By IAN AUSTEN
Published: May 3, 2007
OTTAWA, May 2 — Reconstruction efforts in Iraq are largely doomed to failure, the former chairman of the International Reconstruction Fund Facility for Iraq said Tuesday in an interview.
“Reconstruction is difficult enough in a relatively pacific environment,” said Michael Bell, a retired Canadian diplomat whose two-year term as chairman ended in March. “In this environment it is almost impossible, if not impossible. Over all, the picture is dire, dire.”
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Mr. Bell, who now teaches at the University of Windsor in Ontario, cited as an impediment a desire by the United States and Britain to initially promote high-profile, high-cost projects like repairing utilities, rather than first developing institutions and personnel for their continued operation.
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He also criticized reconstruction plans for making private ownership, rather than government ownership, of infrastructure “an overriding objective.” But those plans have been undermined by the widespread instability in Iraq, he said.
Iraq’s insecurity, he said, has created an exodus among skilled Iraqis who had initially returned to rebuild their country. It has also made supervising and completing reconstruction programs almost impossible logistically.
more By Andrea Shalal-Esa
Wed May 2, 7:44 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Stuart Bowen, the U.S. special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction whose office has uncovered abuse of both Iraqi and U.S. funds, is under investigation himself, a White House spokeswoman said on Wednesday.
"Complaints against Mr. Bowen are being looked at by the integrity committee of the PCIE (President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency), said spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore.
She gave no details about the investigation or the nature of the complaints against Bowen, who heads the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, or SIGIR.
Bowen's office declined comment.
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