TRIPOLI (AFP) - Libya said Wednesday it expected to receive U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice soon following talks with a U.S. envoy who is preparing for the first such visit in more than 50 years.

Ahmad Al-Fituri, the secretary for American affairs in Libya's foreign ministry, said U.S. envoy David Welch had told his Libyan interlocutors that Rice will arrive very soon as there there were no obstacles to her visit.
Welch, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, met Libyan Foreign Minister Abdelrahman Shalgham to explore ways to bolster ties.
They agreed on ""creating joint committees to develop cooperation in the economic, scientific, and cultural fields,"" Fituri told AFP.
Shortly after his arrival late Tuesday in Tripoli, Welch travelled to Benghazi, 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) east of the capital Tripoli, to meet Seif Al-Islam, son of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi, Fituri said.
He did not say what the pair discussed.
Rice had expressed willingness to visit the oil-rich north African state following the release of six foreign medics who had been on death row in Libya after being convicted of infecting hundreds of children with the AIDS virus.
The State Department said that John Foster Dulles was the last and only secretary of state to have visited Libya in May 28, 1953.
President George W. Bush had recently named a ambassador to Libya for the first time in decades and Rice's trip could signal the beginning of a new era in relations.
In May 2006, Washington renewed diplomatic ties with Libya, ending a 25-year-old diplomatic battle with Kadhafi and taking the country off the U.S. list of nations accused of supporting terrorism.
The move followed Kadhafi's announcement he was renouncing weapons of mass destruction programs.
Libya, which Italy took over after centuries of Ottoman rule in 1911 and held until World War II, gained its independence in 1951 following a period of British-French administration under a UN mandate