Delegation From Postwar Iraq Grilled By UN Press

by Thalif Deen

"Who do you really represent?" asked one reporter. "And who paid for your trip to the United Nations?"

Another reporter asked if they were former Iraqi officials who had switched loyalties from the regime of ousted president Saddam Hussein to the U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA).

The answers came mostly -- and hesitatingly -- from Akila Al Hashimi, a spokesperson for the Iraq Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Conscious of the presence of U.S. officials, who appeared to have coached her in advance of Tuesday's press briefing, Al Hashimi fidgeted with her fingers and said, "We are Iraqi technicians working in close cooperation with the Authority. We represent our country."

The U.S. Authority "facilitated" their trip to the United Nations, she added. "We came here to tell everybody that Iraq is back in the international community."

Along with Al Hashimi were Faris Abdulrazzaq Alasam, acting mayor of Baghdad, Fakhridin Rashan of the Ministry of Trade and Nasreen Sideck Barwari, regional minister for reconstruction and development.

The officials were at the United Nations to attend a two-day "informal meeting on the reconstruction and recovery of Iraq."

None of them was willing to admit past ties to the ousted regime in Baghdad. "At the end of the day," said Rashan, "we are technocrats and capable of continuing our work."

Asked about continuing disturbances in Baghdad, Al Hashimi said that "looting and disorder could happen anywhere in the world. It was not as big as the correspondent imagined."

"One day the looting will end," she predicted.

Anti-American and -British violence persists in Iraq, where U.S. troops were killed at an average rate of about one per day in the month of June.

Al Hashimi said she could not estimate when a new Iraqi government would be in place or when the first elections would take place. As soon as an Iraqi government is in place, "everything will be OK," she added.

While she spoke, UN television cameras panned to a U.S. official seated in the audience giving the thumbs-up, evidently pleased with the answers.

At a press conference in Baghdad on Wednesday, the UN Special Representative in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, was emphatic that the United Nations is waiting for local leaders to take charge.

Asked if the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has set a budget for assistance to Iraq, he said: "In the absence of an Iraqi interim administration, and in the absence of an interim minister of finance, neither the IMF, nor the World Bank or any other international organization can actually negotiate with Iraq properly," he said.

"I can safely say that until an interim Iraqi administration is in place, there will be no discussions on substantive issues."

Vieira de Mello also told reporters that numerous fundamental economic and financial issues must be resolved: currency, debt and privatization of state-owned enterprises, the banking system, how to transform the current socialist-based system into a private one.

"These are questions that affect the long-term interests of Iraq and the Iraqi people, and these are issues that international financial institutions and the United Nations wish to discuss with an Iraqi interim administration, and later with an elected government of Iraq," he added.

But the CPA has already announced plans to gradually transform Iraq's state-run economy into a free market economy -- notwithstanding the absence of a legitimate government in Baghdad.

Mark Malloch Brown, administrator of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), told reporters that the informal gathering here Monday and Tuesday was "a meeting of minds." It included representatives of 52 countries, along with senior officials from the IMF, World Bank and the CPA.

A donor conference on Iraq, Malloch Brown said, will be held in October sponsored by the European Union (EU), Japan, the United States, the United Arab Emirates, the IMF, the World Bank and UNDP.

Participants agreed, he added, that by October, the CPA would need to present a budget for 2004, including revenue estimates.

The Authority has projected about $3.5 billion in Iraqi oil revenues for the next six months of this year, and $13 billion for 2004.

But the long-term reconstruction of Iraq is expected to cost close to $100 billion -- far above the country's projected annual oil revenues.