TRIPOLI (AFP) - German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder met Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi at the start of a trip here seen as further confirmation of the north African state's return to the international fold, officials said.
Kadhafi accepted an invitation from Schroeder to visit Germany, an official in the German delegation said after a late-night two-hour meeting between the two leaders in a traditional Bedouin tent Thursday.
Schroeder's trip was finalised only two weeks ago after Libya transferred the first tranche of compensation worth millions of dollars for the victims of a discotheque bombing in 1986 in what was then West Berlin.
It comes during a week in which the European Union lifted an arms embargo against Libya, and follows a similar visit last weekend by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Schroeder, who is accompanied by a large business delegation, is expected to finalise several major business deals during the visit.
Libyan Foreign Minister Abdelraham Shalgham told reporters Thursday that Schroeder's trip was "very important for the development of relations with Western states, especially with Germany".
During Thursday's meeting, Kadhafi blamed the United States for the continuing violence in Iraq and called for US troops to withdraw, but Schroeder expressed doubts over the wisdom of a sudden pullout, the German official said.
The two men were also at odds over the US role in the Middle East, the official said.
However they agreed on the importance of developing relations between Germany and Libya after the September 3 agreement for Libya to pay compensation to 168 mainly German survivors of the Berlin nightclub attack and to the family of a Turkish woman killed in the blast.
The chancellor is scheduled to meet Kadhafi once more during his visit and is expected to push Libya to cooperate more fully in the international war on terrorism, a government official said ahead of the visit.
Kadhafi meanwhile told Schroeder he expected assistance from Germany in removing the landmines laid in Libya by Nazi forces during World War II. Both sides agreed to consider how to resolve this problem and German companies could be involved in the mine-clearing, the official said.
Libya was welcomed back into the international community late last year after announcing it was abandoning attempts to develop nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
Tripoli has also paid damages to the relatives of people killed in the bombing of a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, and it reached agreements in January over a French airliner blown up a year later.