25 June 2003
Nations Rally Around Iraq Reconstruction
(Iraqis say they leave U.N. session with hope for future) (1310) By Judy Aita Washington File United Nations Correspondent United Nations -- Describing it as a rallying of the international community around Iraq, international aid officials announced June 24 that the United Nations will hold a high-level donors conference later this year to help long-term reconstruction projects in Iraq during 2004. At the end of an all day planning session attended by 52 nations, U.N. agencies, the World Bank, IMF, and representatives of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq, Mark Malloch Brown, administrator of the U.N. Development Program (UNDP), said there was widespread agreement on the necessity to fund wide-ranging reconstruction projects in 2004. The United States, the European Union, Japan, and the United Arab Emirates have agreed to sponsor the donor conference. The United Nations Development Group and the World Bank agreed to co-sponsor needs assessment missions to compile information for the conference, which will be held in mid-October at a date and venue to be announced later. The provisional authority will be responsible for presenting a preliminary budget for 2004 that will include estimates of oil and other revenues. The needs assessments will cover health, education, agriculture and food, housing, transport and communication, mine action, water supply and sanitation, employment, institutional capacity building and rule of law, public sector management, investment climate and trade, and the banking and financial sectors. The session was part of a two-day conference on Iraq that focused on both immediate humanitarian and longer-term reconstruction needs. On June 23 the U.N. launched an appeal for $259 million to add to an initial appeal of $2.2 billion to meet Iraq's humanitarian needs through the end of the year. At the appeal there was a "binding of the hearts" around the humanitarian needs in Iraq, Malloch Brown said at a press conference June 24. "Reconstruction calls for a 'meeting of the minds' -- a real agreement on a common vision" for the future of Iraq, and that was clearly evident at the UNDP session, he said. Calling it "an extraordinary meeting of minds," Malloch Brown said that the conference demonstrated that nations -- regardless of their stance before the war -- are now "united around the issue of building as quickly as possible an Iraq which is back on its own feet, politically independent, under its own government, with the kind of economic potential unleashed that its status as the world's second biggest oil country should allow." U.S. Under Secretary of State for Economic and Agricultural Affairs Alan Larson said the United States "did not come into this conference with a view about trying to set out a formulaic approach to burden sharing. We leave very pleased that there was an expressed willingness by all the participants to be part of a process that is helping our Iraqi friends reclaim their country after 25 years of what was called 'mis-development' and bad governance." Jan Louis Sarbib, World Bank vice president for Middle East and North Africa, said that "the atmospherics of this meeting really gave us a sense the international community is rallying behind the people of Iraq to help them reconstruct their country." Sarbib said that the Iraqi members of the CPA delegation talked "about hope, about the future for themselves and their children and, in a small way, this is a step in reconnecting the people of Iraq, which for decades have been isolated from the rest of the world -- a rapidly changing world, with the rest of the world." Nasreem Sideek Barwari, interim regional minister for reconstruction and development and a member of the CPA delegation, said that her impression was of a "positive, forward-looking two days." "We will go back with great hope that we will tell our people, our communities about the commitment for the future," Barwari said. "Definitely we are looking forward to the next step and being heavily engaged in the process of planning for the rebuilding of our country." Planning for the future "is a good message for the Iraqi people," she said, "that will give them hope to go and to maybe tolerate the inefficiencies and limited [services] -- be it a few hours of electricity or less liters of water." Malloch Brown said that "behind this whole meeting lay the sense that there is only one way to go on all of this -- which is forward -- despite the difficulties" such as security. He reported that the other participants said that attacks on coalition forces and looting cannot be reasons to postpone reconstruction. "Insecurity makes it very hard for us to do our job of needs assessment, let alone for the broader environment to be in place for sustained development and the stable evolution of Iraqi society," said Malloch Brown. "Yet on the other hand, without economic and political change it becomes very hard to really tackle the roots of that insecurity -- the large-scale demobilization of former soldiers without jobs and incomes to go to contributes to this insecurity as does other absence of jobs and opportunity in the country." Sarbib said that "the challenges are immense" for both Iraq and the international community. "They are a combination of the challenges of reconstructing an economy which has been damaged not so much by the immediate conflict but by 30 years of economic mismanagement, 30 years of deferred maintenance, 30 years of not paying attention to an infrastructure which is crumbling and, in many ways, has been not been fixed in a lot of years. So to the immediate damage of the war, the looting and the sabotage you have to also add the years of neglect that preceded it," Sarbib said. Added to the reconstruction challenge "is the transition from a economy that was very controlled -- where prices bear no resemblance to the realities of the market or the prices at the border of Iraq -- to one that is open to the rest of the world and to do this in a way to protect the people of Iraq" from the inevitable social turbulence that comes from such transitions, he said. At a press conference June 25, Ramiro Lopes Da Silva, U.N. Coordinator for Iraq, said that looking toward a mid-October date for the reconstruction conference was necessary to give time for the formation of an interim Iraqi administration. "The U.N. wants an interim Iraqi administration in place with whom we can engage in working the reconstruction plan. For that to happen we need to give time for the political process being developed by the Coalition Provisional Authority to mature and those organs representing the Iraqi interim administration established and functioning," Da Silva said. "We, the United Nations, do not engage in any reconstruction plan in any country if we don't have the citizens of that country in the driver's seat, and to have them in the driver's seat you need to have a leadership to interpret the aspirations and expectations of the Iraqi people. It is not for us, the foreigners, to guess what those aspirations and expectations are. We should be playing a supporting role," he said. "That is very much in line with the work plan of the Coalition Provisional Authority," Da Silva added. On the humanitarian projects, Da Silva said that because the southern part of Iraq was neglected more than the rest of the country during the Saddam Hussein regime, a large portion of the $259 million additional funds will be targeted to the southernmost governates around Basra, particularly in the health, water and sanitation, and mine removal programs. (The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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