National Defence committee  Okay. How about I start and anyone else who wants to pick it up is welcome to. As we were discussing in the earlier question by Mrs. Gallant, there are Islamists present in Libya; there are Islamists present in the region. What is important is that structures are in place--poli

National Defence committee  There's something in place. On the $2.2 billion, what we did was move to unfreeze everything that was being held by Canadian institutions in other countries. That money will flow into a mechanism already created by the contact group: the temporary financial mechanism. It has an i

National Defence committee  I'll start with the court question because it's more specific. The courts, to my knowledge, are not currently up and running in Tripoli. I can't speak for Benghazi, but in Tripoli they were not. They are now looking at how to address cases that were tried under the previous gov

National Defence committee  I think certainly the future remains to be seen. I would say a couple of things. One is that the structures that take root in Libya will be Libyan; it is not Canada and it's not populated by Canadians. There will be the governmental structures and legal structures and the impleme

National Defence committee  If I could just add to that, while I was there I spoke to the NTC, and they are very aware of the danger, quite frankly, of having so many weapons in circulation. So many young men have been using them for six months. They spoke informally of intentions to create a national army,

National Defence committee  I would say the major population centres are along the coastline, so we'd probably be looking at maybe 10% or 15%.

National Defence committee  I would say that there were two fairly significant signals we had. One was the convoy you mentioned going to Niger. Also, there were family members who went to Algeria and who still, to our knowledge, are there. All through the last six months we have pressed neighbouring countr

National Defence committee  That friction within the council has in fact existed since the beginning, given that it was set up by the former justice minister, a member of Qadhafi's cabinet. However, we and the council need to recognize that this regime is 42 years old. And during that time, some perfectly r

National Defence committee  I wouldn't say there has been in particular on the stabilization assistance front. Most of the other African countries aren't particularly in a position to offer assistance in that regard. But on a political level, they are certainly interested in playing a role and ensuring that

National Defence committee  Quickly, I want to reiterate that, in Tripoli, I attended meetings with representatives from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and from the International Organization for Migration. They were in the process of helping refugees from neighbouring count

National Defence committee  Sure, and I think to a certain extent we've covered some of those elements. As far as Canada's relationship with the UN goes, as we've indicated, today the Prime Minister is attending a meeting of Friends of Libya, chaired by the UN Secretary General, for the purpose of coordin

National Defence committee  I'll provide the amateur's introduction, and then I will turn to the expert on the implications of that. Yes, you are quite correct, Friday's resolution brought some changes to the arms embargo. They are chiefly focused on two exemptions now for bringing weapons in for certain

National Defence committee  I am not familiar with the specific steps taken by the council. That's something we could follow up on. However, organizations like Amnesty International and, previously, Human Rights Watch had produced a report on the mistakes made by both sides. Those NGOs, which I feel do imp

National Defence committee  We have been in touch throughout the last months of the conflict. I've been in touch, in my capacity as ambassador, with a number of the key companies present on the ground. All the way through we've been able to provide them with our sense of how events were evolving on the grou

National Defence committee  Mr. Chair, the crimes were committed by both sides—by the Qadhafi and the anti-Qadhafi forces—and are equally unacceptable. Some incidents have been noted. I even think that Amnesty International had issued a statement claiming that the number of crimes committed by anti-Qadhafi