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To: LLCF who wrote (30744)	4/3/2003 5:14:06 PM
From: maceng2	Respond to of 74559

I don't. Well, I could easily agree that all wars are a mistake. HCM also bears some of the responsibility in that direction imho. There was some very generous gestures made by the USA government at the time. Of course the history of that war stretches back some time before the 1960's. But what about Iraqi oil? Here is an update from FT.. US seeks Muslim to restore oil industry news.ft.com The US is considering asking a prominent Muslim to become the most senior foreigner to guide Iraq's oil industry after the fall of Saddam Hussein. US policymakers are struggling to convince the Iraqi people and the Arab world that Washington did not go to war to wrest control of Iraq's oil from its people, analysts said. To overcome that hurdle, senior Bush administration officials are discussing the appointment of a Muslim - who would come from outside the Gulf region but be a respected figure in the oil world - to help guide any new Iraqi oil minister. Possible candidates for such a job could be Chakib Khelil, Algeria's oil minister, who has experience working for Shell and Phillips Petroleum in the US. He has also worked for the World Bank for almost two decades, most recently as petroleum adviser. Hassan Marican, president and chief operating officer of Petronas, the Indonesian oil company, is another widely respected possible choice. However, tapping such leaders would be difficult in the current climate, where many Muslims are afraid of being seen as a puppet of the US. Much will depend on how much resentment is stirred up by the US-led siege of Baghdad. Any new Iraqi administration would need the support of hundreds of Iraqi engineers, managers and oil industry workers. "These are very capable people, but they are very nationalistic and oil is central to that," said one analyst. Running Iraq's oil company is widely expected to be left to an Iraqi executive, although the administration is said to have approached Philip Carroll, a former US executive for Shell, to help guide the development of Iraq's upstream sector. US oil companies have quietly begun to lobby for a transparent system to be put in place to facilitate oil deals by western companies in any post-Hussein regime. Valerie Marcel, senior research fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA), points to the example of Sudan, where Washington has put pressure on companies to leave because of the country's ongoing religious persecution and war. "If you look at what happened there, the only ones left are the Chinese and Indians; the Canadians and ChevronTexaco had to get out," she says. Russian companies would also be at an advantage over companies such as Royal Dutch/Shell, ExxonMobil and BP, which are based in the US and UK and are held to higher standards. But under a transparent legal and fiscal system, companies such as BP and Shell would have more to offer, said Ms Marcel.