North Africa and the Middle East

These assets belong to the people of Libya, and so in all normal circumstances—if we can describe any of these circumstances as normal—they would be available to a future Government of Libya. They are frozen, not confiscated. In this case, of course, they are very substantial. In the UK, we have frozen £12 billion-worth of assets; in the United States, I think there were $30 billion-worth of assets. That just shows that the Libyan people could have a much more prosperous future if they had a more economically open and politically free approach. Those assets are held for them.