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Business looks to USAid rather than UN for business in Iraq
Edited
If you flush a toilet in Iraq, the water flows into sewers designed and built by French companies.
My, how appropriate.
If you work on a farm there, the machinery you used was is likely to be supplied from France. This is because France works within the United Nation's oil-for-food program. Under the program, the UN keeps the billions of dollars that Iraq made makes from oil sales in an account. Iraq decides the companies it wants and the UN was is asked to approve the contracts. Iraq has strongly preferred dealing with France in recent years.
And I'm sure we'll be finding out more details about this in the coming months.
The UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, suspended the oil-for-food program before the war. Although the Security Council has let the UN manage it for another 45 days (to prevent the Iraqi people starving or dying for lack of medical care) there are doubts about how the program will operate if the US, Britain and Australia win the war.
Doubts by whom?
France and Russia are opposed to allowing US control of the oil money, believing the US will use it to rebuild Iraq using mostly American and British companies.
Something tells me we made that pretty clear before the war started
USAid, the US aid agency, began funding American firms to handle some of the business of rebuilding Iraq. Other contracts, worth several hundred million dollars, are yet to be announced. US federal law requires that USAid contracts are granted to American companies, but those firms can sub-contract to international firms.
SMH managed to spew usual doom and gloom about how Australian companies feared they wouldn't be able to compete with US and EU for these contracts, while simultaneously noting that ...
Mr Vaile said some Australian firms were well placed to contribute to postwar reconstruction. He singled out the construction firm Multiplex, "almost the contractor of choice" in the Middle East.
The business markets revealing their expected outcome of the war and the future of the UN.
Posted by: Anonymous 2003-03-29
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=12096