Posted on 05/10/2011 9:23:24 AM PDT by tobyhill
Basic goods are increasingly scarce in eastern Libya and the opposition government is rapidly running out of cash to fund its battle against Moammar Gadhafi, its Libyan-American finance minister said Monday.
The opposition Interim Transitional National Council (TNC) has been operating off money in the central bank and other private and public banks in rebel-held eastern Libya, said Ali Tarhouni, 60, a senior economics lecturer at the University of Washington before he rushed home to serve the opposition as minister of finance, oil and economics.
"We're running out of that money," he told msnbc.com in an interview in Washington, D.C., confirming a Reuters report that the opposition had three to four weeks of funds left. "No money is coming in from outside so far."
Among the challenges facing Tarhouni, who went into exile in 1974 and was sentenced to death in absentia by Gadhafi for his pro-democracy activities, are money-hoarding and foreign-exchange liquidity.
"We're faced with the same sanctions as Gadhafi," he said, referring to U.S. sanctions that have frozen more than $34 billion of Libyan government assets, in addition to U.N. and European sanctions. "I don't have access to any foreign exchange to cover any purchases, open lines of credits to merchants, so that's a very challenging aspect to what I do."
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
This is so annoying. Who cares about these folks. We are at “war” with them. Listen, I don’t care what any of your think. I guarantee we were not passing out chicken dinners to the Germans while we were at war with them nor were we ensuring that rice was available for Japan during their “wars”. Seriously this is just crazy. Wait until after the “war” and then if need be we will pick them up like we did all the other countries.
What a juggling act...
One day we take out Osama.
The next we’re assisting a bunch of terrorists in Northern Africa.
Bet the so called leaders from the united states have big, big, big, big, bank accounts. Thank you american suckers. We are in upwards of a billion are two on this BS war.
It would also be a good time to remove the citizenship of all involved. They have shown their alliance is with the brotherhood.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.