Fuente : World Bank
http://www.worldbank.org

Iraq Wins Donors Support For Leading Reconstruction Efforts

/noticias.info/ Donor countries have agreed in principle on a new mechanism which gives Iraq the leading role in reconstruction efforts, The Associated Press reports a top Canadian delegate to a global reconstruction conference said Monday.

The Iraq Reconstruction Forum, dubbed the "IRFO," will be launched in two weeks, said Michael Bell, chairman of the International Reconstruction Fund Facility for Iraq, a body developed early in 2004 to help donor nations channel resources and coordinate support for reconstruction and development in Iraq.

“What the Iraqi government has proposed was a new donor coordination mechanism to be established and that will deal separately from IRFFI, that will be a mechanism, in which the Iraqi government will take full ownership in the development process in a real and concrete way,” Bell said. “It will be the Iraqis who will chair that body and they will deal with all donors on bilateral and multilateral levels through coordination,” he told a news conference at the end of two days of talks by representatives of 60 countries and international organizations on Iraq's reconstruction. Bell said Iraqi Planning Minister Barham Salih will head IRFO. It was not immediately clear how the emerging body will interact with the existing International Reconstruction Fund.

So far, 19 fund members -- including the United States, Japan and Canada -- have pledged over $1 billion to IRFFI, a statement said. It said more pledges were made Monday, including $5.5 million from Denmark, $20 million from Australia, $2.4 million from Greece, $180.8 million from the European Commission, $12 million from Italy and $20 million from Spain. The contributions are separate from the $32 billion in loans and grants pledged for Iraq's reconstruction at the October 2003 donor conference in Madrid, Spain. Bell said the next meeting will be held in February 2006.

Reuters adds that although the Dead Sea meeting focused on activating existing aid allocations, the World Bank extended on Monday a $500 million soft loan for Iraqi infrastructure projects with an interest-free grace period of more than 10 years. The loan is the first from the World Bank to Iraq since 1973. The bank already manages $400 million of donor money to Iraq. The United Nations manages another $500 million. Christiaan Poortman, the World Bank's Vice President for the Middle East, said a monitoring and evaluation system was being set up to help channel larger aid volumes. "The international community is perhaps even more aware now than it was two years ago that we need to show results on the ground," Poortman told the news agency.

Agence France Presse meanwhile reports the Jeddah-based Islamic Development Bank (IDB) signed Monday a 500-million-dollar loan and grant agreement with Iraq to help reconstruction, Jordan's state-run Petra news agency reported Tuesday. Iraqi and IDB officials said the deal would be a bilateral agreement not included in the International Reconstruction Fund Facility for Iraq (IRFFI).

In other developments, Agence France Presse meanwhile reports Iraqi President Jalal Talabani signaled Tuesday that a new constitution could be ready ahead of time. He said the drafting of the constitution was almost finalized and the document could be ready by the end of July, ahead of the August 15 deadline.

The New York Times meanwhile adds that a working draft of Iraq's new constitution would cede a strong role to Islamic law and could sharply curb women's rights, particularly in personal matters like divorce and family inheritance. The document's writers are also debating whether to drop or phase out a measure enshrined in the interim constitution, co-written last year by the Americans, requiring that women make up at least a quarter of the parliament. The draft of a chapter of the new constitution guarantees equal rights for women as long as those rights do not "violate Shariah," or Koranic law. The draft chapter has ignited outrage among women's groups, which held a protest on Tuesday morning in downtown Baghdad. One of the critical passages is in Article 14 of the chapter, a sweeping measure that would require court cases dealing with matters like marriage, divorce and inheritance to be judged according to the law practiced by the family's sect or religion. Article 14 would replace a body of Iraqi law that has for decades been considered one of the most progressive in the Middle East in protecting the rights of women, giving them the freedom to choose a husband and requiring divorce cases to be decided by a judge.

Reuters notes Iraq forecasts 10-12 percent growth this year, still below what the economy needs to recover after decades of wars and UN sanctions, Finance Minister Ali Allawi said on Tuesday. Growth was 30-35 percent last year, but Iraq started from a low base with the US-led invasion of 2003 and its aftermath of violence, arson and looting sending the economy into chaos, Allawi told Reuters in an interview. Allawi said the government's priority was economic recovery through rebuilding the infrastructure and the education system with international aid expected to accelerate after a two-year delay. The education and health system have badly declined over the past 15 years and Iraq's central bank chief economist Mudhir Salih Kasim says basic services, such as water and electricity, are in their worst state in decades.

The International Herald Tribune meanwhile writes Iraqi journalists are getting a chance to show their resumes around. The charitable foundation of the Reuters news agency plans to announce this week that it is turning a grass-roots Iraqi news Web site into Iraq's first independent commercial news service. For several months, the Web site, Aswat al-Iraq, or Voices of Iraq, has relied on a team of 30 stringers and help from three of Iraq's independent newspapers, as well as feeds from the Reuters Arabic-language service, to publish hundreds of articles a month on politics, culture and even the taboo topic of AIDS in Iraq. Now the site, www.aswataliraq.info, will become a full-fledged news wire, managed and staffed by Iraqi journalists in Baghdad and operated independently of Reuters. It will use $800,000 from the United Nations to create a newsroom and post reporters in each Iraqi province. When the service goes live in a few months, it will feed breaking news to both Iraqi and foreign news outlets notas_de_prensa_archivo