U.N. officials appeared upbeat Tuesday at the prospects of resolving the standoff over the trial of two Libyans, alleged to be involved in the bombing of a U.S. airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1998.

Libya, however, continued to give mixed signals over whether it would allow a trial at the World Court in the Netherlands of its citizens.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who met with Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi last weekend, said he was assured that any obstacles to a trial would be resolved in “not an inordinate amount of time.” Annan still had to spell out whether the Libyan government was willing to accept handing over the two suspects, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifa Fhimah, to the International Court of Justice in the Hague

“I know when issues have dragged on for so long, whenever there is an encounter we all tend to expect rapid results,” Annan said after meeting Qaddafi at an undisclosed location in Libya. “But rapid in these situations is all relative. I think, after waiting for 10 years, we can get this thing done in a relatively short period.”

The question for U.N. diplomats, however, was the length of that period. The United States and Britain have tried to win Tripoli’s approval to try Fhimah and al-Megrahi for their alleged involvement in the 1988 bombing of Pan American flight 103 over Lockerbie.

With the 10th anniversary of the bombing, in which 270 people died, approaching at the end of this month, governments in Washington and London appeared eager to show momentum in their campaign. Yet reaction to Annan’s weekend initiative to negotiate the handover directly with Qaddafi was muted.

British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said he viewed the meeting with “cautious optimism”, while U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright argued that Libya has already taken “far too long” to extradite the suspects.

At the same time, however, Annan informed Albright that “we are well on the way to resolving the problem”, and U.N. officials believed that the meeting had begun a process which could result in the handover of the suspects within the next few weeks.

According to the officials, the process began Tuesday with the convening of a session of the Libyan People’s Congress. The Congress previously had refused to hand over the two Libyans, and its re-convening is taken by many at the United Nations as a sign that Tripoli now is willing to overturn the earlier decision.

The Libyan government gave no guarantees that the Congress would push through an agreement on extradition. But Libyan Foreign Minister Omar al-Muntasser said after Annan’s meeting with Qaddafi that Libya would “work hard to solve the problem as soon as humanly possible, to ensure this trial for the suspects”.

The shift in Libya’s posture came after several months in which the Tripoli government was openly suspicious of an Anglo- American compromise to allow al-Megrahi and Fhimah to be tried by a Scottish court sitting under special jurisdiction in the Netherlands.

That compromise resembled one which Libya and its African allies had proposed earlier, but Tripoli argued that it also wanted assurances that the two Libyans would not be jailed in Scotland if found guilty but returned instead to Libya. Libya also expressed worries about the safety of the two suspects during any trial in the Netherlands.

Annan said after meeting Qaddafi in a private tent in the Libyan desert that “we have finally made good progress” on several of the concerns. But some U.N. officials conceded after the meeting that the extradition remains politically sensitive in Libya – both suspects have been accused of being Libyan intelligence agents – and thus the process may still take several steps.

Most sensitive of all was the issue of when the U.N. Security Council would lift a six-year-old air travel ban designed to compel Tripoli to hand over the suspects, as well as sanctions on oil-related machinery. The sanctions have hurt Libya’s tourism and aviation sectors and made most travel arrangements for Libyans cumbersome.

Annan confirmed this week that, once the accused were transferred to the Netherlands, he would submit a report to the 15- nation Security Council on the lifting of sanctions. Sources in the Council said that, if that was done, the end of the sanctions would be certain – despite U.S. wariness about Libya’s compliance.

Yet the United States still may push for tougher measures against Libya if the People’s Congress failed to follow through with allowing the extradition. U.S. diplomats remained adamant that they would not negotiate conditions on the Lockerbie trial further, and may seek new U.N. sanctions if the handover was not accomplished soon.

“I hope that in the not too distant future, we will be able to give the families (of the Lockerbie victims) some good news so that they can put this issue behind them, mourn their lost ones and carry on with their lives,” Annan said.