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Australian Broadcasting Corporation
TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT
LOCATION: http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2004/s1090643.htm
Broadcast: 20/04/2004 Iraq power handover ‘a fraud’

Reporter: Tony Jones

TONY JONES: Back now to the day’s developments in Israel and Iraq.

The assassination of Hamas leader Dr Abdel-Aziz Rantissi at the weekend has unleashed rage and fury on the streets of Gaza just days after President George W Bush backed Israel’s sovereignty over West Bank settlements in return for a total pull-out of settlers from the Gaza Strip.

In Iraq, meanwhile, troops from Spain are preparing to go home just as America has announced the death of its 700th soldier in fighting there.

Well, joining me now is Robert Fisk.

He’s a correspondent for the British newspaper the ‘Independent’ and is a 25-year veteran of reporting from the Middle East.

Robert Fisk, thanks for joining us.

ROBERT FISK, WRITER & JOURNALIST: Thank you.

TONY JONES: Let’s start with Iraq if we can and the immense problems the United States now faces in handing the country back to Iraqis.

Just to start with that, anyway.

The June 30th deadline now looks like it’s going to be postponed.

What will be the consequences if it is?

ROBERT FISK: Nothing.

The handover is basically a fraud.

The governing council, which is appointed by the Americans, and which is the Iraqi Government at the moment would merely be handing over to another group of American-picked Iraqis.

They’re not democratically elected, the new institution, whatever it is.

We don’t even know what it’s going to be.

I notice that when President Bush gave his press conference three days ago, he said that Mr Brahimi was working on that, referring to Lakhdar Brahimi, the former Algerian foreign minister who’s special envoy to Iraq for the UN’s Kofi Annan, but Mr Brahimi found that quite a surprise.

He’s not trying to put together a future government - he’s trying to arrange elections and that may not be until next year.

Even if there was a democratically elected government to hand over sovereignty to, which is there not, the sovereignty doesn’t mean anything because under the laws that Paul Bremer, the US proconsul in Baghdad has already enacted for post June 30, all the Iraqi security forces will be commanded by United States officers, so that’s not a handover of sovereignty.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - An Iranian court has ruled the United States should pay $600 million in compensation for supplying ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein with chemical weapons, the official IRNA news agency said on Wednesday.

IRNA said the money in the case, brought by Iranian war veterans and disabled, should be paid to survivors of attacks on the town of Sardasht which borders Iraq.

Iraqi gas attacks killed thousands of Iranians and Iraqi Kurds in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. Hundreds of thousands died on both sides and Iran has thousands disabled by chemical arms.

No further details were available and Iranian officials were unavailable for any immediate comment.

“The court has ordered the American government to pay the money for furnishing Saddam with chemical weapons to attack Iran,” IRNA reported.

The United States and Iran have been at odds since 1979 when more than 50 Americans were held hostage by Iranian student militants at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran for 444 days after the Islamic revolution.

The verdict was submitted to the Swiss Embassy which has covered U.S. interests in Iran since Washington cut ties with Tehran in 1980.

The graphic shows penalties paid in the past four years by contractors handling assignments in Iraq. (AP Graphic)

Mon Apr 26
By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Ten companies with billions of dollars in U.S. contracts for Iraq reconstruction have paid more than $300 million in penalties since 2000 to resolve allegations of bid rigging, fraud, delivery of faulty military parts and environmental damage.

The United States is paying more than $780 million to one British firm that was convicted of fraud on three federal construction projects and banned from U.S. government work during 2002, according to an Associated Press review of government documents.

A Virginia company convicted of rigging bids for American-funded projects in Egypt also has been awarded Iraq contracts worth hundreds of millions. And a third firm found guilty of environmental violations and bid rigging won U.S. Army approval for a subcontract to clean up an Iraqi harbor.

Seven other companies with Iraq reconstruction contracts have agreed to pay financial penalties without admitting wrongdoing. Together, the 10 companies have paid to resolve 30 alleged violations in the past four years. Six paid penalties more than once. But the companies have been awarded $7 billion in Iraq reconstruction contracts.

“We have not made firms pay the price when they screw up,” said Peter W. Singer, a former Pentagon official who worked on a task force overseeing military and contract work in the Balkans.

“But it’s not the company’s fault if it has a dumb client. I’m not blaming the companies, I’m blaming the government,” said Singer, now a fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

The contracts are legal because the Bush administration repealed regulations put in place by the Clinton administration that would have allowed officials to bar new government work for companies convicted or penalized during the previous three years.