MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Here's NPR's Michele Kelemen.
MICHELE KELEMEN: For a secretary who has been a vocal proponent of human rights, today's visit by a top Libyan official could have proved awkward. But Secretary Rice did not appear before reporters with Libyan foreign minister Abdel-Rahman Muhammad Shalgam. Instead, one of her deputies, Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky, spoke about the budding relationship at a formal signing ceremony for a science and technology cooperation agreement.
PAULA DOBRIANSKY: Today we pledge to strive toward global partnership in science and technology. The possibilities are exciting and limitless.
KELEMEN: Foreign Minister Shalgam is the highest ranking Libyan official to visit Washington in 35 years. He spoke briefly at the ceremony today and at a luncheon yesterday with U.S. business executives. But he did not take questions or speak about past troubles and U.S.-Libyan ties, instead he focused on the future, calling for more investment in his oil-rich nation.
ABDEL: Libya is open for the American companies to come and to invest there. They are welcome, all of them, because we want the American technology, the American know-how. The American, also, capital to come back to Libya and to invest there.
KELEMEN: Families of the victims of Pan Am Flight 103 are furious with the reception the foreign minister has gotten here. Libya has not fully compensated the families of the Lockerbie bombing victims because part of the settlement was contingent on the U.S. pulling Libya off the list of state sponsors of terrorism by a certain date, a date that the U.S. missed. Kara Weeps(ph), whose brother was killed in the 1988 airline bombing, told the memorial service in December that the U.S. should not normalize ties until Libya finishes compensating the Pan Am families and the families of the American victims of a 1986 Berlin disco bombing.
KARA WEEPS: To do, otherwise, risk a shocking failure of U.S. diplomacy and security. While I understand diplomacy can be delicate, so are innocent human lives.
KELEMEN: Those thoughts were echoed by a Libyan-American human rights activist, Mohammed el-Jahmi, who now lives in Massachusetts.
MOHAMMED EL: The cost of embracing a dictator like Gadhafi, who also has American blood on his hands, outweighs any benefits that we could get from him.
KELEMEN: His brother, Fathi el-Jahmi, is a prominent democracy activist who is listed in a new report by human rights watch as one of three jailed Libyan dissidents who have disappeared. Mohammed el-Jahmi says his family has had not contact with his 66-year-old brother for nearly 17 months.
BLOCK: We certainly hope that he is alive. We don't know anything about his condition.
KELEMEN: El-Jahmi says he was appalled when State Department officials told them they can't do much to help and suggested that he deal with Moammar Gadhafi's son, the heir apparent in Libya. El-Jahmi says Libyan intermediaries who approached him wanted assurances that his brother would stay silent if released.
BLOCK: They wanted me also to whiten their faces. Meaning, that I become part of the machine of saying that Gadhafi has changed. I refuse this.
KELEMEN: Michelle Kelemen, NPR News, Washington.