A spokesman for Sen. John Kerry told the Washington Times that the senator misspoke Wednesday when he said the U.S. had frozen more than $30 billion of assets belonging to ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, according to the Washigton times website.
The spokesman for Senator Kerry said he mistakenly referred to Mr. Mubarak instead of Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi.
During a question-and-answer session after a speech Wednesday at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, an Egyptian reporter asked Mr. Kerry if the U.S. intended to honor the new Egyptian government’s request to freeze Mr. Mubarak’s assets, saying nothing had yet been done.
The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee answered: “I understood we have frozen assets of President Mubarak, somewhere in the vicinity of $30 billion. And that includes properties in New York, properties in California, and bank assets, as well as in other parts of the world. But we ourselves — just us — have frozen $31.5 billion.”
The website of Sen.John Kerry, however, doesn't refer to the incident, while the Carnegie's Endowment website shows the video of the speech including the senator's reference to Mubarak's wealth freeze.
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