Iraq holding onto rebuilding funds: US

[maddezmom]

Source: Australian Associated Press

Iraq holding onto rebuilding funds: US
Iraq's government is sitting on about $US12.5 billion ($A15.46 billion) in rebuilding funds from its own 2006 budget because it lacks the tools and expertise to spend the money, a senior US official says.

~snip~
(Satterfield)He said Iraq had held onto the funds because it lacked the "capacity" to execute its budget, but he argued that a recent request to the US Congress for an additional $US4 billion ($A4.95 billion) would help address this problem.

Legislators from the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs subcommittee rejected Satterfield's suggestion the Iraqis did not have the know-how to execute their own budget.

~snip~

Exactly four years ago, then Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who now heads the World Bank, predicted to Congress that Iraq would "soon" be able to pay for its own reconstruction via oil funds.

"Well, four years and $US21 billion ($A26 billion) into US assistance later, reality seems more like not relatively soon but relatively never," said Ackerman. "The government of Iraq is apparently either unable or unwilling to assume the burden of its own reconstruction."



Read more: http://au.news.yahoo.com/070327/2/12wls.html

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27 March 2007

Iraq Making Political, Economic Progress, U.S. Official Says
State’s Satterfield cites Iraq's advances in reconciliation, development

By David McKeeby
USINFO Staff Writer



Washington – Iraq’s elected leaders are making progress toward political reconciliation, economic development and improved relations with neighbors, says a top U.S. official.

In a March 27 speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, David Satterfield, senior adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and coordinator for Iraq, said Iraqi officials are making a “vigorous and comprehensive” effort to seek compromise and bridge differences among the Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish communities to create “a new national basis for a common future.”

The most important example of the reconciliation agenda’s progress, Satterfield said, was Iraq’s recently completed draft hydrocarbon law, a key benchmark recently approved by the Council of Ministers that will be submitted to the Iraqi Council of Representatives in a few weeks.

The law, which outlines foreign investment and the national and local government’s roles in developing the country’s estimated 115 billion barrels of oil reserves, was the result of intensive negotiation. Satterfield said this demonstrates that internal differences exacerbated by decades of political repression are not irreconcilable and can be resolved through the democratic process.

more: http://usinfo.state.gov/utils/printpage.html

interesting the order in which the emphasis is in this speech. :eyes:

[Erika]

1. So I wonder whom amongst our needy will be denied funding

so this reconstruction will continue. Wolfowitz screwed Americans with the full knowledge of the Bush administration.

[Up2Late]

2. Another $4Billion to get things going? Now THAT'S a big Bribe!

Maybe someone at State should turn off Fox "news" and go visit Iraq and check out the "ground truth."

[izzie]

3. Guess they need a few GOP people in their to show them how

Has any one ever seen a group of so called MBA's running a govt. as they have these last 6 years and done such a job? From the army, to NIH to Smithsonian not a thing is run right and all the top guys seem to be skimming off the top. Funny I knew this would happen when Bush came in. Look at his history of short cuts and messy business deals and you knew like people would come with him.

[rodeodance]

4. I wonder if the $$ is really there?--actually exists??