Mr. Speaker, to continue on with this line of questioning, we ended by saying that it looks as though the best we could get is default judgments in the United States which the debtor countries ignore and refuse to pay, so where does that leave the victim? The next problem is recovery. They say that recovery is the problem given the limited assets of listed countries being held in the U.S. and the executive branch's resistance to allow frozen assets to be used for that purpose. Even if we are trying to hunt down the assets, we are not going to be getting the help of the government in this regard. The executive would resist such efforts over concerns about retaliatory measures, losing leverage over the countries concerned and potentially violating international law on state immunity. They go on to talk about the Algiers court as an example.
This is very complicated. In addition, countries such as Cuba and Iran have simply retaliated by bringing in their own equivalent measures introduced in their own countries.
I would ask the member if he would like to comment further on that aspect.