WASHINGTON - The Bush administration on Thursday sent its expert on international economic issues to Iraq and other countries in preparation for a conference to secure financial commitments to rebuild Iraq.
John Taylor, the Treasury Department's undersecretary for international affairs, was scheduled to make a quick stop in Paris on Friday before flying on to Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan and Jordan, Treasury spokesman Tony Fratto said.
Taylor was scheduled to return to the United States for a June 24 meeting of potential donor countries. The meeting in New York is being jointly sponsored by the United States and the United Nations.
Fratto said the administration hopes the June 24 discussions will lay the groundwork for a conference of actual donors later this summer.
The United States is looking for sizable support from other rich countries as well as international lending organizations to contribute resources to rebuild Iraq's shattered economy.
International Monetary Fund spokesman Thomas Dawson told reporters Thursday that the 184-nation international lending agency currently has its own fact-finding mission in Baghdad gathering information on reconstruction needs. He said other IMF officials working outside Iraq were trying to get an accurate account of the size of the nation's foreign debt.
Dawson said the IMF teams hope to present a preliminary report to the agency's executive board within the next two weeks.
In addition to new loans from the IMF and World Bank, the Bush administration is negotiating with other wealthy nations to restructure Iraq's outstanding loans on more favorable terms that would give the country breathing room.
In Baghdad, Taylor was expected to met with the administration's financial point man on Iraqi reconstruction, Peter McPherson, as well as the top overseer of the entire coalition reconstruction effort, L. Paul Bremer.
Taylor will "review progress and discuss planning going forward," Fratto said.
In Afghanistan, Taylor will check on that country's progress in rebuilding. In Jordan he will attend the World Economic Forum, where regional economic development issues and Iraqi reconstruction will be discussed, Fratto said.
LONDON (Reuters) - Kurdish parties in northern Iraq agreed Thursday to merge their regional administrations in a move intended to give them a united voice after the U.S.-led war that ousted Saddam Hussein, Kurdish television said.
The political leaders of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan endorsed a plan to unify their authorities, according to a report by the KDP's satellite television channel, monitored by the BBC.
KDP leader Massoud Barzani and PUK head Jalal Talabani attended a meeting in Dukan, northern Iraq, to set up a committee to oversee the unification of their administrations, which are run from Arbil and Sulaimaniya respectively.
"The two sides stressed that the unification of the two administrations was another important step toward uniting the two sides' stances regarding all developments and eventualities," the BBC quoted the television as saying.
Iraq's Kurds share control of the mountainous area through their parallel, cooperating administrations.
They acquired de facto autonomy from Saddam's rule in Baghdad thanks to U.S. air cover following the 1991 Gulf War. But rivalry between the KDP and PUK flared into war in the mid-1990s until a U.S.-brokered cease-fire in 1997.
Kurdish leaders have put aside ambitions for a separate state in return for U.S. assurances of a fair deal from the Arab majority in post-Saddam Iraq.
U.S. ally Turkey fears a united Kurdish state in its southern neighbor, Iraq, could fuel demands for a separate state among its own 12 million Kurds, mainly in the southeast of the country.