WP: Rebuilding Aid Unspent, Tapped to Pay Expenses [View All]

[kskiska]

Seven months after Congress approved the largest foreign aid package in history to rebuild Iraq, less than 5 percent of the $18.4 billion has been spent and occupation officials have begun shifting more than $300 million earmarked for reconstruction projects to administrative and security expenses.

Recent reports from the Coalition Provisional Authority, the CPA's inspector general and the U.S. Agency for International Development attest to the growing difficulties of the U.S.-led reconstruction effort. And they have raised concerns in Congress and among international aid experts that the Bush administration's ambitious rebuilding campaign is adrift amid rising violence and unforeseen costs.

Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.), chairman of the House Foreign Operations Appropriations Committee, cited "bureaucratic infighting" and a "loss of central command and control" at a hearing yesterday as he sharply questioned top administration officials: "I have very serious concerns about the pace of assistance in Iraq and the management of those funds."

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz pointed to successes in rebuilding, and blamed contracting snafus for some of the delays. But Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary at the State Department, which will take over from the CPA this summer, refused to make what he called "excuses."

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54692-2004Apr29.html