The EU has ended 12 years of sanctions against Libya and eased an arms embargo to reward the North African country for giving up plans to develop weapons of mass destruction.
"This is a turning point in relations with Libya," French European Affairs Minister Claudie Haignere said on Monday.
The UN sanctions were imposed in 1992 to force Tripoli to hand over two Libyans indicted for the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am airliner over the Scottish town of Lockerbie. A year later, they were expanded to include a freeze on Libyan assets in foreign bank accounts and a ban on buying oil equipment.
The Security Council suspended the sanctions after the two Lockerbie suspects were delivered for trial in 1999, and abolished them last year after Libya agreed to compensate the families of the Lockerbie victims as well as those of the 1989 bombing of a French airliner over Niger.
Diplomats said the EU foreign ministers acted in accordance with a UN decision last year. The move reflected a significant warming of relations in recent months.
Britain was pushing for a complete normalization of relations between the EU and Libya and a full lifting of the arms embargo, according to a senior British official in London.
Friction remains over a Libyan court's conviction of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor accused of deliberately infecting more than 400 Libyan children with the AIDS virus. They were sentenced to death in May after allegedly infecting the children as part of an experiment to find a cure for AIDS.
Unsafe practices
Human-rights groups allege Libya concocted the experiment story to hide unsafe practices in its hospitals and clinics. Bulgaria has close ties with the EU and is to become a full member in 2007.
"We are very concerned about the situation of the Bulgarian citizens," Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said. He said the EU wants that court ruling to be reversed.
The EU, like the US, wants to improve relations with Libya now that Tripoli has scrapped its program for developing weapons of mass destruction.
The Europeans are eager to invest in Libya's substantial oil reserves and obtain its cooperation in stopping the flow of illegal immigrants into Europe.
Separately, the foreign ministers approved an Italian request to ease the EU's own arms embargo imposed on Libya in 1986. This will enable Libya to buy high-tech equipment to prevent the flow of illegal African migrants through Libya into Europe.
An EU "technical mission" will likely visit Libya next month to assess its need for equipment to monitor illegal migration.
The US lifted most of its commercial sanctions in April after Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi abandoned his banned weapons programs.
Warming relations
As a sign of warming relations, Qaddafi went to the EU's Brussels headquarters in April on his first trip outside the Middle East or Africa in 15 years.
European Commission President Romano Prodi has visited Libya several times to meet Qaddafi to discuss ways for Libya to sign up to an EU aid and trade pact it has with North African and Middle Eastern nations.
To join up to that pact, Libya will have to sign declarations renouncing terrorism as well as committing to implement democratic reforms and respect human rights.
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