Free Republic

April 15, 2006 -- The American pop star Lionel Richie and the Spanish opera singer Jose Carreras have performed in a concert in Tripoli to mark the 20th anniversary of the U.S. bombing raid on Libya. About 40 people, including an adopted daughter of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, were killed in the raids on Tripoli and Benghazi in the early hours of April 15, 2006. Then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan said the air strikes were launched in retaliation for Libyan complicity in the bombing of a West Berlin discotheque that killed an American soldier.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Twenty years after alleged Libyan-backed terror attacks spurred the United States to launch air raids against Tripoli, relations between the two are on the mend, if not yet fully normalized, the State Department says. "We are, at this point, committed to the goal of full normalization," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Thursday. "We have moved along that pathway." The first steps on that path were taken several weeks after Libya announced in December 2003 it was abandoning efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Both sides moved toward reestablishing relations after a 24-year break, triggered by...