LISBON, Portugal - When Condoleezza Rice spends a few hours in Libya and shakes hands with Moammar Gadhafi, she will close a nearly three-decade era of bitter animosity between the United States and the North African nation that has sometimes been personal.

It's not every day that a U.S. president calls a foreign leader a "mad dog."

As the first secretary of state to visit the former pariah, oil-rich country in more than a half-century, Rice's visit Friday represents a foreign policy success for a Bush administration badly in need of one in its final months.