About 1,200 representatives from 71 countries, 20 international organizations and 225 private companies gathered here Thursday for the two-day international donors conference on Iraq, as Iraqi officials are striving to tout businesses for investment.
The conference, held amid a US call for more cash and troops from other countries to ease its burden, seeks to "set long-term reconstruction priorities, perhaps stretching over 10 years or longer, draw the participation of various countries and create a multilateral fund" for getting Iraq back on its feet.
After technical discussions on Iraq's needs in education, health and its electrical grid, more than 300 representatives of private companies and business associations from more than 40 countries met with Iraqi officials to discuss investment opportunities in the war-torn Iraq.
Although the security in Iraq was in a "state of flux," it was "not intolerable" compared with the instability in other parts of the world, Ali Allawi, trade minister on the Iraqi Governing Council, told the business conference, which draws together world-known companies that specialize in telecommunications, energy, infrastructure, financial services, health and agriculture.
Allawi said that the Iraqi Interior Ministry was working together with the occupying forces to improve things in the country, pointing out that free-market reforms, responsible government and Iraq's central location in an oil-rich region should give investors incentives equal to or better than any that they would face in any other parts of the world.
Promising that the future Iraqi government would establish a stable economic framework by honoring contracts and tackling the country's heavy debt burden, the trade minister said recently announced economic reforms in Iraq would allow foreign investors 100-percent ownership in all sectors except oil.
Allawi was among the Iraqi delegation of more than 100 representatives, who came to Madrid with high hopes after Washington urged generous donations for Iraq, where violence still rumbles on.
Iraq's call for foreign investment came as United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan urged the international community to donate for Iraq in his opening speech at the two-day conference.
"Today, they are looking to this conference for a signal that the international community is indeed ready to help them to build a new Iraq, a stable, independent and democratic country at peace with itself and its neighbors," said the UN chief, who left Madrid before the ministerial conference on Friday, when international donors were expected to formally announce their pledges for rebuilding Iraq.
Amid concerns that donations at the conference might greatly fall short of billions of US dollars needed for Iraq's reconstruction, US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was expected to appear at the Friday conference, sought to lower expectations that Washington would come away with the entire US$35.8 billion through 2007 it hopes to raise from others to jump-start Iraq's economic recovery.
"It may take time to meet the goal" of more than US$55 billion estimated by the World Bank, which includes the US pledge of nearly US$20 billion, Powell was quoted as saying.
On the result of the conference, local analysts said the two-day event is likely to be only the first step along a rocky and winding road towards even a semblance of prosperity in Iraq.
Eyes were on the final breakdown revealed by the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in a closing session on Friday, they said.
While Iraq has the world's second largest oil reserves, its economy is a shambles. The situation has been aggravated by continuing violence that caused more than 100 US combat deaths since the United States declared months ago that major military campaign in Iraq was over.
So far, US$27 billion in donations have been promised. The majority of them, or US$20.3 billion, are to be provided by the United States, but the US Congress wants US$10 billion of that to be loans.
Despite the adoption of the new UN resolution on Iraq last week, France, Germany and Russia, which opposed the US-led war in Iraq, have made it clear that they will contribute no more money to Iraq's reconstruction.
(Xinhua News Agency October 24, 2003)
