NEW YORK (AP) — Libya wants to open a new chapter in relations with the United States by investing some of its $100 billion sovereign wealth fund in U.S. companies and sending thousands of students to study in America, the son of Libya’s leader said Friday.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Seif al-Islam Gadhafi also outlined plans for Libya to move from the one-man rule of his father, Moammar Gadhafi, to a constitutional democracy as part of the country’s modernization process.

The younger Gadhafi said he expects a constitution providing for democratic elections to be adopted by September 2009 — the 40th anniversary of the 1969 revolution that brought his father to power. He said he also expects Libya to reform its central government and follow a model similiar to the U.S. federal government, with strong regional and local governments.

Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, who was a key figure in normalizing Libya’s relations with the United States, stepped from the political stage in August and is on a private visit to the United States. But his visit had definite political overtones, including meetings with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other administration officials as well as about 30 members of Congress.

It also coincided with Friday’s confirmation of Gene Cretz as the first U.S. ambassador to Libya in 36 years. Gadhafi was in Washington Thursday when the Senate approved the appointment after it was confirmed families had received full compensation from Libya for the loss of relatives in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

The bombing killed 180 Americans.

This week’s events — including an unprecedent phone call between Bush and Moammar Gadhafi — capped a halting, five-year rapprochement between the two countries that began in 2003 when the Libyan leader renounced terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.

The younger Gadhafi, who also met with human rights and environmental groups, said his main message was: “We are good people, and nice. We’ll make business. We’ll invest, and we have friends here in the states and we have a new chapter in the relations.”

He said Libya’s new sovereign wealth fund, a government-owned investment fund with almost $100 billion, “wants to invest here in America” despite the current financial crisis.

Because the fund is new, he explained, “we avoided that tsunami, the big wave. We escaped that risk, and now we are in good shape to invest right now.”

Why invest in the United States?

“This is a great country with the biggest economy in the world, with a great opportunity,” the younger Gadhafi said. If some companies are having financial troubles “it doesn’t mean the whole economy is collapsing and it’s useless to invest here. Of course not. I think just the opposite. It’s the right time to invest here.”