10 July,2009 08:34 AM IST | | Agencies
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi met his first US president yesterday, shaking hands with Barack Obama and sitting just one place away from him at a dinner for world leaders at the G8 summit in Italy.
Strained for many years over Libyan support for groups Washington considers terrorist, US-Libyan ties have thawed in recent years. But there is still mistrust on both sides and relations are businesslike at best.
Gaddafi, who former US President Ronald Reagan once called the "mad dog of the Middle East", received the then-US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Libya last year and former president George W Bush spoke to him on the telephone.
