Gaddafi in new Lockerbie talks

LIBYA'S LEADER, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, starting a week-long trip to Egypt amid signs of a possible breakthrough in the Lockerbie dispute, drove towards Cairo in a cavalcade of some 200 vehicles yesterday.

Egypt's Foreign Minister, Amr Moussa, said in Malta he expected a solution "within the next few weeks" to the lengthy conflict pitting Libya against Britain and the United States.

"There are great prospects for optimism in this question. There are positive signs from both sides," said Mr Moussa at the end of a two-day European-Mediterranean foreign ministers' meeting in Malta's capital, Valletta.

The United Nations Security Council imposed sanctions on Libya in 1992 for failing to hand over for trial two Libyans accused of planting a bomb on the Pan Am airliner that exploded over Lockerbie in December 1988, killing 270 people.

Mr Moussa said the dispute would figure high in talks between Colonel Gaddafi and President Hosni Mubarak when they meet at the Qubba presidential palace today.