Condoleezza makes historic visit to Libya - 55 years since last trip by a U.S. Secretary of State

'It is a historic stop,' said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

John Foster Dulles was the last U.S. Secretary of State to visit Tripoli in May 1953, before Miss Rice was born.

Making friends? Condoleezza Rice will be the first U.S. Secretary of State to visit  Libya since 1953 and she is expected to meet with leader Muammar Gaddafi

'If you think about this expanse of time and what has happened in that period of time - we have had a man land on the moon, the Internet, the Berlin Wall fall and we have had ten U.S. presidents,' Mr McCormack said.

Miss Rice is expected to meet Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi during her three-day visit.

She could sign a trade and investment framework deal and U.S. officials said both sides were discussing a number of other agreements, including education, security, political and cultural, to try and expand ties.

How quickly ties improve further will depend on whether Libya implements a deal signed last month between the two countries to resolve compensation cases involving victims of U.S. and Libyan bombings.

These include the 1988 Lockerbie outrage and the 1986 attack on a Berlin disco that killed three people and wounded 229.

Assistant Secretary of State David Welch, who led negotiations with Libya on the compensation cases, said: 'The development of a relationship to the level we would like is inhibited until we get this agreement implemented.'

Relations between the two countries began to thaw when Tripoli gave up its weapons of mass destruction program in 2003.

Miss Rice's trip will also include visits to Maghreb nations Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco and stop over in Lisbon, Portugal, before returning to Washington on Sunday.