RICE

ALGIERS, Algeria (AP):

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice makes a historic trip to North Africa this week as the highest-ranking US official to visit Libya in half a century.

In another first, she is touring other regional allies that have emerged as a simmering battlefront in the fight against terrorism.

Rice's first official tour of Libya, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia will show that the region holds both promise and pitfalls for the next US president. Oil resources, emigration and the all-important cooperation in America's global war on terrorism have increasingly turned North Africa into a key US partner.

Rice reaches Tripoli today, meeting with Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and other top officials in what the State Department calls a landmark trip, opening a new era in relations between the United States and the oil-rich country.

She's the first secretary of state to visit Libya since John Foster Dulles in 1953 and the highest-ranking American to go there since Vice-president Richard Nixon in 1957.