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By Lee Berthiaume

OTTAWA — Canada will give $10-million to the new regime in Libya to help it secure the country’s stock of weapons of mass destruction and track down 23,000 shoulder-to-air missile launchers that pose a major threat to civilian aircraft.

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Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird announced the funding during a meeting with the head of Libya’s National Transitional Council, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, as he toured the capital Tripoli on Tuesday.

While former president Muammar Gaddafi claimed he destroyed his regime’s stockpiles of nuclear and chemical weapons, rebel forces reportedly found two warehouses containing radioactive material as well as stockpiles of chemical weapons in southern Libya in September.

Baird congratulated the Libyan people on the “transformative events” that have been happening in the country and offered Canada’s ongoing support to the new government, “particularly to get rid of weapons of mass destruction, which obviously exist in at least several warehouses of chemical weapons.”