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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Win Smith who wrote (67821)	1/22/2003 7:18:09 PM
From: mistermj	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

U.S. Promises to Hold Iraqi Oil 'In Trust' story.news.yahoo.com WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) promised that a U.S. military occupation would hold Iraq's oilfields "in trust" for the Iraqi people. In an interview with U.S. newspapers on Tuesday, released by the State Department on Wednesday, Powell said the Bush administration was studying different models for managing the Iraqi oil industry if the United States invades. "If we are the occupying power, it will be held for the benefit of the Iraqi people and it will be operated for the benefit of the Iraqi people," he said. "How will we operate it? How best to do that? We are studying different models. But the one thing I can assure you of is that it will be held in trust for the Iraqi people, to benefit the Iraqi people. That is a legal obligation that the occupying power will have," he added. Powell said the U.S. military would not want to run Iraq for long after a possible invasion but he declined to speculate how long U.S. troops would stay in the country. "There is no desire for the United States armed forces to remain in charge or to run a country for any length of time beyond that which is necessary to make sure that there is an appropriate form of government to take over from the initial military occupation," he said. ((Reporting by Jonathan Wright, editing by Sonya Hepinstall; Reuters Messaging: jonathan.wright.reuters.com@reuters.net; email jonathan.wright@reuters.com; +1 202 898 8393)

To: Win Smith who wrote (67821)	1/22/2003 8:54:23 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Thanks, Win. Good to have that post on the record. No doubt, we'll get back to all this when the hearings really heat up. Or, we may not. I'm not certain this thread can handle that much explosiveness. And then there is the sometimes plaintive cry of what does this all have to do with foreign affairs. My argument on that point, admittedly not the strongest argument around, is that the decision to renominate Pickering derives from the Bush political strategy of winking and nodding southward. And one can make the case as I'm considering doing, that his foreign policy has some elements of the same. Not the racism but a deliberate appeal to a certain kind of very militaristic Southern culture. I make that last bit of qualifying because I don't consider that true of Southern culture in some generic sense.