Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Iraq Coordinator Satterlee: Iraq can't spend $12.5 billion in rebuilding funds unless U.S. sends $4 billion more

An armed guard poses beside pallets of $100 bills in Baghdad, part of $12 billion in cash 'distributed' by the Coalition Provisional Authority in the year following the invastion. Much of the money has never been accounted for.

Iraq's government is sitting on about $12.5 billion in rebuilding funds from its own 2006 budget because it lacks the tools and expertise to spend the money, a senior U.S. official said on Tuesday.

With growing pressure in the U.S. Congress to reduce U.S. funding for Iraq, the State Department's Iraq coordinator, David Satterfield, told lawmakers he too was concerned an oil-rich nation such as Iraq had not spent $12.5 billion of its own funds earmarked for rebuilding.

He said Iraq had held onto the funds because it lacked the "capacity" to execute its budget, but he argued that a recent request to the U.S. Congress for an additional $4 billion would help address this problem.

Read the rest at Reuters/Alternet

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