US sending first envoy to Libya in 36 years

The nomination of Gene Cretz had been held up for more than a year on lawmakers' concerns that Libya had not paid full compensation to the families of victims of the 1988 Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, but the career diplomat won Senate confirmation to the position in a voice vote late on Thursday.

"We're very pleased," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Friday. "We're anxious to get him out there."

Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., had placed a hold on Cretz's nomination pending the resolution of the compensation issue. But he lifted it after Libya made its final payment into a $1.5 billion fund to settle claims by the families of American victims of Libyan-linked terrorist attacks in the 1980s.

Before Cretz's confirmation on Thursday, Lautenberg and the families of the Pan Am victims announced that the compensation process was complete.

Cretz, nominated by President Bush in July 2007, will be the highest-ranking U.S. diplomat posted to Libya since 1972, when Washington's last ambassador was withdrawn as Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi intensified anti-Western policies. Relations further deteriorated through the 1970s and the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli was closed in 1980.

More than a decade of intense hostilities followed with Libyan attacks on American interests, including the Pan Am flight and a disco frequented by U.S. servicemen and women in Germany, as well as U.S. retaliatory strikes on Libyan targets.

A halting, five-year rapprochement began in 2003 when Gadhafi renounced terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. That process gained traction in August when Tripoli and Washington agreed on the compensation deal.

Shortly after that, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a historic trip to Libya and met Gadhafi, whom President Reagan once famously called the "mad dog of the Middle East." Rice was the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit the country in more than half a century. The U.S. then opened a trade and commercial office in the Libyan capital.

Earlier this week, Bush called Gadhafi to welcome a new era in relations, and on Thursday morning, Rice met with Gadhafi's son, Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, at her State Department office.