The Bush administration decision, announced Monday, to restore U.S. diplomatic relations with Libya and open an embassy in Tripoli makes sense.

American governments sometimes make the mistake of taking the position that having diplomatic relations with a country is an expression of U.S. approval of the regime in power. A more practical and useful view is that diplomatic relations provide a means to communicate directly with the government of a country, regardless of what the U.S. government in power and Americans in general may think of that country's actions.

Because successive U.S. administrations disapproved of the actions of the government of Libya's leader, Col. Moammar Gadhafi, the American relations with Libya that were broken in 1979 were not restored until now. The problem with that approach is that restoration of relations implies that the United States now approves of the actions of the Gadhafi regime in Tripoli. Basing U.S. relations with Libya -- or with any country, including others with which the United States does not have normal relations such as Iran, Iraq before the war, and North Korea -- on approval of its policies is naive and doesn't make sense.

The United States needs communications with countries whose government policies it does not like. In fact, it requires effective communications with those countries even more than it does with friendly nations.

Col. Gadhafi's government has cleaned up its act to a degree in recent years. It more or less tidied up the aftermath of its deadly 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 by accepting responsibility and agreeing to pay restitution. It publicly gave up its weapons-of-mass-destruction programs. It got itself off the "state sponsors of terrorism" list by formally renouncing terrorism and, according to the Bush administration, cooperating in the United States' war against terrorism. We will assume that U.S. intelligence about what goes on in Libya is good enough to make a determination that it has in fact changed its spots.

What is sure is that Col. Gadhafi's government has not changed its approach to democracy. It still has the usual political prisoners, no elections, no free press -- and the colonel's son, Saif-al-Islam, is his most likely successor.

What Col. Gadhafi's government has done is welcome U.S. companies back to Libya to try to bring its staggering oil industry into the 21st century in terms of technology and production. Its new positive attitude toward U.S. oil companies underlines its status as a producer-of-oil state, as opposed to a sponsor-of-terrorism state.

It probably doesn't matter that the Bush administration changed Libya's characterization and will open an embassy there for hokum reasons. It probably doesn't hurt Americans much to kid themselves about Libya and Col. Gadhafi. What is important is that the change in policy should result in useful improvement in the quality of communications between the two countries.