[casi] News, 09-16/04/03 (11)

[Peter Brooke <pbrooke@DELETETHISukonline.co.uk>]

News, 09-16/04/03 (11)

THE RADIANT FUTURE

*  Freedom's jubilant victory
*  It is 2013, and the US is leaving
*  Democracy might be the wrong answer for Iraq
*  US rejects Iraq DU clean-up

SPOILS OF WAR

*  US plans to loot Iraqi antiques
*  War puts Denel's Iraq contract at risk
*  Scandal-hit US firm wins key contracts
*  World Financial Leaders Discuss Economy
*  US manages interests by pushing for Iraq debt relief
*  Privatization in Disguise
*  Bush Urging U.N. to Lift Sanctions Imposed on Iraq
*  Insurance Worries Delay Iraq Reconstruction Deal


THE RADIANT FUTURE

http://www.iht.com/articles/92835.html

*  FREEDOM'S JUBILANT VICTORY
by William Safire
International Herald Tribune, from New York Times, 11th April

WASHINGTON: Like newly freed Parisians tossing flowers at Allied tanks; like
newly freed Germans tearing down the Berlin Wall; like newly freed Russians
pulling down the statue of the hated secret police chief in Dzerzhinsky
Square, the newly freed Iraqis toppled the figure of their tyrant and ground
their shoes into the face of Saddam Hussein.

All these pictures flow together in the farrago of freedom's victories over
despotism in the past two generations. Just as video of human suffering
understandably triggers demonstrations against any war, unforgettable images
of enslaved people tasting liberty drive home the wisdom of just wars.

Even in the flush of triumph, doubts will be raised. Where are the supplies
of germs and poison gas and plans for nukes to justify preemption? (Freed
scientists will lead Americans to caches no inspectors could find.) What
about remaining danger from Ba'athist torturers and war criminals forming
pockets of resistance and plotting vengeance? (Their death wish is our
command.)

The most insulting question is this: Considering their Islamist religious
schisms and tribal hatreds, their tradition of monarchy and obedience to
dictatorial regimes, their turbulent streets easily inflamed by demagogues,
how can any population of Arabs be entrusted with democracy?

The answer to that is the experiment on which Iraq is now embarked. Iraqis
start with the advantages of being literate and extravagantly oil-rich, and
most aren't fundamentalists.

If Iraqis are able to adopt a system of free enterprise and representative
government, they will become the center of an arc of freedom from Turkey in
the north to Israel in the south (with Lebanon freed from Syrian occupation,
if France will liberate the state it created). Egypt, the largest Arab
nation, could not long resist such a tidal wave of liberty.

A parade of former U.S. ambassadors to Arab nations pooh-poohs this vision,
deriding the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz idealists as the four horsemen
of hubris.

But consider one example of a big segment of Iraq's population that proved
willing to ally itself wholeheartedly with the coalition, and showed under
fire its eagerness to make sacrifices for its freedom.

Nobody came out of this war more nobly than the 3.5 million long-suffering
Kurds of Iraq. After the Gulf War in 1991, America at first left them to the
poison-gas savagery of Saddam, then expiated that sin by providing them air
cover for the next decade. In that time, this ethnic group built a model
state: a lively Parliament, schools, hospitals, a thriving economy built on
farming and a little smuggling on the side.

Their rival leaders, Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani, realized that the
people whom they call "our friends to the north" - the Turks - suspected a
plot to declare an independent Kurdistan, which might encourage Turkey's
Kurdish minority to break away.

Because the United States believed that it would get Turkey's cooperation
against Saddam, it refused to arm the Kurds, even though they were under
attack from terrorists affiliated with Al Qaeda. Despite this, when America
began its invasion, the 70,000 Kurdish pesh merga troops volunteered to
serve in the coalition under the command of small U.S. airborne units in the
north. The Kurds were and still are the only indigenous force fighting
against Saddam's regime.

One tragic test of loyalty came last week when a U.S. aircraft mistakenly
bombed a convoy carrying pesh merga to engage Saddam's troops. Nineteen
Kurds died, with two of the Barzani clan wounded. A Barzani aide, Hoshyar
Zabari, told me by cell phone afterward: "We do not blame anyone. This
happens in war. We are fighting together for our freedom."

That's an ally. The Kurds have decided that their cultural autonomy - and
their future safety - lies not in independence but as part of Iraq's new
confederation, with its capital Baghdad. "We will always retain our Kurdish
identity, but we are Iraqis," emphasized Barham Salih, Talabani's prime
minister.

My guess is that the urbane Talabani will serve in Iraq's national
government, with the locally rooted Barzani in its regional capital in the
north. They have learned how democracy works and have earned a seat at the
governing table. They also know, and will bear witness to their Iraqi
compatriots in this great experiment, that the United States and Britain are
freedom's best friends.


http://news.scotsman.com/columnists.cfm?id=425862003

*  IT IS 2013, AND THE US IS LEAVING
by Alex Massie
The Scotsman, 12th April

IRAQIS have become accustomed to seeing history happen in the ten years
since Saddam Hussein's regime crumbled into dust. Yesterday they saw it made
again.

As a young girl presented General Arthur Marshall with a posy of flowers, an
Iraqi military band played God Bless America.

The girl, aged ten, had been carefully chosen for the task. Born in a US
military field station near Nasiriyah on 3 April, 2003, she was named
America by the US troops who delivered her. Yesterday they formally
delivered her country back to her people.

As the Stars and Stripes was lowered for the last time at Bush Air Base
outside Baghdad, the band struck up the new Iraqi national anthem, chosen
five years ago after a nation-wide competition.

Even normally hard-bitten marines, standing to attention as the Iraqi flag
was raised, could not hide their emotions. Many had tears in their eyes.

Gen Marshall reminded the audience of invited dignitaries and the thousands
of ordinary, flag-waving Iraqis who had come to see this long-dreamt-of
moment, that the sceptics had been gloriously wrong when they predicted that
Iraq could not hope to survive intact let alone thrive following the War of
Liberation.

"But they were wrong," he said, speaking in Arabic to the sound of
tumultuous cheers, "Iraq today is an example of hope and opportunity to the
rest of the Arab and Muslim world. We leave you, the Iraqi people in good
hands. Your hands.

"They said that it could not be done, that Arabs could not govern themselves
or could not create a free, open society. They were wrong.

"I look at this country today and marvel at what you have built. You have
built, in the words of a great American, Abraham Lincoln, a nation
'conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are
created equal'.

"As we take our leave, we are honoured to have played a part in building
that new future. Before we go, I have just four final words to say: May God
Bless Iraq."

>From today the only boots on the ground are Iraqi boots. "We are on our own
now," said Ibrahim Rawah, a poet and member of the Pan-Iraqi Freedom Party,
who spent ten years in prison during the dark days of Saddam's misrule.
"Look around you and decide for yourself if we are ready."

Mr Rawah pointed to the success of last year's second Iraqi parliamentary
elections in which Ahmed Chalabi's government was defeated. "We have had a
peaceful transfer of power. Everyone has respected the result. This is a
first in the Arab world. Even the press respects the result."

According to Majid Girgis, executive director of the Iraqi Enterprise
Institute, one of a slew of think-tanks set up in Baghdad after the
liberation, "much of the progress could not have been made without the Truth
Commission".

The commission, modelled on South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation
Commission, was established in 2004 as a means of purging the last remnants
of Baath ideology from Iraq.

The leading 50,000 Baathists were banned from seeking office for ten years
and the commission heard evidence from more than 4,000 witnesses in the
three years it sat. "The commission helped draw the poison of Baathism
without us needing to punish every member of the party."

The new coalition government has promised a programme of economic
liberalisation and fiscal rectitude to curb inflation, now at 10 per cent.
The government has also promised to expand higher education, entering into
partnerships with US Ivy League universities as well as creating the Arab
world's first on-line university.

The most pressing issue lies on the border with Syria, however. The frontier
remains porous and dangerous as the civil unrest rocking Damascus threatens
to create a humanitarian disaster in northern Iraq.

The US has suggested it might be better if it stayed a little longer to
ensure Iraq's security, But the coalition government in Baghdad, emboldened
by the sweeping mandate it received in last year's elections, insisted Iraq
was capable of dealing with the situation. A quarter of Iraq's slimmed down
army, just 70,000 strong, has been dispatched to the region to deal with the
flood of refugees crossing the border.

And so, the last 2,000 US troops have gone. The Italians, Indians and South
Africans who made up the rest of the International Peace and Stability Force
left last year, but their departure, welcomed though it was by the Iraqi
people, carried none of the symbolism of yesterday's events.

"The Americans should really have gone before," a senior Iraqi
administration figure said. "We've been telling them for years that we are
ready and that they make everything more difficult by staying here but,
being Americans, they wouldn't listen."

The vast majority of Iraqis in Baghdad yesterday seemed ready for the
testing times ahead. "Who can say what will happen?" said Efraim Qanbar, a
politics student at Baghdad University. "But we have learned a lot from the
Americans. It is good that they are going, it is better that Iraq is now its
own country."

The ten years since Saddam Hussein's regime crumbled before the eyes of the
watching world have seen Iraq veer perilously close to civil war. The long,
arduous constitutional convention, attended by no fewer than 80 parties and
ethnic groups, took far longer to deliver a new constitution than anyone had
anticipated.

The Kurds had walked out after six months and only flattery from Ahmed
Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress and US threats to cut off their share
of the money accruing from the state oil company's joint ventures with
Exxon, Gulf and BP coaxed them back into the fold.

The final constitution, ratified in December 2006 after three years of
debate, drew on the examples set in South Africa and Northern Ireland and
paved the way for the first elections in April 2007. Mr Chalabi, who had
confounded his critics in the US state department, won a handsome victory
and led his Iraqi National Congress into government.

United Nations election observers declared the poll "largely honest" and in
the months after the poll General Tommy Franks began sending the first of
his troops home. By 2008 only 10,000 US military personnel remained in Iraq.

Massive western investment - more than $175 billion (£110 billion) - in
Iraq's infrastructure has made the Iraqi oil industry among the most modern
in the world. Next year the government will privatise IraqOil, floating it
on the Baghdad stock exchange.

New schools and hospitals have been built and much-needed investment in
irrigation projects and the use of genetically modified crops has
transformed the fertile crescent, turning Iraq into the Middle East's bread
basket.

Tourists, particularly from the United States, have flocked to stay in the
luxury hotels constructed out of Saddam's presidential palaces and to play
golf on the new courses on the banks of the river Tigris. Among their number
have been former US soldiers, many of whom served in the War of Liberation.

Even growing prosperity and political freedoms have not solved all of Iraq's
problems. In the south-east, close to the Iranian border, militants continue
their campaign to restore Islamic rule in Iran after the mullahs'
ignominious fall five years ago, as well as to topple the pro western
government in Baghdad.

Other groups continue to protest the controversial ban on religious parties,
castigating the government for being "the infidel's catamite". A senior
government official said yesterday, however: "We have history on our side.
They are fighting the last war. They will not prevail. They cannot win."

The attack on the regional parliament in Basra by a suicide bomber last
month, killing three MPs and two policemen, was a timely reminder, however,
that Iraq's apparent stability is less firmly rooted than it might be.

Optimists, and there are many in Iran and Iraq, argue that close
co-operation between Tehran and Baghdad will succeed in snuffing out the
threat. Their 2009 trade agreement and cultural exchanges have helped bring
the two countries together. Even so, a leaked CIA report concluded last
year: "There is a grave danger of further unrest jeopardising the progress
that has been made so far."

Somehow, whether by courage, determination, skill or just luck, Iraq has
remained intact. From today it takes its first steps as a truly independent
nation, free from the watchful eye of its guardians.

"We are a proud people with a long history. We are not an infant country, we
are the ancient home of civilisation. You in Europe were nearly destroyed by
dictatorships in the 20th century and you spread your ideologies to the Arab
world," Mr Rawah said. "The Baath Party created a national socialist state.
We were your creation, now we are our own masters." If the first nation-wide
elections, held in 2007, had been one turning point, so too was the 2010
football World Cup in South Africa.

Appearing in the tournament for the first time since 1986, the indomitable
Iraqis pulled off the shock of the tournament, defeating the US in Durban
thanks to a stoppage-time goal from the Barcelona striker, Entifadh Aziz.

Ambassador Paul Wolfowitz in Baghdad was gracious enough to host a reception
for the Iraqi squad when they returned to the capital, amid scenes of
jubilation as 500,000 Iraqis gathered at the airport to welcome their
conquering heroes home.

"If the United States had to lose to any country in this tournament," Mr
Wolfowitz said, "I'm glad it was against Iraq. This is another great day for
the Iraqi people. I don't know much about soccer but we were definitely
beaten by the better team."

If that success swelled the populace's pride, the middle classes had been no
less overjoyed when an Iraqi film, A Nation Alive (or, as US critics dubbed,
it "Birth of a Nation - with moustaches instead of the KKK") received the
Oscar for best foreign language film at the Academy Awards in 2007.

That success was the catalyst for the first Basra Film Festival, generously
funded by the European Union's film production fund, which in turn helped
foster a fresh artistic confidence that has produced a string of surprise
box-office hits in western cinemas. In cinematic terms the Middle East is,
western wags say, the new China.

Sporting and cultural success could not hide the growing tensions at the
heart of the Iraqi government, however. Indeed that famous victory in Durban
brought fresh calls from some politicians and religious leaders for US
troops to leave Iraq for good. The government held firm, however, arguing
that the international security force's work was not complete.

That became an increasingly unpopular position, however, and, combined with
economic mismanagement and accusations of widespread corruption in Iraq's 18
provinces, helped ensure Mr Chalabi's government was defeated last year.

Mr Chalabi was sanguine about the result. "My work is done. It is for others
to continue our work." Besides, he joked: "The problem with a democracy is
that sometimes you lose. That is how it should be."

Yesterday, after the last US troops had left, Mr Rawah, the poet, took me
back into the centre of Baghdad. He pointed to the plinth in Firdus Square
where once the massive statue of Saddam had stood.

The statue was joyously destroyed ten years ago but the plinth remains
empty. This is deliberate. "It is a reminder of where we have come from.
And," he added, smiling, "where we will not go again."


http://news.scotsman.com/columnists.cfm?id=425552003

*  DEMOCRACY MIGHT BE THE WRONG ANSWER FOR IRAQ
by Allan Massie
The Scotsman, 12th April

THE war has been won. The victory has been as swift and complete as our
greatest military historian and analyst Sir John Keegan said it would be.
Even if the Iraqi resistance was a bit stiffer than some expected, the
disparity between the allied and the Iraqi forces made any other outcome
inconceivable. It was no real contest.

Some thought the war wrong, others that it was unwise. I was in the latter
camp. I still am, though I hope my doubts are unfounded.

No-one surely can be anything other than delighted to see Saddam Hussein
overthrown and his loathsome tyranny ended. But it's a question of what
happens next, of winning the peace; and that is going to be much more
difficult.

The scenes of jubilation in Baghdad this week testified to the hatred so
many Iraqis felt for Saddam and the Baath Party. We have seen such scenes in
Muslim countries before, most recently, just over 20 years ago, in Iran.
There too an unpopular and despotic regime, that of the Shah, was
overthrown. What came next was no better. Many would say it was worse.

Indeed, those with long memories can recall a similar scene in Baghdad
itself, in 1958, when the monarchy was removed, the king murdered, and his
prime minister, Nuri-es-Suid, torn to pieces by the mob in the street.

Of course, there was a difference. History never repeats itself exactly.

The Shah was, till very near the end, supported by the United States. He was
seen as an American puppet; his crime was the enforced modernisation -
Westernisation - of Iran. His opponents were traditionalists, bent on
imposing theocratic rule. The Iraq monarchy was a creation of the British,
and was overthrown by Arab nationalists resentful of our influence.

This time the revolution has been made, or made possible, by the US, with
some help from ourselves. But not all who loathed Saddam love the West.

Saddam ran one of the few secularist states in the Arab world. Among his
bitterest enemies are devout Muslims, some of them Islamic fundamentalists.

The Americans promise to establish democracy in Iraq. They dream of
spreading democracy throughout the Middle East. Let us assume they are
sincere. They have no reason not to be. Americans really do believe in
democracy.

But democracy is not easy to establish. It is a slow-growing plant. It took
us at least 200 years - some would say more - to move from Stuart absolutism
to a truly representative parliamentary democracy.

There is no democratic tradition in the Arab world. There is no pattern of
representative democracy. I am not suggesting that Arabs are incapable of
democracy. That would be insufferably arrogant. In any case I have always
liked Palmerston's response to the MP who asserted that the Greeks were not
ready for a constitution: that if this was the case, the only way to make
them ready was to give them one. But it will be very difficult.

The Americans may have to stay longer in Iraq than they now intend; and if
they do, they will be unpopular.

There is another problem with democracy. It can give the wrong answers. It
is very likely to do so in the Muslim world. By that I mean the wrong
answers from our point of view.

This happened in Algeria where the army stepped in to prevent the Islamic
parties from winning an election. A bloody civil war has been raging there
for ten years now, and fundamentalist refugees from Algeria have exported
Islamic terrorism to Europe.

It may be happening in Turkey, the most secular state in the Muslim world.
The Islamic parties have won an election and now form the government.

Elections may give Iraq an Islamic government, in response partly to the
infidel West, partly to the experience of Saddam's secularist rule. But if
the US draws back from its commitment to "give" Iraq democratic
institutions, then any government is going to be regarded as an American
puppet, and would be likely to last only as long as there are US troops
there to support it.

Can Iraq hold together? Nobody knows. It is described as an artificial
state, created by the British after the First World War and the
disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. So comparisons are made with
Yugoslavia and what happened there when Tito's strong hand was removed.
There is talk of some sort of federation. But federal systems work only
where there is political maturity. Will Shias, Sunnis and Kurds co-operate
or come to blows? The latter seems more probable.

If the chance of political stability in Iraq itself is slim, what of the
Middle East as a whole? There is some hope of a settlement of the
Palestinian problem, the theory being that the scale of the American victory
will compel the Palestinians to accept the reality of Israel.

It will take a lot to convince the Israeli Right, which is in power, that
this acceptance, if it comes, is sincere. Of course, the US can put pressure
on Israel to agree to the creation of a Palestinian state, to abandon its
settlements and withdraw to its 1967 frontiers. But will it? And, even if it
does, how will lasting peace be guaranteed?

Our experience in Northern Ireland, where far less divides the two sides
than in Israel Palestine, and where the conflict was far less bloody,
teaches us just how difficult reconciliation is.

This war has done nothing to reconcile the Muslim world to the West. An Arab
state has once again suffered humiliation, and nothing breeds resentment and
hatred more surely than that. For the present, that resentment may be
tempered by the scenes of jubilation in Iraq. But that joy will fade.

At the moment, a little window of opportunity is open. It will soon close,
and then it is the overwhelming power of the US that will stare the Middle
East in the face. There is talk already of regime change elsewhere, of
imposing the Pax Americana throughout the region. The American Empire is
supreme, in the ascendant, but for too many in the Middle East the message
it sends out is the old Roman one: Let them hate, provided they fear. Unless
the Americans use their power with great sensitivity and wise judgment, then
a deeper, more intense, hatred is what they will provoke.

A final reflection from history: when the French Revolution broke out in
1789, Charles James Fox hailed the fall of the Bastille as "how much the
greatest event that ever happened in the world! and how much the best!"
Some, here and in Baghdad, may react to the fall of Saddam in the same tone.

But Fox's friend Edmund Burke took a different view. He warned that "very
plausible schemes, with very pleasing commencements, have often shameful and
lamentable consequences", and also remarked of the men who made the
revolution who "amidst assassination, massacre, and confiscation,
perpetrated or meditated, are forming plans for the good order of future
society". Just like the Americans today.

And was that revolution a good thing? As the Chinese prime minister
Chou-en-lai remarked, "it's too soon to tell". Likewise with Iraq. The best
one can say is that things there may not be as bad as they were under
Saddam, but they are unlikely to be good.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2946715.stm

*  US REJECTS IRAQ DU CLEAN-UP
by Alex Kirby
BBC, 14th April

The US says it has no plans to remove the debris left over from depleted
uranium (DU) weapons it is using in Iraq.

It says no clean-up is needed, because research shows DU has no long-term
effects.

It says a 1990 study suggesting health risks to local people and veterans is
out of date.

A United Nations study found DU contaminating air and water seven years
after it was used.

DU, left over after natural uranium has been enriched, is 1.7 times denser
than lead, and very effective for punching through armoured vehicles.

When a weapon with a DU tip or core strikes a solid object, like the side of
a tank, it goes straight through before erupting in a burning cloud of
vapour. This settles as chemically poisonous and radioactive dust.

Both the US and the UK acknowledge the dust can be dangerous if inhaled,
though they say the danger is short-lived, localised, and much more likely
to lead to chemical poisoning than to irradiation.

But a study prepared for the US Army in July 1990, a month before Iraq
invaded Kuwait, says: "The health risks associated with internal and
external DU exposure during combat conditions are certainly far less than
other combat-related risks.

"Following combat, however, the condition of the battlefield and the
long-term health risks to natives and combat veterans may become issues in
the acceptability of the continued use of DU."

A Pentagon spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel David Lapan, told BBC News Online:
"Since then there've been a number of studies - by the UK's Royal Society
and the World Health Organisation, for example - into the health risks of
DU, or the lack of them.

"It's fair to say the 1990 study has been overtaken by them. One thing we've
found in these various studies is that there are no long-term effects from
DU.

"And given that, I don't believe we have any plans for a DU clean-up in
Iraq."

The UN Environment Programme study, published in March 2003, found DU in air
and groundwater in Bosnia-Herzegovina seven years after the weapons were
fired.

The UN says the existing data suggest it is "highly unlikely" DU could be
linked to any of the health problems reported.

But it recommends collecting DU fragments, covering contaminated points with
asphalt or clean soil, and keeping records of contaminated sites.

Reports from Baghdad speak of repeated attacks by US aircraft carrying DU
weapons on high-rise buildings in the city centre.

The UK says: "British forces on deployment to the Gulf have DU munitions
available as part of their armoury, and will use them if necessary." It will
not confirm they have used them.

Many veterans from the Gulf and Kosovo wars believe DU has made them
seriously ill.

One UK Gulf veteran is Ray Bristow, a former marathon runner.

In 1999 he told the BBC: "I gradually noticed that every time I went out for
a run my distance got shorter and shorter, my recovery time longer and
longer.

"Now, on my good days, I get around quite adequately with a walking stick,
so long as it's short distances. Any further, and I need to be pushed in a
wheelchair."

Ray Bristow was tested in Canada for DU. He is open-minded about its role in
his condition.

But he says: "I remained in Saudi Arabia throughout the war. I never once
went into Iraq or Kuwait, where these munitions were used.

"But the tests showed, in layman's terms, that I have been exposed to over
100 times an individual's safe annual exposure to depleted uranium."


SPOILS OF WAR

http://www.sundayherald.com/32895

*  US PLANS TO LOOT IRAQI ANTIQUES
by Liam McDougall
Sunday Herald, 4th April

FEARS that Iraq's heritage will face widespread looting at the end of the
Gulf war have been heightened after a group of wealthy art dealers secured a
high-level meeting with the US administration.

It has emerged that a coalition of antiquities collectors and arts lawyers,
calling itself the American Council for Cultural Policy (ACCP), met with US
defence and state department officials prior to the start of military action
to offer its assistance in preserving the country's invaluable
archaeological collections.

The group is known to consist of a number of influential dealers who favour
a relaxation of Iraq's tight restrictions on the ownership and export of
antiquities. Its treasurer, William Pearlstein, has described Iraq's laws as
'retentionist' and has said he would support a post war government that
would make it easier to have antiquities dispersed to the US.

Before the Gulf war, a main strand of the ACCP's campaigning has been to
persuade its government to revise the Cultural Property Implementation Act
in order to minimise efforts by foreign nations to block the import into the
US of objects, particularly antiques.

News of the group's meeting with the government has alarmed scientists and
archaeologists who fear the ACCP is working to a hidden agenda that will see
the US authorities ease restrictions on the movement of Iraqi artefacts
after a coalition victory in Iraq.

Professor Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn, leading Cambridge archaeologist and
director of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, said: 'Iraqi
antiquities legislation protects Iraq. The last thing one needs is some
group of dealer-connected Americans interfering. Any change to those laws
would be absolutely monstrous. '

A wave of protest has also come from the Archaeological Institute of America
(AIA), which says any weakening of Iraq's strict antiquities laws would be
'disastrous'. President Patty Gerstenblith said: 'The ACCP's agenda is to
encourage the collecting of antiquities through weakening the laws of
archaeologically-rich nations and eliminate national ownership of
antiquities to allow for easier export. '

The ACCP has caused deep unease among archaeologists since its creation in
2001. Among its main members are collectors and lawyers with chequered
histories in collecting valuable artefacts, including alleged exhibitions of
Nazi loot.

They denied accusations of attempting to change Iraq's treatment of
archaeological objects. Instead, they said at the January meeting they
offered 'post-war technical and financial assistance', and 'conservation
support'.


http://www.bday.co.za/bday/content/direct/1,3523,1324662-6080-0,00.html

*  WAR PUTS DENEL'S IRAQ CONTRACT AT RISK
by Gordon Bell
Business Day (South Africa), 10th April
 
State arms manufacturer Denel faces losing a multi-million rand contract to
clear mines in northern Iraq, should the United States take over functions
currently under the auspices of the United Nations (UN).
 
The war in the Middle East country would have serious implications for the
work of Denel subsidiary, Mechem, in that country, Public Enterprises
Minister Jeff Radebe said, opening debate on his Budget vote in the National
Assembly.
 
Mechem has for the past four years been clearing mines in the north of Iraq
for the UN, but withdrew staff ahead of the US-led invasion.
 
"By the time of their withdrawal by the UN, under whose mandate they
operate, Mechem's team consisted of 27 South Africans, 689 local Iraqis, and
180 mine detection-trained dogs."
 
All but five of the South Africans had returned to this country and remained
on standby to return to Iraq, if called upon by the UN.
 
The remaining South African staff were currently waiting in Jordan and
Cyprus.
 
The Iraqi and Kurdish members of the team -- who received three months
salary in advance  - and the dogs remained in Iraq.
 
"Not only has this important humanitarian activity been severely disrupted,
the current invasion has turned back the clock considerably, with the
prospect of even greater horror for the local population as landmines,
cluster munitions, and other unexploded bombs litter the Iraqi countryside,"
the minister said.
 
Radebe's special adviser, Dr Ian Phillips, told reporters prior to the
speech the decision of who should administer Iraq after the war was critical
for the future of the contract.
 
"If the US decides to take over the work of the UN, then obviously it will
have a bearing (on the contract)."
 
Mechem had earned about US10-million (about R80-million) since 1999 clearing
almost 10 million square metres of landmines and exploded ordnance dating
back to the first Iraqi war of the early 1990s.
 
The company -- described as a world leader in de-mining -- had also been
involved in operations in Bosnia and Angola, he said.
 
"With the war in Iraq it is very difficult to predict the future of the
contract, and it is, therefore, also difficult to say whether and when the
programme will proceed following the cessation of hostilities," the
department said in a statement.


http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,935689,00.html

*  SCANDAL-HIT US FIRM WINS KEY CONTRACTS
by Antony Barnett
The Observer , 13th April

A US military contractor accused of human rights violations has won a
multi-million-dollar contract to police post-Saddam Iraq, The Observer can
reveal.

DynCorp, which has donated more than £100,000 to the Republican Party, began
recruiting for a private police force in Iraq last week on behalf of the US
State Department.

The awarding of such a sensitive contract to DynCorp has caused
consternation in some circles over the company's policing record. A British
employment tribunal recently forced DynCorp to pay £110,000 in compensation
to a UN police officer it unfairly sacked in Bosnia for whistleblowing on
DynCorp colleagues involved in an illegal sex ring.

An Observer reporter who contacted the firm's US headquarters purporting to
be a potential police recruit for Iraq was told it was hoping to 'get people
on the ground in two to four weeks'. The recruiter told the reporter he
could expect a salary of $80,000plus 'hazard bonuses'. He was offered a
contract of between three months and a year and told he did not need to be
able to speak Arabic. He had to be a US citizen who had served as a police
officer in America, and when the reporter said he had worked in Texas for a
number of years he was told he sounded 'ideal'.

Despite DynCorp's demands for US citizens only, it is offering the private
contracts through its British office in Aldershot.

Former Labour Defence Minister Peter Kilfoyle said last night: 'I find it
difficult to believe that, at a time when bringing law and order to Iraq
needs to be handled with delicacy and sensitivity, a private American firm
like DynCorp is entrusted with this job.'

DynCorp's advert, posted on a US website and headed 'Iraq mission', stated
that it was acting on behalf of the US Department of State's Bureau of
International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. It was seeking
'individuals with appropriate experience and expertise to participate in an
international effort to re-establish police, justice and prison functions in
post-conflict Iraq'.

The company is looking for active duty or recently retired policemen and
prison guards and 'experienced judicial experts'.

While the US has promised help in bringing law and order to Iraq, the
involvement of DynCorp has caused concern as it has been involved in a
series of recent high-profile scandals involving personnel in sensitive
missions overseas.

DynCorp personnel contracted to the United Nations police service in Bosnia
were implicated in buying and selling prostitutes, including a girl as young
as 12. Several DynCorp employees were also accused of videotaping the rape
of one of the women.

When Dyncorp employee Kathy Bolkovac blew the whistle on the sex ring she
was dismissed by the company for drawing attention to their misbehaviour,
according to the ruling of a British employment tribunal in November.

DynCorp has also been heavily criticised over its involvement in Plan
Colombia, instigated by Bill Clinton, that involves spraying vast quantities
of herbicides over Colombia to kill the cocaine crop.

A group of Ecuadorean peasants have filed a class action against the company
alleging that herbicides spread by DynCorp in Colombia were drifting across
the border, killing legitimate crops, causing illness, and killing children.
The company denies the charges.

DynCorp, which has its headquarters in Reston, Virginia, employs almost
25,000 staff, many of them former US military personnel. The Observer was
unable to reach DynCorp for comment.


http://www.newsday.com/business/nationworld/ats
ap_business10apr13,0,6643631.story?coll=sns-business-headlines

*  WORLD FINANCIAL LEADERS DISCUSS ECONOMY
by Harry Dunphy
Newsday, from Associated Press, 13th April

WASHINGTON -- Global financial leaders papered over differences on
rebuilding Iraq at their weekend meetings and pledged to attack sluggish
economic growth rates their countries and poverty worldwide.

The agreement to support a new U.N. Security Council resolution to rebuild
Iraq came after the United States dropped its insistence that no such
prerequisite was needed to initiate International Monetary Fund and the
World Bank action.

In turn, the Americans won approval to begin talks on reducing Iraq's
massive foreign debt burden, estimated at between $60 billion and $100
billion.

Resolving Iraq differences allowed the finance ministers and central bank
governors to turn their attention to what World Bank President James
Wolfensohn has called the other war, alleviating poverty in developing
countries.

Wolfensohn and South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel were to preside
Sunday over a meeting of the bank's policy-setting development committee. On
the table were debt relief for poor countries and increasing African
representation on the executive boards of the IMF and World Bank.

The IMF's policy-making panel, chaired by British Chancellor of the
Exchequer Gordon Brown, had already addressed industrial nations' sluggish
economies. "We must remain vigilant with each of us asking what
contributions we can make to achieve greater stability and growth," he said.

Much of Iraq's debt is owed to France, Germany and Russia, which opposed the
U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and want the United Nations closely involved in
postwar Iraq.

Brown said the new U.N. resolution on Iraq would deal with such issues as
lifting the existing U.N. sanctions and unfreezing the country's assets.

"We are all agreed on the need for a further Security Council resolution,"
Brown said.

U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow had said earlier [in the?] week [that?]
the demand for the resolution "baffled" him, but on Saturday he described
the discussions as "excellent."

He told reporters that as soon as it was safe to tour the country, IMF and
World Bank would determine critical needs and start the flow of billions of
dollars in loans. Officials have said the first assistance would focus on
food, medical needs, water and sanitation and getting children back to
school.

IMF Managing Director Horst Koehler said IMF and World Bank have substantial
experience assessing needs in post-conflict countries, including
Afghanistan, Bosnia and East Timor.

Iraq's needs are expected to be massive, ranging from $20 billion per year
for the first several years to $600 billion over a decade.

The Bush administration, anxious about the rising American costs of war and
reconstruction, has promised Congress to involve other wealthy countries and
international financial organizations in reconstruction.

"The U.N. has a vital role to play in the reconstruction of Iraq," the White
House said in a statement issued Saturday. "We will be talking to Security
Council members, friends and allies about that role."

Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Jacques Chirac and German
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, wrapping up two days of talks in St.
Petersburg, made it clear Saturday they believe the United Nations should
have the key role in rebuilding Iraq.


http://english.aljazeera.net/topics/article.asp?cu_no=1&item_no=2581&version
=1&template_id=277&parent_id=258

*  US MANAGES INTERESTS BY PUSHING FOR IRAQ DEBT RELIEF
aljazeera.net, 14th April

Rebuilding Iraq is going to be expensive, United States reconstruction
companies don't come cheap ­ particularly if contracts cannot be competed
for internationally.

By having Iraqi debt forgiven, however, coming US building costs may be met
by Iraqi oil sales and the US taxpayer may not end up spending much more
than they are already being asked to pay for the invasion so far.

Schroder, Putin and Chirac have a lot  to lose

The debts consist, according to the Barton-Crocker analysis, of $199 billion
in unresolved claims for compensation from creditors in more than a dozen
nations after the invasion of Kuwait, $127 billion of foreign debts, and
$57.2 billion in pending foreign contracts - public and private.

Iraq owes Russia $12 billion (much of it for arms), Kuwait $17 billion, the
Gulf States $30 billion, and smaller sums to Turkey, Jordan, Morocco,
Hungary, India, Bulgaria, Poland, and Egypt.

Pending contracts, which may or may not have lasting value, are mostly to
Russian firms ($52 billion) but also involve France, China, the Netherlands,
the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt. Iraq owes the US relatively little.

"It's a mountain of debt," says Alan Krueger, an economist at Princeton
University. It would amount to $16,000 for every man, woman, and child in
Iraq, many times per capita income. The United States has talked up
forgiving Iraqi debts, while continuing itself to collect interest on
colossal debts in sub-Saharan Africa, which suggests that debt-forgiving is
a political issue rather than a charitable one.

"In exchange for debt relief, France, Germany, Russia and others are very
likely to ask for contracts to rebuild the country and sell Iraqi oil, as
well as a voice in economic policy," points out Robert Hormats, vice
chairman of Goldman Sachs International and a former State Department
official in the Carter Administration.

Middle East countries, Russia, Germany and France are all owed billions of
dollars worth of money ­ yet the House of Representatives approved an
amendment that would prevent reconstruction contracts going to Syria,
Russia, Germany or France last week.

Bush Administration officials frequently insist that reconstruction of Iraq
would be paid for by the country's oil revenues before the war. But
considering the debts, money owed on signed contracts and reparations from
the previous two Gulf wars, Baghdad probably owes $200 billion or maybe more
­ no accurate figure can be given as the IMF has not been active in Iraq for
almost 20 years.

This means the country is in much tougher shape than other international
financial hopeless cases such as Argentina. Its oil sales, subject to UN
approval, may amount to only about $15 billion annually once the industrial
sector has been upgraded and reorganized.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz has called for reduction or
elimination of Iraqi debt, and over the weekend the US put that demand to
the Group of Eight finance ministers meeting in Washington.

So far, the billions of dollars in contracts to rebuild Iraq are going to US
companies. And at least initially, US officials are planning to make all
decisions about Iraq's economy, with help from local advisers. If that
doesn't change, it will be difficult to persuade other countries to drop
their debts ‹ and US taxpayers will end up paying the price.

Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin told local television that Russia,
the creditor with the most to lose with around $70 billion, will not forgive
Iraq's debt and it hopes to collect it one day.

"No one has forgiven Russia's debt, regardless of what kind of regime it was
and regardless of the country's clout," Kudrin said. "For this reason,
international law and our membership of the Paris Club of creditor nations
will allow us to press for the repayment of our loans."

Putin's economic adviser Andrei Illarionov,  attending World Bank and IMF
meetings,  also played down the chances of Russia accepting a write-off. "I
haven't heard anybody seriously discussing the possibility of writing the
Iraqi debt off," he said.

But as Russia and the United States wrestle over Iraq's debts and oil
revenues, it may be that Russia risks further reducing its chances of
getting any role in Iraq by continuing to ruffle US feathers. While France
and Germany have toned down their stance this week, Russia has continued to
speak out strongly against the war.

Although it is not legally binding, the House of Representatives last week
approved an amendment to bar French, Russian, German and Syrian companies
from gaining any reconstruction contracts in postwar Iraq.

The Bush administration claims it does not support this move, but it is a
sign of how concerned the US has become that it should not be the only one
to pay for the invasion it wanted, but that it should be the one to benefit
most from rebuilding the country.


http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030428&s=klein

*  PRIVATIZATION IN DISGUISE
by Naomi Klein
The Nation, 28th April

On April 6, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz spelled it out: There
will be no role for the United Nations in setting up an interim government
in Iraq. The US-run regime will last at least six months, "probably...longer
than that."

And by the time the Iraqi people have a say in choosing a government, the
key economic decisions about their country's future will have been made by
their occupiers. "There has got to be an effective administration from day
one," Wolfowitz said. "People need water and food and medicine, and the
sewers have to work, the electricity has to work. And that's a coalition
responsibility."

The process of getting all this infrastructure to work is usually called
"reconstruction." But American plans for Iraq's future economy go well
beyond that. Rather, the country is being treated as a blank slate on which
the most ideological Washington neoliberals can design their dream economy:
fully privatized, foreign-owned and open for business.

Some highlights: The $4.8 million management contract for the port in Umm
Qasr has already gone to a US company, Stevedoring Services of America, and
the airports are on the auction block. The US Agency for International
Development has invited US multinationals to bid on everything from
rebuilding roads and bridges to printing textbooks. Most of these contracts
are for about a year, but some have options that extend up to four. How long
before they meld into long-term contracts for privatized water services,
transit systems, roads, schools and phones? When does reconstruction turn
into privatization in disguise?

California Republican Congressman Darrel Issa has introduced a bill that
would require the Defense Department to build a CDMA cell-phone system in
postwar Iraq in order to benefit "US patent holders." As Farhad Manjoo noted
in Salon, CDMA is the system used in the United States, not Europe, and was
developed by Qualcomm, one of Issa's most generous donors.

And then there's oil. The Bush Administration knows it can't talk openly
about selling off Iraq's oil resources to ExxonMobil and Shell. It leaves
that to Fadhil Chalabi, a former Iraq petroleum ministry official. "We need
to have a huge amount of money coming into the country," Chalabi says. "The
only way is to partially privatize the industry."

He is part of a group of Iraqi exiles who have been advising the State
Department on how to implement that privatization in such a way that it
isn't seen to be coming from the United States. Helpfully, the group held a
conference on April 4-5 in London, where it called on Iraq to open itself up
to oil multinationals after the war. The Administration has shown its
gratitude by promising there will be plenty of posts for Iraqi exiles in the
interim government.

Some argue that it's too simplistic to say this war is about oil. They're
right. It's about oil, water, roads, trains, phones, ports and drugs. And if
this process isn't halted, "free Iraq" will be the most sold country on
earth.

It's no surprise that so many multinationals are lunging for Iraq's untapped
market. It's not just that the reconstruction will be worth as much as $100
billion; it's also that "free trade" by less violent means hasn't been going
that well lately. More and more developing countries are rejecting
privatization, while the Free Trade Area of the Americas, Bush's top trade
priority, is wildly unpopular across Latin America. World Trade Organization
talks on intellectual property, agriculture and services have all bogged
down amid accusations that America and Europe have yet to make good on past
promises.

So what is a recessionary, growth-addicted superpower to do? How about
upgrading Free Trade Lite, which wrestles market access through backroom
bullying, to Free Trade Supercharged, which seizes new markets on the
battlefields of pre-emptive wars? After all, negotiations with sovereign
nations can be hard. Far easier to just tear up the country, occupy it, then
rebuild it the way you want. Bush hasn't abandoned free trade, as some have
claimed, he just has a new doctrine: "Bomb before you buy."

It goes further than one unlucky country. Investors are openly predicting
that once privatization of Iraq takes root, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait
will be forced to compete by privatizing their oil. "In Iran, it would just
catch like wildfire," S. Rob Sobhani, an energy consultant, told the Wall
Street Journal. Soon, America may have bombed its way into a whole new
free-trade zone.

So far, the press debate over the reconstruction of Iraq has focused on fair
play: It is "exceptionally maladroit," in the words of the European Union's
Commissioner for External Relations, Chris Patten, for the United States to
keep all the juicy contracts for itself. It has to learn to share:
ExxonMobil should invite France's TotalFinaElf to the most lucrative
oilfields; Bechtel should give Britain's Thames Water a shot at the sewer
contracts.

But while Patten may find US unilateralism galling and Tony Blair may be
calling for UN oversight, on this matter it's beside the point. Who cares
which multinationals get the best deals in Iraq's post-Saddam, pre-democracy
liquidation sale? What does it matter if the privatizing is done
unilaterally by Washington or multilaterally by the United States, Europe,
Russia and China?

Entirely absent from this debate are the Iraqi people, who might--who
knows?--want to hold on to a few of their assets. Iraq will be owed massive
reparations after the bombing stops, but without any real democratic
process, what is being planned is not reparations, reconstruction or
rehabilitation. It is robbery: mass theft disguised as charity;
privatization without representation.

A people, starved and sickened by sanctions, then pulverized by war, is
going to emerge from this trauma to find that their country has been sold
out from under them. They will also discover that their newfound
"freedom"--for which so many of their loved ones perished--comes
pre-shackled with irreversible economic decisions that were made in
boardrooms while the bombs were still falling.

They will then be told to vote for their new leaders, and welcomed to the
wonderful world of democracy.


http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/17/international/worldspecial/17CAPI.html

*  BUSH URGING U.N. TO LIFT SANCTIONS IMPOSED ON IRAQ
by Richard W. Stevenson with Felicity Barringer
New York Times, 16th April

ST. LOUIS, April 16 ‹ Having declared Saddam Hussein's rule to be ended,
President Bush called on the United Nations today to lift economic sanctions
on Iraq, moving to allow greater sales of Iraqi oil to help pay for its
reconstruction.

In a speech here that combined elements of a campaign appearance with a
solemn remembrance of lives lost in Iraq and a restatement of his foreign
policy principles, Mr. Bush said that "the regime of Saddam Hussein has
passed into history" and that it was time to end more than 12 years of
sanctions, which have all but halted international trade with Iraq.

"Now that Iraq is liberated, the United Nations should lift economic
sanctions on that country," he said.

Ending or suspending the sanctions should make it easier to sell Iraqi oil
and raise money to repair the physical damage from the war and the economic
damage from years of international isolation as well as neglect by Mr.
Hussein. Iraqi oil sales are restricted by the United Nations oil-for-food
program.

But dropping the sanctions would require a Security Council vote. Raising
the issue before the Council sets the stage for more debate, if not another
diplomatic battle with France, Germany and Russia over the administration of
postwar Iraq, the status of commercial contracts with Iraq and the awarding
of reconstruction contracts.

Administration officials have not drafted a resolution to end sanctions.

"If you ask me, do we have a specific language or specific resolution to
propose at this specific moment in time, the answer is no," Ambassador John
D. Negroponte said at the United Nations. He said the specifics were still
being discussed in Washington.

Scott McClellan, deputy White House press secretary, told reporters that the
administration would seek a resolution "in the near future" that would help
Iraq "restore a normal trading relationship with the global economy."

As recently as Tuesday, the Security Council committee monitoring the
temporary operations of the oil-for-food program was consumed with debates
over which contracts would be honored to buy food, supplies and medicines,
with representatives of Russia and France often at loggerheads with the
United States and Britain, according to two participants in the meeting.
Still, some diplomats sent signals that they wanted to find common ground on
Iraq and dispel the bitterness left by differences over military action
against it.

One option, some Council diplomats suggested, would be to pass a resolution
suspending sanctions, but delay a decision to lift them. It was unclear what
effect that would have on the legal status of the oil-for-food program,
which tightly regulates the use of Iraqi oil revenues.

Before leaving for the speech here and then a long holiday weekend at his
ranch in Crawford, Tex., Mr. Bush lowered the domestic terrorism alert level
to yellow from orange, where it had been for a month.

He also signed the $79 billion spending bill passed by Congress to pay for
the war and the initial reconstruction costs in Iraq. The war has cost more
than $20 billion so far, and Pentagon officials are projecting costs of $2
billion a month through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year, a senior
Defense Department official said today. Those figures do not include the
costs of postwar reconstruction.

Dov Zakheim, the Defense Department comptroller, said military operations
had cost more than $10 billion, personnel and personnel support costs had
approached $7 billion, and munitions and equipment costs had topped $3
billion.

The 1991 Persian Gulf war cost about $60 billion, Pentagon officials said,
but most of that was repaid by Kuwait, neighboring Persian Gulf states and
other allies.

Appearing before an audience of about 1,000 Boeing workers in a fighter-jet
assembly plant here, Mr. Bush said the successes of the United States
military "begin right here on the factory floors," a crowd-pleasing line
that he used to turn the subject to his tax cut plan. He called early this
year for a tax cut worth $726 billion over the next decade, but opposition
from Democrats and some Republicans in Congress has left him with a
difficult fight to win a tax cut of more than $350 billion.

"I have sent to the Congress a jobs and growth package that will reduce the
burden on our taxpayers, that will give you more of your money in your
pocket so you get to decide how to save or invest and spend," the president
said. "In order for all Americans who are looking for work to find work, the
Congress must pass this jobs package as soon as they come back from their
recess."

Asked whether the move to lift the sanctions was a signal that the war was
over, Mr. McClellan said the military had made "tremendous progress, but
there are still objectives that we are working to accomplish."

These include finding any chemical or biological weapons developed under Mr.
Hussein. Mr. Bush only glancingly mentioned the banned weapons, which were
his primary rationale for going to war with Iraq. Instead, he focused on
freeing Iraqis from a government that he said had imprisoned children,
tortured dissidents and built palaces for its leaders instead of hospitals
for its citizens.

"In Iraq, the world is witnessing something dramatic and something
important," he said. "We're seeing the deep and universal desire of men and
women to live in freedom."

He did not mention Syria today, after it figured prominently in
administration addresses in the last few days, but in Washington, Secretary
of State Colin L. Powell said he would probably travel to Damascus at some
point to "have very candid and straightforward discussions" with President
Bashar al-Assad.

After having redefined American foreign policy after the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks to focus on pre-empting threats to the United States, Mr. Bush today
gave equal weight to ending repression.

"American interests and American founding beliefs lead in the same
direction," he said. "We stand for human liberty."

Mr. Bush pointed to the meeting on Tuesday in Ur, Iraq, of leaders from
across Iraq as evidence of progress in bringing stability to the country.
"They even had some protesters outside the meeting, a sure sign of freedom,"
he said with a smile.

Mr. Bush's appearance here reflected a White House effort to put the
president's wartime popularity to use on behalf of his domestic agenda, and
his political standing heading into the 2004 campaign, without giving up his
above-the-partisan-fray role as commander in chief.

He was flanked by two F/A-18F fighters, a warplane that flew strikes against
Iraq, and he spent much of his address discussing the defeat of Iraq's
military and the collapse of Mr. Hussein's government.

"By a combination of creative strategies and advanced technology, we are
redefining war on our terms," Mr. Bush said. "Terrorists and tyrants have
now been put on notice: they can no longer feel safe hiding behind innocent
lives."

Mr. Bush paid tribute to the courage and skill of American and allied
military personnel, and especially to those who were killed, saying "these
are the men and women who our nation will honor forever."

But while Mr. Bush used the event to show his concern for the American
economy, he also has to worry about economic stability in Iraq, which the
White House hopes can be transformed into a model of democratic capitalism
in the Middle East.

The sanctions are the basis for nearly all the United Nations' ties to Iraq
‹ its control of billions of dollars of oil revenue, its control of the
goods and services purchased by the Iraqi government, and its distribution
of food staples relied on by at least 60 percent of the Iraqi population.

The sanctions were imposed against the nation of Iraq, not against any
particular government, so they may be lifted before a new government is
created.

With sanctions gone, the United Nations would have no legal authority in
Iraq, other than what the allied forces give it. The $2.9 billion now in an
escrow account would no longer be under United Nations control, and oil
sales and other imports and exports could proceed without United Nations
supervision.

The resolutions can be abrogated by passing another resolution. But since
they were imposed to disarm Mr. Hussein, revoking them means finding that
Iraq is free of illegal weapons. The resolutions allow, but may not require,
the Council to rely on the judgment of United Nations weapons inspectors.
Hans Blix, a chief weapons inspector, is to meet with the Council on
Tuesday.


http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=focusIraqNews&storyID=2580306

*  INSURANCE WORRIES DELAY IRAQ RECONSTRUCTION DEAL
by Andrea Shalal-Esa
Reuters, 16th April

WASHINGTON: Concerns over excessive liability risks have delayed a $600
million contract to rebuild Iraq's schools, roads and hospitals that the
U.S. government had hoped to award last week.

Two privately-held firms -- Bechtel Group Inc., based in San Francisco, and
Pasadena, California-based Parsons Corp. -- are vying for the contract to be
awarded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

A panel of government experts is now reviewing federal law 85-804, which
allows agencies to indemnify, or offer extra insurance to contractors, in
cases involving unusually hazardous risks, according to sources familiar
with the talks.

The officials are trying to determine if the law would allow USAID to offer
such extra insurance, or whether President Bush might have to issue another
executive order like the one he issued to cover certain homeland security
contracts awarded after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Another option would be to ask Congress to pass a law providing such
protections in certain cases, although this would probably take months,
congressional aides said.

The sources did not predict how quickly the matter would be resolved, but
said they were seeking expedited action.

"The goal is to move forward as quickly as we can," said one source, who
asked not to be named.

Typically, a contractor's negotiations with the government about application
of this particular law take months, industry and legal experts said.

Officials at USAID were not available to comment on the insurance issue.

Officials at Bechtel and Parsons declined comment, saying they would not
discuss any current contract still being negotiated.

Public law 85-804 allows an agency to indemnify a deal when there is a
national emergency; the contract would facilitate the national defense; or
the president has specifically authorized the agency to enter into such
contracts.

Bush's executive order on homeland security contracts would not apply in
this case, the sources said, since it referred to procurement of
anti-terrorism products and services.

Industry sources said such extra protection is not generally offered to
companies engaged in post-war reconstruction. For instance, the danger of
possible mines is one that could be reasonably expected in a post-war
situation.

But in Iraq, they said, companies faced myriad unknown challenges, including
the possibility that they could stumble upon a cache of weapons of mass
destruction.

The possible consequences of such a discovery were so dangerous that
insurers would not agree to provide insurance, or the insurance premium
would exceed any possible profit from the project, they noted.

In those cases, if the government still needed the work done, it could opt
to insure the project itself.

Without adequate insurance, a company could face costly third-party
lawsuits, and possibly bankruptcy, industry officials said.




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