French President Nicolas Sarkozy met Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi yesterday on a trip to deepen relations after helping to resolve a diplomatic standoff that hurt the oil exporter's ties with the West.
Libyan officials said the two countries would sign an accord on cooperation on a military-industrial partnership and another to activate what they called a previous agreement on cooperation on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.
Mr Sarkozy, who met Colonel Gaddafi in a tent in the compound of his Tripoli residence, has said he wants to help Libya return to the "concert of nations" after it freed six foreign medics convicted of infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV.
The medics - five Bulgarians and a Palestinian - left Libya on Tuesday on a French plane accompanied by Mr Sarkozy's wife, clearing the way for a visit by the President.
"I am happy to be in your country to talk about the future," Mr Sarkozy wrote in a book at Colonel Gaddafi's residence. He is seeking to further French business interests in Libya and boost diplomatic ties before flying on to Senegal and Gabon.
"There will be the signing of an agreement on cooperation on a military-industrial partnership," Libyan Foreign Minister Mohammed Abdel-Rahman Shalgam told reporters shortly before Mr Sarkozy and Colonel Gaddafi met.
Libya ended decades of international isolation in 2003 when it agreed to halt a weapons programme prohibited by the UN and pay compensation for the bombing of a US airliner over Scotland in 1988 in which 270 people were killed.
The following year it signed a similar deal over the 1989 bombing of a French UTA plane over the West African country of Niger that killed 170 people.
France convicted six Libyans in absentia for the UTA attack.
French-Libyan relations, which had been warm in the 1970s, hit a low during the UTA dispute and French officials spoke of a new era after the compensation deal.
French oil firms had benefited from the absence of US competitors in Libya.
But US oil firms, barred since 1986 due to economic sanctions, have now resumed their activities and Libya has held three oil licensing rounds to draw foreign investment and boost oil exports.
Most of the permits were awarded to US, Japanese and Russian firms.