Posted on 04/03/2003 5:06:07 PM PST by blam
US warned that oil cannot provide funds
By David Usborne in New York
04 April 2003
A senior British official at the United Nations warned the United States yesterday that it should think twice before assuming it can administer post-conflict Iraq on its own terms.
Mark Malloch Brown, the director of the UN Development Programme, also said Iraq's crippled oil industry would not finance reconstruction after the war.
His candid remarks preface what is shaping to become another mammoth struggle between the powers in the UN Security Council over the role of the UN in running Iraq and helping it back to self-government. He said: "Maybe there are people in Washington who can't see round the next corner in the road and don't know where it goes, but eventually will."
There is growing alarm in UN circles at what appears to be plans by Washington to install its own government in Iraq, headed by retired Lieutenant-General Jay Garner. He and a group of carefully selected US officials are in Kuwait waiting for the moment to transfer to Baghdad and take over Iraqi ministries.
While Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, has kept fairly quiet about the UN role after the war, Mr Malloch Brown has decided to start speaking out. "We will be pushing to make as international and broad-based as possible the management of humanitarian and reconstruction needs," he said.
He added that achieving agreement on a resolution granting UN powers in Iraq may yet be hard and several weeks away given the bad diplomatic blood spilt when the war started. "The emotions are still high and a lot of damage has been done. But everything drives you back to that little table [in the Security Council] and a new resolution." General Garner, he predicted, "will not be left there indefinitely".
Any attempt by Washington to stifle the UN's role is likely to be resisted by other governments, Mr Malloch Brown asserted. "An international, UN-sanctioned administration of the country is likely to be condoned by many as indispensable," he said.
He quipped that the "triangulated Tony Blair" was "in maximum leg-split" as he attempted to stand by President George Bush while responding to the "European concern for a UN international role for post-conflict Iraq".
He also questioned any US calculations that depend on oil flows from Iraq to bankroll the reconstruction costs.
"My numbers don't add up like theirs do," he said. "The oil industry in Iraq needs a sustained burst of new investment before it can contribute significantly to the capital costs of reconstruction".
It's about corruption. The only reason the really mean it when they say, US Warned That Oil Cannot Provide Funds, is because of the amount these crooks intend to siphon off for themselves.
I'm beginning to really detest Europeans. They harangue us for not bowing to their stupid socialism. When they can't carry their own weight as a result of its attendant bureaucracy, they expect us to defend them for decades and foot the bill for it in lives and treasure. They expect us to do their bidding out of deference to their colonial dominance. Now, as a result of their unwillingness to defend themselves, they feel the frustration of powerlessness. They thus fear and hate us when we do anything other than their bidding, or anything that threatens their welfare state lifestyle to which they have become too accustomed.
Screw Europe. They've done enough damage to this Republic with all their machinations in the Civil War, foisting on us a socialist public school system, dragging us into World Wars to bail their sorry butts, dealing with their destructive colonial legacy, trying to drag us under a Global Government to pay for the mess they've made, and now taking on their cowardice after they've lazily imported so much Islamic labor that they're quaking in their shoes while we fix it.
So now they want a cut out of Iraq's hide?
Well, that was a quick, stay out of this, answer from Dubya.
It has the concomitant advantage of assuring that the USA is seen as giving itself zero preference in the exploitation (and I mean that in a good sense) of Iraq's oil: "An auction of producing oil reserves and prospective oil deposits to the highest bidder, regardless of nationality." He estimates that the producing reserves alone would bring in $100-billion real quick, and much more would follow. He points to the USA experience in selling offshore oil and gas "discovery-production rights" under sealed bid system. We've gotten $110-billion this way since 1954. The Iraqis nonproducing reserves are estimated at 87 billion barrels.
Dr. Adelman concludes that "Iraq has the opportunity to teach the world an invaluable economic lesson about the power of privatization to jump-start a young country's economy. But that's up to them: It's their oil."
There's nobody in the world with the discovery-production knowhow of the American and British oil companies, Adelman says, predicting that "They will be willing to spend the most for such rights and will win most of the bids."
This sounds like an approach that's a winner for the people of Iraq, a public-relations winner for the USA government, and we might even get to laugh at the French being told that their blood-money deals with Saddam are void, but any reasonable costs they've already incurred on actual development can be applied as payment of their bid on that field, if they win it.
This is what comes out of the United Nations at all levels.
The UN stifled its own role! Bush practically pleaded with them to be involved in the war, but they refused! Now they want to dictate terms on the peace?
You almost have to admire the sheer gall.
It's in the agreement which I do not have a copy of. I don't know how to go about getting it.
I agree, lets set up iraq like we did Japan, hand em a constitution and make em stick to it.
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