Tripoli - Tight security has been imposed for US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's meeting with Libyan leader Moamer Gaddafi scheduled for later Friday.

Details of Rice's stay have been kept vague as a precaution against a possible terrorist attack, the newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat said.

Libyan government sources said the secretary of state was due to arrive early evening and meet Gaddafi in a tent, probably in the capital Tripoli.

She has also been invited to visit the house where the Libyan leader's adopted daughter died in a US air raid on Tripoli in 1986.

The sources said Rice would land at a military airport outside the capital on the first leg of a four-nation tour of North Africa.

She would not be spending the night in Libya, the sources said.

The landmark visit is seen as the opening of a new era after more than half a century of strained US-Libyan relations.

The last US secretary of state to visit Libya was John Foster Dulles in 1953.

During her stay, Rice is expected to discuss with Gaddafi and other high-ranking officials ways to activate trade and investments, especially in the energy sector.

Icy relations between the US and Libya began to thaw in 2003 after Libya abandoned its programme to produce weapons of mass destruction. Later, the US removed Libya from a list of countries that support terrorism, allowing for the exchange diplomatic envoys in 2006.

The US hopes that Libya's changed behaviour will influence other countries, according to Jim Phillips, a Middle East analyst at The Heritage Foundation.

"Some within the US administration hope that this sends a positive signal to Iran and North Korea that they can improve relations with the US and other countries by following Libya's example," Phillips told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

"The US administration seeks to showcase Libya as a success for its non-proliferation and counter-terrorism policies, since Libya gave up its weapons of mass destruction and disavowed terrorism," he said.

A couple of months ago, the US praised Libya for granting overflight rights to US aircraft on their way to Chad to end a blockade of the US embassy in the Chad capital, N'Djamena.

Rice's visit comes just weeks after Libya agreed to pay into a fund to compensate the families of victims of the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Libyan intelligence was implicated in the plane bombing that killed 270 people, including 189 Americans.

Two years earlier, president Ronald Reagan ordered air strikes against two Libyan cities, Tripoli and Benghazi, that killed dozens of people, including Gaddafi's adopted daughter.

Rice, who arrived in Libya after paying a brief visit to Portugal, is also expected to bring up the case of political activist Fathi al- Jahmi, 66, who has been detained without trial since 2004 and is reported to be in poor health.

From Tripoli the US secretary of state travels on to Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. (dpa)