WORLD LEADERS last night agreed to unblock $15 billion in assets linked to Muammar Gadafy’s regime and put it towards the country’s reconstruction effort.
Some 42 years to the day after Col Gadafy seized power, leaders of Libya’s National Transition Council were received with full honours in Paris for a conference attended by delegations from 63 countries.
“We helped the Libyans, but they liberated themselves,” French president Nicolas Sarkozy said alongside his co-host, British prime minister David Cameron.
The UK, US and France unfroze more than $5 billion in Libyan assets this week , and Mr Sarkozy said other countries would follow suit “to finance the development of the Libya of the future”.
Defending the military intervention, he said tens of thousands of lives were saved as a result.
He added that operations would continue “as long as there’s a threat”.
The heads of state encouraged the new Libyan leadership, represented in Paris by Mustafa Abdel Jalil and Mahmoud Jibril, to begin a process of reconciliation, not retribution, after their victory over Col Gadafy.
US secretary of state Hillary Clinton told the meeting United Nations sanctions should be lifted in a responsible way and the new leaders given Libya’s UN seat.
“The work does not end with the end of an oppressive regime,” she said.
“Winning a war offers no guarantee of winning the peace that follows. What happens in the coming days will be critical.”
If peace and political stability were the watchwords at last night’s talks, there were signs on the sidelines of early jostling for lucrative opportunities to help in the major task of restoring Libya’s infrastructure.
However, both the French and the Libyans firmly denied reports that Paris had been promised 35 per cent of new oil contracts in Libya in exchange for its backing of the rebels.