Brown and Obama bring Gaddafi in from the cold

Gordon Brown met Colonel Gaddafi for talks at the G8 summit - believed to be the first time they have come face to face.

The pair met before a "working breakfast" at which they were joined by the other G8 leaders.

The Prime Minister invited the Libyan leader to an energy summit in London last year but he did not attend. Mr Brown's predecessor Tony Blair famously flew to Libya in 2004 for talks in Col Gaddafi's tent, after he had given up his country's weapons of mass destruction and accepted responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing in 1988.

Earlier Col Gaddafi shook hands with Barack Obama, continuing the president's policy of rebuilding friendships with former US enemies. The handshake was seen as a sign that relations between the countries are on a new footing.

Col Gaddafi was once called "Mad Dog" by president Ronald Reagan, who ordered air strikes on Tripoli in 1986 in retaliation for a bomb attack on a Berlin disco.