Posted on 01/12/2004 11:04:09 AM PST by Calpernia
Iraqi letters and packages soon will feature updated postage stamps without the face of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein.
The new stamps will be issued Jan. 15, Dan Senor, senior Coalition Provisional Authority spokesman, told reporters during a Jan. 10 press conference in Baghdad.
Haydar al-Abadi, the Iraqi minister of communication, and Iraqi Postmaster General Ibraheem Kuhdair announced the new stamp that day, Senor said. The new stamp will be the first Iraqi postal stamp issued since the April 9, 2003, fall of Saddam Hussein's government, the U.S. official pointed out.
Five million new stamps, Senor said, will become available for purchase at post offices across Iraq starting Jan. 15.
The updated stamps depict images of old-fashioned Iraqi transportation. The new, first-to-be-issued 100-dinar stamp, for example, shows an Iraqi being transported via horse-drawn carriage. Additional stamp designs with different denominations, Senor said, will debut in the weeks and months ahead.
Senor said about 80 percent of the 275 Iraqi post offices that were operational before the war are again open for business. And Iraq and Kuwait recently signed a contract to exchange international mail, Senor pointed out, the first such agreement made between the two nations since the 1991 Gulf War.
Almost the entire Iraqi postal system work force – about 3,000 employees – had returned to work by the end of July, Senor said.
In the months ahead, Senor noted, the new Iraqi postal system will develop a postal code system and digitized services through the implementation of new technology.
Senor said Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III, administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, plans to send a short note to President Bush in an envelope bearing a new Iraqi stamp.
About 90 percent of the postage stamps issued by the deposed regime were destroyed because they featured images of Saddam Hussein, according to a CPA news release.
Iraqi letters and packages soon will feature updated postage stamps without the face of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein.
Good memory Skylark!
On October 15, 2003 Iraq got a new currency to replace Iraq’s two currencies, one of which was easily counterfeited and mostly circulated in a single denomination. Banks issue only the new currency and government employees paid in cash will receive their salaries in the new currency. Until January 15, 2004 the old and new currencies will circulate freely at a fixed exchange rate. Exchange between the old and new currencies is conducted at now charge at multiple exchange points around the country.
The other financial market structures are strong:
95 percent of all pre-war bank customers have service and first-time customers are opening accounts daily. Iraqi banks are making loans to finance businesses. The central bank is fully independent. Iraq has one of the world’s most growth-oriented investment and banking laws.
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