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PARIS, Nov 23 - A visit by President Jacques Chirac to Libya Wednesday is the first ever by a French head of state since independence in 1951.
For France the trip is also the chance to stake a claim for lucrative business contracts which should follow Kadhafi's promise to liberalise the oil-rich country's heavily-controlled economy.
Accompanied by three ministers and a delegation of business leaders, Chirac spends Wednesday night in Tripoli before flying to Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso for the biennial summit of French-speaking nations.
Talks with Kadhafi will focus on Iraq, Africa, terrorism and economic cooperation, Chirac's spokesman Jerome Bonnafont said. The fate of five Bulgarians sentenced to death for causing an outbreak of Aids will also be brought up.
Chirac's visit follows meetings this year between Kadhafi and other European leaders including Britain's Tony Blair, Gerhard Schroeder of Germany and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, all likewise bent on encouraging Libya's rehabilitation and also pitching for economic favours.
In an interview this week Ghanem told AFP that Chirac's visit would "seal the normalisation of relations between the two countries now that the outstanding problems have been sorted out. Paris and Tripoli both want to deepen their ties and develop them across the board."
"It is the end of a process of progressive normalisation between Libya and the international community," Bonnafont said.
French businesses are keen to get access to contracts in the Libyan oil industry, as well as in aviation, banking, electricity, sanitation and tourism.
On Monday the two countries ironed out one of the last hurdles to increased investment, with an agreement for the payment of more than EUR 40 million in arrears owed by Libyan companies to France's export credit guarantee agency Coface.
Loos and his Libyan counterpart Mohamed Ali Al-Huwej also signed a protocol in Paris to permit companies operating abroad in either country to pay only one set of taxes.
France is Libya's fifth largest supplier with exports of EUR 272 million in 2003, most of them linked to major public work contracts. French imports from Libya were worth EUR 756 million in 2003 and consisted almost entirely of oil.
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