4 US senators go to post-Gaddafi Libya
2011-09-29 21:06
Tripoli - Four Republican senators travelled to Libya on Thursday to meet with the nation's new rulers, the highest-profile American delegation to visit the country since the ousting of Muammar Gaddafi.
John McCain, Mark Kirk, Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio met with the head of the national transitional council, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, and other high-ranking officials of the group that is now governing Libya after revolutionary forces ousted Gaddafi.
The fugitive leader remains on the run and his whereabouts unknown, but Libya's new rulers suspect he is hiding in the southern desert of the North African nation.
The leaders of Britain, France and Turkey have visited Libya, and US Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman has met with the NTC's leaders in Tripoli. But the congressional group was the most significant American presence to visit Libya as the nation begins a new chapter.
The trip contrasted sharply to the last visit by McCain and Graham to Tripoli in August 2009, when they met with Gaddafi and his son Muatassim to discuss the possible delivery of non-lethal defence equipment as the erratic Libyan leader was moving to normalise his relations with the international community.
- AP