Libya made clear this morning it wants to come in from the cold after decades as a pariah state and Britain and the United States pledged to reward its decision to abandon its banned weapons programmes.
Mr Muammar Gaddafi's Libya, which Britain said had been close to making an atomic bomb, opened the prospect of an end to sanctions and the possible return of US oil companies with its pledge last night to stop seeking weapons of mass destruction.
But some US officials cautioned that Libya's move, the culmination of secret negotiations that began just before the US-led Iraq war and announced less than a week after US forces captured Saddam Hussein, still left it too early to say when and if Washington will lift sanctions.
"Libya wants to solve all problems and we want to focus on development and advancing our country. This programme does not benefit our people or country," Foreign Minister Mohamed Abderrhmane Chalgam told Al Jazeera television.
"We want to have ties with America and Britain because this is in the interest of our people," Minister Chalgam said in the first televised comments on Tripoli's move by a top Libyan official.
The Libyan announcement came ahead of tomorrow's 15th anniversary of the Christmas bombing of a Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people. Libya escaped broader UN-imposed international sanctions earlier this year after accepting responsibility for the attack and paying out billions to the families of victims.
Washington left its sanctions in place, citing suspicions Tripoli was seeking biological and chemical weapons.
"We have begun to solve the Lockerbie problems," Minister Chalgam said.