Washington, Dec. 21 (Reuters): Secret trips by American intelligence officers, late night meetings with Muammar Gaddafi and disclosures that the US knew about Libya’s arms programmes led to Tripoli’s pledge to give up its unconventional weapons, senior intelligence officials said yesterday.

A team of American and British intelligence officers flew to Libya clandestinely in October and December for stretches of about two weeks, visiting sites where they were shown parts of the country’s chemical, nuclear and missile programmes.

“The Libyans are very focused on extremism and have made some contributions to the war on terrorism,” one of the intelligence officials said.

“We’re hopeful that we can indeed do some collaborative work against some of the extremist groups who are threatening all sorts of people.”

The intelligence officers were accompanied at all times by Libyan intelligence, drivers changed cars along the way and the Westerners were ushered into office buildings for meetings with Gaddafi that started after 11 pm.

“Operationally, we did conduct this entire business as secretly as we possibly could so it indeed was the result of a series of secret meetings in Europe and then of course trips clandestinely to Libya,” a US intelligence official who was on the visits said.

Gaddafi’s representatives initiated the process in mid-March by asking Britain to broker talks with the US on its programmes to develop weapons of mass destruction. When Libya learned how much the US already knew about its weapons programmes, that appeared to give Tripoli the final push to give up its banned weapons.