Libya

Ben Wallace Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. What we are doing at the moment is taking through parts of unfreezing assets on an ad hoc basis through the UN Security Council. We were able to unfreeze the Libyan dinars printed by De La Rue in this country, and we can now distribute them back to the Libyan people. As for making sure that they are properly received, as I said in my statement there should be a proper accounting and transparency initiative in Libya. As for a more general asset release, we need a new UN resolution, and we are pushing for it, but we do not want to lose what we have at the moment, which is a UN resolution that enables the NATO mission to go on protecting civilians. It is a balance: we want to get both those things so that the assets can be unfrozen more broadly.

[Mr Ben Wallace (Wyre and Preston North) (Con)]

The last Government consistently told us that the whole reason for working more closely with Libya was the agreement reached in 2003 on weapons of mass destruction. Following the collapse of the Gaddafi regime, we now see that Gaddafi kept hardly any part of that agreement. He hoarded massive stocks of chemical weapons in order continually to brutalise and ignore human rights. Does the Prime Minister not think it rather odd that the last Government knew that all along, but for eight years continued to increase co-operation with the Libyans?

[The Prime Minister]

That is an important point. Hopefully, with a new Government in Libya, we shall be able to see how much of the agreement over weapons of mass destruction was kept. It is concerning that there are still large supplies of unweaponised mustard gas, on which the international community and, now, the NTC must keep a close eye, but, as I have said, when the new Government get their feet under the table, we may find out more.