- BAGHDAD -- Colin Powell,
the US secretary of state, made a surprise visit to Iraq yesterday and
admitted that Washington was becoming increasingly concerned about Iran's
attempts to gain influence in the south of the country.
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- His warning came with pressure mounting on Tehran because
of evidence that the regime has flouted pledges to the International Atomic
Energy Agency and has re-embarked on a programme to develop nuclear weapons.
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- Mr Powell's intervention appeared to have been prompted
by repeated warnings from western diplomats that weapons and money have
been crossing the border with Iran. Several Shia political parties in southern
Iraq are known to maintain links in Iran.
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- "Iran has the potential of playing a helpful role,
but we are uneasy about some of the actions that it [Iran] has been taking
in the south," said Mr Powell, who is the first senior US administration
official to visit Iraq since the handover of power in June.
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- "We hope that the Iranian authorities will realise
that it is in their interest to have a stable Iraq as a neighbour."
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- His comments came only days after the Iraqi defence minister
told a US newspaper that Iran was his country's "first enemy",
accusing Tehran of "blatant interference".
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- Mr Powell, who met Iraq's president, Ghazi al-Yawer,
also promised to speed up reconstruction spending. Although the US Congress
has approved more than $18bn (£10bn) for Iraqi reconstruction, only
$458m of this money has been spent, largely because of bureaucracy and
inefficiencies.
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- "Reconstruction and security are two sides of the
same coin," Mr Powell said. However, there have been complaints that
reconstruction and security contracts in Iraq have been awarded hurriedly
and without proper bidding procedures or oversight. Several critical official
audits have been undertaken, investigating the way the Coalition Provisional
Authority spent hundreds of millions of dollars of Iraqi money in the past
year. Nearly all the $1bn spent on contracts up to April 2004 was Iraqi
money taken from oil revenues or seized assets from Saddam Hussein's regime.
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- In a report to the US Congress published yesterday, the
CPA inspector general, Stuart Bowen, listed several com plaints. In one
case he found that a military assistant to a defence department official
gambled and lost part of a $40,000 payment allocated to an Iraqi amateur
sports team.
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- One of the most serious cases involved a senior CPA adviser
who manipulated the awarding of a $7.2m security contract. The adviser
was eventually sacked and an advance of $2.3m had to be retrieved from
the security firm.
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- In an audit published earlier this week, Mr Bowen concluded
that the CPA had no effective system to review, track or monitor contracts.
He found the CPA "did not ensure that a fair and reasonable price
was negotiated" for a $24.7m contract to provide security for the
change in currency last August; he said the contract cost at least $5m
too much.
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- In another case he found that no one had checked to see
whether 15 Mitsubishi double-cab trucks bought for $187,500 for the police
in the southern province of Maysan last No vember had actually arrived.
In a letter to the inspector general, Brigadier General Stephen Seay, head
of Contracting Activity, defended the contracting office saying it faced
"overwhelming challenges", including staff shortages and continued
security problems. "We believe that contracts awarded with Iraqi funds
were for the sole benefit of the Iraqi people, without exception,"
he said.
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004 http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1273203,00.html
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