European Commission President Romano Prodi has urged Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to increase co-operation with the European Union as his country acts to end its pariah status.
Prodi, who spoke with Gaddafi by telephone on December 30, also said he was ready to meet the Libyan leader in Brussels as early as possible, the Commission said in a statement released on Friday.
"Now it is time for Libya to enter through the main door and to contribute to the Euro-Med dialogue and to be part of the EU's ring of friends," the Commission quoted Prodi as saying.
He was referring to the EU's political and economic co-operation process with 10 countries around the Mediterranean, in which Libya so far has only observer status.
Libya has been a pariah state for much of Gaddafi's 34-year rule, under UN sanctions until this year and still under US sanctions and on its list of countries sponsoring terrorism.
But in recent years Gaddafi has shown signs he wants to regain international respectability, accepting responsibility for airliner bombings in 1988 and 1989, and recently acknowledging a weapons of mass destruction programme and seeking UN help in dismantling it.