The German government is funding and helping to produce daily radio programmes for the upcoming Iraqi elections, the German Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday in a statement. | Color me pleased. Thanks, Germany! |
A team of 25 young Iraqi reporters has been trained to produce election stories under a programme by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, which has close links to German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democratic Party (SPD). The reporters, based across Iraq, produce radio news casts that are sent via internet to Berlin where they are put together into 30 minute radio packages by a German-Iraqi team and then sent back to Iraq via satellite, said the statement. These news packages have been broadcast since Monday by Radio Dijila, the Voice of Kurdistan and Kerbala FM. Germany has provided EUR 150,000 for the radio programming which will run five days a week in the run-up to Iraq's planned elections on 30 January. Berlin is sending aid to Iraq and played a leading role in winning a deal last month to forgive 80 percent of Iraq's USD 39 billion of foreign debt owed to the Paris club of creditor nations. Germany is also training Iraqi police and military officers under a programme being run in the United Arab Emirates. |