By IPS Correspondents
BAGHDAD, Oct 20 2003 (IPS)

As U.S. President George W. Bush continues to woo Congress for an additional 20 billion dollars to help rebuild Iraq, many Iraqis accuse the coalition forces of mismanaging money that should be better spent on Iraqi people.

Members of the governing council appointed by the United States too have joined the criticism.

Bush asked Congress for an additional 87 billion dollars for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Congress approved 85 billion dollars.

Of this, 66 billion dollars will be spent on military operations mostly in Iraq, and the rest allocated to reconstruction in this country, about half of it as a grant.

Iraq has had little independent revenue so far and is not expected to have any by the end of the year either, and so almost all of that money comes from U.S. taxpayers.

But Iraqis here say the United States is spending too much on contracts that can be scrapped for now or carried out cheaper.

"Yes, it’s their money, so they go around spending it as they wish," says Adel Abdel Mehdi, a senior representative of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). He often represents the movement’s leader and governing council member Seyyed Abdel Aziz Hakim in the council’s proceedings.

"But remember, this is the money that they say they are spending on the Iraqi people," he says.

One instance is a 1.3 billion dollar contract the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) is due to sign with Jordan for setting up a facility to train 30,000 to 40,000 Iraqi police.

"I think our forces can be trained (here) very quickly if the Americans allow that," says Mahmoud Osman, a member of the governing council. "We have two police colleges which are very good and have good teachers. They can do the training cheaply and quickly at one-tenth of what the Americans want to pay Jordan."

The contract is a favour being given to Jordan "at our expense," he says.

Coalition officials say they are aware that some members of the governing council would like to exert tighter control over how the CPA spends its money.

During a tour of Washington last month, Ahmed Chalabi, then chairman of the council, told reporters that the coalition forces should let the council handle some of the 20 billion dollars the Congress was expected to give to Iraq.

CPA spokesperson Charles Heatly says the council members have discussed the Jordan issue with Bremer.

"We discussed the modalities and reasons why we were looking to increase training facilities outside while continuing with the training facilities inside, and we explained the reason we were looking outside was to rapidly increase the number of police officer on the streets," Heatly said.

"The reason it is expensive is because bringing Iraqi police officers to the standard that Iraqis and we expect will take international trainers," he said. "They don’t come cheaply. Whether the training is conducted in Jordan, in Iraq or another country, those costs would be the same."

Heatly said the CPA disagrees with governing council members that the training could adequately be conducted in Iraq.

CPA officials say the coalition forces use different standards for using Iraqi money from spending monies donated by the United States and other members of the coalition forces.

U.S. and British officials here also point out that there is a distinction between the money spent by the coalition forces under the organisation headed by Bremer, and monies spent by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Since the CPA budget comes out of the U.S. Department of Defence, contracts such as the Jordan facility to train Iraqi police officers or some aspects of the controversial reconstruction contract awarded to Halliburton for more than a billion dollars, can legally be audited by the U.S. Congress. Halliburton was headed by Vice-President Dick Cheney until he moved to the White House.

Contracts awarded by the Bechtel Corporation on the other hand are considered private because it is considered a sub-contractor, although USAID is a U.S.-government agency.

Many Iraqis do not recognise such distinctions. They say foreign contractors, mostly from the United States, get inflated salaries and these are monies that should be spent on the Iraqis.

"The legal and technical issue of how one kind of money can be spent on something and not on something else, and how one type of work can be paid this amount and not another, these things are irrelevant to us," says Hend Atef, an accountant in Baghdad.

"What matters to us is that you (coalition forces) came in saying you will fix things," she added. "Things have not been fixed but a lot of you people, the Americans and the British, are getting rich on our account. It is your money, yes. But it is also going back to your pockets, not ours."

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