Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has spoken to relatives of some of the victims of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.

In a forthcoming interview with CNN television, Col Gaddafi said the meeting had been “friendly” and that he had offered his “condolences”.

Libya has already formally accepted responsibility for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 and paid reparation.

Col Gaddafi told CNN that terrorism was “a common enemy to all of us”.

During the pre-recorded interview, he compared the Lockerbie bombing to the US bombing raid on Libya in 1986, which killed around 40 people, including Col Gaddafi’s adopted daughter, Hannah.

“Whether it is Lockerbie or whether it is the 1986 raid against Libya, we are all families... terror in all its forms is a common enemy to all of us,” the Libyan leader said, in a publicly released excerpt.

One of the victims’ relatives who met Col Gaddafi said: “He was very friendly and cordial to us”, the Associated Press reports.

Lisa Gibson, an attorney from Colorado whose brother died in the Pan Am attack, said the meeting took place on Wednesday at the Libyan mission to the UN.

“He [Col Gaddafi] said he was sorry for the loss, but we didn’t go into any details,” Ms Gibson was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.

“Honestly, I think he was touched by us being there,” she said.

On Wednesday, Col Gaddafi addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York in what was his first appearance there.

Many senior figures in the US have been highly critical of the release and subsequent homecoming arranged by Libya for convicted Pan Am bomber Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi.

Megrahi, who has terminal prostate cancer, was freed from a Scottish prison last month on compassionate grounds.