The United States denied aiding Libya in nuclear aims even though the two countries are close to reaching an agreement for cooperation on a nuclear medicine centre. For now the US has no plans for the kind of broad nuclear energy development Tripoli has suggested, a US official said on Monday. On Monday Libya's official Jana news agency reported that a Washington-Tripoli agreement that would help Libya generate nuclear electricity would be signed shortly. Reports from Tripoli quoted Jana as saying that the agreement on the nuclear program to be signed soon got approval by Libya's General People's Committee (GPC), or parliament on Sunday. According to the agreement, the United States would help "establishing a nuclear station in Libya to produce electricity, desalting water and developing the radiochemistry performance at energy research centres". But the US official, in an interview with Reuters, said the Jana report "vastly overstates things." "What we said to the Libyans after they got rid of their nuclear weapons effort was we'd be open to talking to them about some aspects of civilian uses of nuclear power," said the official. However an official Libyan source later told journalists in Tripoli that Libya was planning to negotiate an agreement with the United States on the peaceful use of nuclear energy. Nuclear medicine uses internally administered radioactive materials, called radioisotopes, to help diagnose and treat a wide variety of diseases. Exact details about the center's cost and specific projects were not immediately available. Libya has been ling accused of seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction before Tripoli renounced all attempts to develop a non-conventional arsenal in late 2003.

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