Libyan FM calls AU to play role in preservation of Libyan funds abroad
Tripoli, Libya (PANA) - The Libyan minister of foreign affairs of the government of national accord (GNA), Mohamed Taher Siala, Friday stressed the need for the country to play a key role in the management and monitoring of interests generated by Libyan funds and assets abroad that were not covered by international freezing decisions, calling on the African Union to assist in the preservation of those funds.
In a speech at the 36th ordinary session of the AU executive council held in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, Friday, Siala said "these decisions prevented the Libyan government from watching and supervising those funds".
He explained that "the said funds were placed through official channels within the framework of the implementation of Libya’s investment policy abroad", according to a communiqué posted on the website of the Libyan ministry of foreign affairs.
The AU ordinary session officially opened Thursday under the theme "Silencing the Weapons: Creating the Conditions Appropriate for Africa’s Development".
The head of the Libyan diplomacy added that those funds "were supposed to be safe from any threat under international decisions".
He therefore called on Libya "to profit from the interests generated by those funds at the internal level to back the country’s national economy and currency".
He reaffirmed his appeal to the African Union to play a key role in the preservation of the funds and what they generate as interests, particularly those placed in Great Britain.
The Libyan foreign affairs minister said that Great Britain was trying hard - ignoring all international decisions - to ‘’pass a bill at the House of Commons to cut part of the funds in order to compensate the victims of the events which the Libyan people was not responsible for, and which were already sorted out", alluding to the North Ireland issue where separatists benefited from the late Colonel Mouamar Kaddafi.
He said Libya had presented a request to the UN Security Council to modify its decision ordering the freezing of the Libyan funds and assets abroad.
This, he noted, ‘’gives Libya and its investment institutions the right to freeze the funds and assets without unfreezing them, in order to attain the fundamental goal, which is the interest of the Libyan people who are the owners of the said funds".
Siala said that "Libya’s deprivation of the right for the management of the funds has significantly contributed to the drop of revenues", calling African member-countries of the UN Security Council to back that request.
The UN Security Council in February 2011 decided to freeze the assets of the Libyan former regime on the basis of Chapter VII of the UN Charter.
It also passed a resolution banning the family of Mouamar Kaddafi and top officials of his regime from traveling and imposed a military embargo on Libya.
-0- PANA BY/TBM/MSA/RA 7 Feb2020
