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IRAQ: Portugal Also Keen on Winning Reconstruction Contracts
By Mario de Queiroz
LISBON, Apr 10 (IPS) - Just hours after U.S. tanks entered al-
Fardous square in the heart of Baghdad, Portugal began to press
Washington for its right to a share of the contracts for
rebuilding Iraq.
As the image of the huge toppled statue of Saddam Hussein in
the Iraqi capital began to make its way around the world, Lisbon
did not let the opportunity go by to remind Washington that it was
one of the few that had stood firmly by the United States.
''Portugal is proud of having stood on the side of democracy
and freedom from the very start,'' conservative Prime Minister
José Manuel Durao Barroso said Thursday in parliament.
In early March, when it became clear that war was inevitable
and imminent, Lisbon took an unconditional stance on the side of
the United States, offering the use of the strategic Portuguese-
U.S. Lajes air base on the Azores islands in the Atlantic ocean.
Although the air base is jointly run by the United States and
Portugal, by law the Portuguese parliament must be consulted
before the base is pressed into service in case of war.
But in this case, the decision was reached without being put to
a vote in parliament.
Portugal thus joined the group of the closest European Union
(EU) allies of the United States with respect to the war on Iraq,
alongside Britain, Spain, the Netherlands, Italy and Denmark,
despite complaints from Portugal's opposition parties, and the
overwhelming public rejection of the war.
A full 82 percent of those surveyed this month in an opinion
poll carried out by the Catholic University said they were opposed
to the war.
The other nine EU countries - Austria, Belgium, Finland,
France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Luxembourg and Sweden -
continued to advocate a diplomatic United Nations-based solution
to the Iraq question.
Agribusiness, services, telecommunications and public works
companies in Portugal have already announced their interest in
taking part in the reconstruction of Iraq. Experts say the
contracts could amount to as much as 100 billion dollars.
Fighting has not come to an end in Iraq, but ''for the markets,
the war is over, and investors are not really very interested in
what happens on the battleground,'' economic analyst Anabella
Campos said Thursday.
But Portuguese firms ''stand to receive no more than a bit of
frosting from the huge cake,'' since the U.S. Agency for
International Development (USAID) ''will assign a very limited
amount of funding to third party countries, and only in the sphere
of subcontractors working in association with U.S. companies,''
economist Diogo de Sousa told IPS.
Portuguese Minister of Foreign Relations Antonio Martins da
Cruz acknowledged that he had already been contacted by ''several
businesses asking about the details of the process'' of bidding
for subcontracts under the USAID rules governing the
reconstruction work in Iraq.
The first contracts, for works totalling 1.9 billion dollars,
have already been awarded to U.S. companies, according to a study
published Thursday by researchers Paulo Pina and Cesaltina Pinto,
with the Edimpresa economic-publishing group.
Pina and Pinto said the beneficiaries were Bechtel, Fluor,
Louis Berger, Parsons, Washington Group International, and
Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton, of
which U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney was chief executive officer
between 1995 and 2000.
The participation by firms from Portugal or other small
countries that formed part of what the U.S. government of George
W. Bush described as the ''coalition of the willing'' that backed
the war on Iraq ''is conditioned by the strict rules that the
United States has set for the reconstruction of Iraq, that
restrict the allotment of funds to the area of subcontracts,''
they explained.
USAID said foreign firms could only bid on subcontracts for
U.S. funded reconstruction projects.
But that has not discouraged Portuguese investors, especially
civil construction firms, from approaching the Foreign Ministry to
express their interest.
Martins da Cruz said his ministry and the Economy Ministry
would ''pass on all information'' on post-war opportunities. ''I
hope there are Portuguese companies that have a rapid response
capacity, as soon as the plans for the reconstruction of
infrastructure in Iraq are divulged,'' said the minister.
The National Association of Public Works Companies (ANEOP) said
some of its members were interested in getting involved in the
rebuilding of Iraq.
But its rival, the Association of Civil Construction and Public
Works Industrialists (AICCOPN), does not share that intention.
The president of the AICCOPN, Rui Viana, said it was
''immoral'' to talk about the reconstruction of a country that
''doesn't even have a government yet.''
At any rate, he added, ''it is not necessary to go to a country
involved in a war. There are more interesting markets for
Portugal, like Algeria or Morocco.''
Besides, he said, the most likely scenario in Iraq is that
''the United States will leave very few crumbs to the rest of us
in the distribution of the spoils.''
No one can predict what will happen in Iraq, because not even
''the British and the Americans have reached an agreement yet,''
said Arnaldo de Figueiredo, international director at Mota, the
country's biggest construction company.
But he said that under the current circumstances, he did not
see clear opportunities for Portuguese businesses.
If the United States is going to be in charge of the
reconstruction process, not even sharing control with the British,
''the business will go to U.S. firms, which in turn will give work
to their own subcontractors, and it is only with these that we
could perhaps have a chance,'' he said.
Both Britain and Australia - which committed troops to the
war, unlike other supporters like Portugal - are pushing hard for
a slice of the key contracts for building shattered infrastructure
in Iraq.
Even ''if the UN were in charge, the contracts would not go to
Portuguese companies, but to the big European powers, as it has
always been,'' said Figueiredo.
However, everything indicates that Bush is determined to reduce
the role of the UN ''to a kind of 'first aid brigade' in the
rubble of the war,'' international affairs analyst José Golao said
Thursday. (END/2003)
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