969 coup.

Relations were restored after Col Gaddafi said Libya would dismantle its weapons of mass destruction, an announcement Mr Blair is credited with working behind the scenes to achieve.

His government has also formally accepted responsibility for the 1988 Lockerbie atrocity following the jailing of a Libyan agent for the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing which 270 people were killed.

And there have been suggestions that British police probing the 1984 killing of WPC Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan embassy in London could travel there to investigate.

Mr Blair said: "Let us offer to states that want to renounce terrorism and the development of weapons of mass destruction our hand in partnership to achieve it, as Libya has rightly and courageously decided to do. That does not mean forgetting the pain of the past but it does mean recognising it's time to move on."

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