Libya takes $1bn in unfrozen funds

Libya has withdrawn $1bn in assets from the US, assets which had previously been frozen for almost 20 years, the Libyan central bank has said.

The move came after the US lifted a trade ban to reward Tripoli for giving up weapons of mass destruction and vowing to compensate Lockerbie victims. The original size of Libya's funds was $400m, the central bank told Reuters. However, the withdrawal did not mean that Libya had cut its ties with the US, he added.

"We are in the process of opening accounts in banks in the United States," the central bank's vice president Farhat Omar Ben Gadaravice said. The previously frozen assets had been invested in various countries and are believed to have included equity holdings in banks. The US ban on trade and economic activity with Tripoli - imposed by then president Ronald Regan in 1986 after a series of what the US deemed terrorist acts, including the 1988 Lockerbie air crash - was suspended in April. Bankers from the two country's had been working on how to unfreeze Libya's assets.