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

To: tekboy who wrote (102432)	6/22/2003 11:23:36 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Bremer Broaches Plans For Iraq's Oil Revenue Money Should Be 'Shared by All Iraqis,' He Says By Rajiv Chandrasekaran Washington Post Foreign Service Monday, June 23, 2003; Page A17 The "Alaska" approach. Good Politics. Bad Economics. DEAD SEA, Jordan, June 22 -- As Iraq began shipping crude oil today for the first time since the start of the war, the U.S. administrator of the country broached the politically sensitive issue of how oil revenue should be spent, proposing that some of the money be shared with Iraqis through a system of dividend payments or a national trust fund to finance public pensions. The civilian administrator, L. Paul Bremer, told members of the World Economic Forum, who gathered at a Dead Sea resort to discuss Iraq and other Middle East issues, that Iraq would need a "humane social safety net" to ease the transition from the centrally planned, socialist system of former president Saddam Hussein to a free-market economy. "Iraq's resources cannot be restricted to a lucky or powerful few," Bremer said. "Iraq's natural resources should be shared by all Iraqis." Many Iraqis fear that the U.S. postwar occupation authority, which Bremer heads, would control how the revenue is spent and would award oil contracts to U.S. firms. In an interview, Bremer dismissed those fears as unfounded and said he hoped his proposal would "help pop that particular balloon." "It says to Iraqis, 'This is what I get from my country's oil,' " he said on a military plane transporting him back to Baghdad. Bremer said one option would pay Iraqis annual dividends based on the year's oil sales, a system used in Alaska. Another option, he said, would be to deposit the oil revenue into a trust fund to create a social security system. Either way, he said in a speech at the conference, "every individual Iraqi would come to understand [that] his or her stake in the country's economic success was there to see." In Turkey, workers at the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan began loading 1 million barrels of Iraqi crude oil purchased by Turkey onto a tanker that would be taken to a refinery on the Aegean coast. About 8 million barrels of Iraqi crude have been sitting at the port since exports ceased on March 20. Although Iraq's State Oil Marketing Organization, which is operating under control of the U.S. occupation authority, wanted to start sales shortly after the war, it had to wait for U.N. export sanctions to be lifted and for oil companies to bid for the crude. Thamir Ghadban, Iraq's acting oil minister, said he hoped oil production would reach 1.5 million barrels a day by the end of the summer. The resumption of production was hampered by the looting and sabotage of production facilities, he said. On Saturday, alleged saboteurs set off an explosion that cut a large natural gas pipeline west of Baghdad. Bremer said he expected Iraq to sell about $5 billion worth of oil by the end of the year. After commissions and payments to a reparations fund to compensate Kuwait for the Iraqi invasion in 1990, he said Iraq would likely receive $3.5 billion, which would be deposited in a fund to pay for development projects. Bremer said he did not anticipate the creation of a dividend or social security system this year. He also said he wanted the issue to be discussed among Iraqi political leaders before a decision was made. He did not specify how much of Iraq's annual oil revenue should be set aside for such purposes. "This resource belongs to the Iraqi people," he said in the interview. "It's really up to them." Hundreds of conference attendees, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, crowded into a large, sweltering tent to listen to Bremer, who was dressed in a blue pinstripe suit with tan combat boots. In a subsequent panel discussion, Amr Moussa, the secretary general of the Arab League, said Arab nations were "ready to help" with the reconstruction of Iraq and would even assist with security "under a U.N. banner." Moussa's comments were regarded by participants and analysts as a sign that Arab nations might play a more active role in Iraq's reconstruction. But Moussa also urged the United States to speed up the process of transferring political authority to Iraqis, something Bremer said he intended to do in a measured way to avoid Hussein loyalists and Muslim fundamentalists from grabbing positions of power. "We want to see an Iraqi government, call it interim, call it transitory," Moussa said. "We want an Iraqi government and we want to deal with them as soon as possible." washingtonpost.com

To: tekboy who wrote (102432)	6/23/2003 9:17:46 AM
From: KLP	Respond to of 281500

MP3 Audio files: Foreign Policy issue Sept-Oct 2001 Interviews with former US military leaders on recent terrorist attacks... Including: Present in the interview with FP Editor Moises Naim were four of America’s most respected and influential former military leaders: Army Major General William Nash (Ret.), former commander of the Army’s 1st Infantry Division and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations; Navy Admiral William Owens (Ret.), former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and author of Lifting the Fog of War (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000); Marine Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper (Ret.), former assistant commandant of the Marine Corps and former president of the Marine Corps University; and Air Force General Charles Boyd (Ret.), former deputy commander in chief of the U.S. European Command, former executive director of the Hart-Rudman Commission and current director at the Council on Foreign Relations. foreignpolicy.com Any place for written transcripts of these?