Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

DATE=12/11/03

TYPE=WORLD OPINION ROUNDUP

NAME=IRAQ CONTRACTS DISPUTE

NUMBER=6-130182

BYLINE=ANDREW GUTHRIE

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

CONTENT=

INTRO: The United States decision to limit the awarding of contracts for rebuilding Iraq to countries that assisted in the U-S-led war is drawing sharp criticism in the foreign press. V-O-A's ___________ has a sampling in this week's World Opinion Roundup.

TEXT: The Bush Administration finds itself in an awkward situation this week. At about the same time President Bush is asking major nations to help Iraq by forgiving its international debt, the Pentagon is precluding many of those nations from bidding on contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq.

The deputy secretary of defense, Paul Wolfowitz, issued a memo stating that only nations that aided in the Iraq war can bid on 18-billion-dollars of reconstruction contracts. That leaves out France, Germany, Russia and Canada, and officials of all those countries were upset by the memo. The reaction was similar in several of the globe's major dailies, such as London's Financial Times, which although Britain is not left out, suggests:

VOICE: The Pentagon's decision . is, to put it mildly, impolitic. The . edict shows yet again the Pentagon's preference for sticking to its own alarmingly overoptimistic postwar scenarios.

TEXT: In France, one of the nations cut off by the decision, Le Figaro complains:

VOICE: What is unpleasant is that this has been done with a degree of rudeness that comes close to provocation.. Anti-Americanism, which we are right to fight, will be awakened.

TEXT: La Repubblica in Rome, while unhappy with the U-S decision, remembers that the offending nations were forewarned.

VOICE: We must give this administration credit for one thing -- of having clearly warned the unruly that to oppose the war would .cost them a high price.

TEXT: Turning to Russia, which is also not being allowed to bid on the contracts for rebuilding to Iraq, Kommersant in Moscow, declares:

VOICE: The . decision . is nothing out of the ordinary. . The Pentagon's logic is quite clear. Choosing between stick and carrot in its relations with the new Entente, the U-S has picked the former.

TEXT: In Warsaw, the Polish paper Fakt wonders:

VOICE: .whether the Americans will prove equally tough when it comes to rewarding their most faithful allies. Poland still hopes to get Iraqi contracts.

TEXT: In Spain, the daily El Mundo in Madrid says:

VOICE: That a country which proclaims itself the champion of commercial freedom stigmatizes certain companies because of the foreign policies of their governments is a real aberration.

TEXT: In Canada, the National Post says:

VOICE: Magnanimity in victory is laudable. Unfortunately, when it comes to awarding infrastructure contracts in post-Saddam Iraq, Washington isn't displaying much of it. . From a moral point of view, there is some basis to the exclusion: having refused to risk our soldiers for the liberation of Iraq, it is perhaps fitting that we will profit little from the industrial boom taking place.. On the other hand, it is plainly ridiculous to argue that involving Canada -- a close military ally of the United States -- in Iraq's reconstruction would compromise America's 'essential security.'

TEXT: On that note, we conclude this sampling of reaction to the U-S decision to restrict contracts on the effort to rebuild Iraq to firms in countries that supported the Iraq war.

NEB/ANG/KL