French President Jacques Chirac will visit Libya soon to meet leader Muammar Gaddafi, Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said on Wednesday, another sign of warming ties between the West and the North African country. "Relations between Libya and France will be reinforced further ... with the visit of President Jacques Chirac to Libya in the next few months," he said after talks with his Libyan counterpart Mohammed Abdel-Rahman Shalgam in Tripoli. Barnier said he had a letter from Chirac to Gaddafi, who was once considered a pariah by Europe, and the visit would probably take place this year. Libya agreed in January to pay $170 million in compensation for the 1989 bombing of a French airliner over the Niger desert, removing a major hurdle in bilateral relations. The bombing, blamed on six Libyans, killed 170 people. It followed Gaddafi's move in December to end Libya's isolation with a pledge to abandon weapons of mass destruction. Libya last year also agreed to pay $2.7 billion for the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland. --More 2245 Local Time 1945 GMT
