IRAQ Awards Billion Dollar Contract To IRAN/CHINA To Build Power Plants

[kpete]

The New York Times is reporting:

Iraq has agreed to award $1.1 billion in contracts to Iranian and Chinese companies to build a pair of enormous power plants, the Iraqi electricity minister said Tuesday. Word of the project prompted serious concerns among American military officials, who fear that Iranian commercial investments can mask military activities at a time of heightened tension with Iran.

The Iraqi electricity minister, Karim Wahid, said that the Iranian project would be built in Sadr City, a Shiite enclave in Baghdad that is controlled by followers of the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr. He added that Iran had also agreed to provide cheap electricity from its own grid to southern Iraq, and to build a large power plant essentially free of charge in an area between the two southern Shiite holy cities of Karbala and Najaf.

The expansion of ties between Iraq and Iran comes as the United States and Iran clash on nuclear issues and about what American officials have repeatedly said is Iranian support for armed groups in Iraq. American officials have charged that Iranians, through the international military wing known as the Quds Force, are particularly active in support of elite elements of the Mahdi Army, a militia largely controlled by Mr. Sadr.

An American military official in Baghdad said that while he had no specific knowledge of the power plant contracts, any expansion of Iranian interests was a concern for the military here.

more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/18/world/middleeast/18grid.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

[Zodiak]

1. Good

for one, middle eastern countries will do much better if they got along, and this development will go towards that end. For two, it is obvious that US companies have no interest in actually building what they are contracted to build, so another company might as well do it.

After all, Iraqis need electricity.

[Ganja Ninja]

2. In your face Dick Cheney!

:popcorn:

[Toots]

3. But they can't do that...Halliburton is the ONLY company in the world

capable of doing those type things. That is what the Bush* Administration told us when awarding all those billion dollar No-Bid Contracts They would not allow any companies to bid on the contracts because ONLY Halliburton was capable of doing the job...We know Bush* would never LIE to Americans...

[pampango]

4. That sounds like a great business move and smart politics.

It sends a message to Bush and his boys, as well as to other countries in the Middle East and the world.