ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice makes a historic trip to North Africa this week as the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Libya in half a century. In another first, she is touring other regional allies that have emerged as a simmering battlefront in the fight against terrorism.

Rice’s first official tour of Libya, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia will show that the region holds both promise and pitfalls for the next U.S. president. Oil resources, emigration and the all-important cooperation in America’s global war on terrorism have increasingly turned North Africa into a key U.S. partner.

Rice reaches Tripoli on Friday, meeting with Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and other top officials in what the State Department calls a landmark trip opening a new era in relations between the United States and the oil-rich country.

She’s the first secretary of state to visit Libya since John Foster Dulles in 1953 and the highest-ranking American to go there since Vice President Richard Nixon in 1957.

Islamist militants have strongly shifted their attention to the region.

Algeria in particular has seen a surge of terrorist attacks since an extremist group left over from a civil war in the 1990s publicly joined Osama bin Laden’s terror network in 2006 under the name Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa. In August, more than 100 people were killed in Algerian terrorist violence, and neighboring Morocco has also dismantled half a dozen terrorist cells this year.

Meanwhile, one of the key tasks of the new Africa Command created by the Pentagon is to track militant groups and traffickers in the lawless Sahara, where there are fears that al-Qaida could be establishing new bases.

Rice is due to spend only a few hours in Algiers on Saturday. Militants have not been able to operate in the capital - tightly controlled by army checkpoints - since bombings in December 2007 killed 41 people, including U.N. workers.

Several Algerian newspapers questioned whether Rice would press the government to allow U.S. military bases in Algeria as part of a broader plan to fight cross-border terrorism.

But a senior Algerian Foreign Ministry official said that and a rumored free-trade deal were "absolutely not at the top of the agenda."

Most North African countries are former French colonies that have maintained strong ties with France, which earlier this year launched a European Union plan for a tighter partnership with countries south of the Mediterranean Sea.

But North Africa also closely cooperates with the United States. American oil companies, for instance, take the great majority of Algeria’s 2 million barrels-per day oil output.

Still, people in Algeria - as in much of the rest of the Arab world - have grown increasingly wary of the United States under the two terms of President George W. Bush.

The invasion of Iraq, the handling of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis and the detentions at Guantanamo Bay prison have left many Arabs feeling they have become targets of American policies.

"Polls show that there’s a great deal of anger in the region against the Bush administration," said Anthony Cordesman, an analyst at the Washington-based Center for International and Strategic Studies.

Several former U.S. detainees have filed lawsuits on grounds the CIA illegally took them to countries like Morocco, where they say they were tortured. Islamists lambast their governments for this coziness with the White House.

In Algeria, al-Qaida messages have repeatedly stated the government was "apostate," or a traitor to Islam, in part because of its pro-American stance.

In Tunisia, some hoped that U.S. regional influence could promote general reforms.

"I hope the secretary of state will appeal ... for more determined political reforms," said Rachid Khechana, the editor of an independent weekly magazine.

Among regional states, Morocco is particularly close to the United States, from which it recently bought a large shipment of F-16 fighter jets.

Despite the friendship, Lahcen Haddad, a prominent Moroccan specialist, said Rice has kept the Maghreb "on the back burner."

Other than reaffirming Washington’s strategic anti-terror alliance, "Rice does not have too much to offer North African states," said Haddad.

He views Washington’s main diplomatic task here as rebuilding confidence with Arab public opinion.

But it’s now too late for Rice to work at restoring America’s "reputation and credibility in North Africa," said Cordesman of CSIS. "These problems are going to be a challenge for the next American president." rice6=U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice meets with Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates Thursday, Sept. 4 2008, at the Sao Bento palace in Lisbon, ahead of a trip to North Africa that will take her to Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. (AP)