The North African country, which earned international censure for its refusal to surrender Libyan suspects in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, formally joined the Council Tuesday for two years, along with four other non-permanent members: Burkina-Faso, Costa Rica, Croatia and Vietnam.

The five newcomers were elected by secret ballot by the UN General Assembly last October to succeed Congo, Ghana, Peru, Qatar and Slovakia.

After chairing his first council meeting Thursday, Libya's UN Ambassador Giadalla Ettalhi told reporters: 'It's quite a challenge, but we will do our best.'

Oil-rich Libya had served on the council once before in 1976-1977.

'For us, a country which was for a decade under sanctions of the Security Council, it is very important and very significant (to be back),' Mr Ettalhi told a press briefing after consultations on the council's monthly agenda.

'It means we are back to normal, at least from the perspective of others.'

The presidency of the 15-member body rotates every month, in alphabetic order in English, by country name. It is Libya's turn this month.

The Libyan envoy said the council would discuss the stalled deployment of the UN-African Union force (UNAMID) in Sudan's Darfur region next Wednesday.

Libya is neighbor to two countries high on the Council agenda, Sudan and Chad, and diplomats say Tripoli can help solve crises there.

On Tuesday, Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi traveled to Cairo for talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on the Darfur conflict.

His visit came a day after UNAMID took over peacekeeping in Darfur from an AU mission that failed to stem nearly five years of violence, which claimed an estimated 200,000 lives.

Meanwhile Ettalhi also revealed that Serbian President Boris Tadic on Thursday formally asked to address the Security Council on Jan 16, when members are to review the mandate of UNMIK, the UN mission in the breakaway Serbian province of Kosovo.

Kosovo has been administered by UNMIK since mid-1999 when a NATO bombing campaign ended a Serbian military crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists.

Kosovo is expected to declare its independence early this year following the collapse of international efforts to mediate a negotiated deal between ethnic Albanian separatists and Belgrade, which backed by Russia categorically opposes independence.

The Security Council is made up of five veto-wielding permanent members - Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States - and 10 non-permanent members, elected every year by groups of five for two-year mandates that cannot

be immediately renewed.

Non-permanent members South Africa, Belgium, Indonesia, Italy and Panama are to stay on the council until the end of 2008.

Meanwhile, Libyan Foreign Minister Abdelrahman Mohammed Shalgam arrived in Washington for talks with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the first such meeting in 36 years.

Mr Shalgam made no comment as he entered the State Department building for his meeting with Dr Rice, which was scheduled to begin at 4am.

Dr Rice's spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters on Wednesday he expected the secretary of state to raise the issues of human rights and democracy in Libya, including freeing political dissidents.

Mr McCormack also said 'there's still some outstanding issues with respect to claims by US citizens' that need to be resolved.

The two capitals restored diplomatic relations in 2004, following a break since 1981, a few weeks after Kadhafi announced that Tripoli was abandoning a bid to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

In 2006, Washington announced a full normalization of ties, lifting Libya from a State Department list of state sponsors of terrorism and raising diplomatic relations to the level of ambassadors.

Dr Rice even signaled her willingness to visit the north African state following the release last July of six foreign medics who had been on death row in Libya after being convicted of infecting hundreds of children with the AIDS virus.

Mr Ettalhi confirmed that Dr Rice would make the visit 'soon' but did not give any dates. -- AFP