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UN meeting next week to discuss rebuilding Iraq
Washington, June 20: Representatives from 35 to 40 countries will meet next week at the United Nations to discuss rebuilding Iraq and to lay the groundwork for a conference for prospective donors in the fall, a senior US official said.
Washington, June 20: Representatives from 35 to 40 countries will meet next week at the United Nations to discuss rebuilding Iraq and to lay the groundwork for a conference for prospective donors in the fall, a senior US official said.
They will hear assessments from Americans in the coalition provisional authority in Baghdad, senior Iraqi officials and a former polish finance minister, Marek Belka, who is working on donor coordination, said Alan Larson, undersecretary of state for economic affairs.
Larson said he expected Tuesday's one-day meeting to be a "crystallizing moment that will bring everyone together to hear really for the first time, face to face, from the coalition authority and Iraqis a status report on the situation in Iraq." Larson yesterday said that the officials will provide a "much sharper perspective than exists now" on Iraq's needs and anticipated revenues and expenditures.
Although the meeting would not be a pledging conference, participants would discuss how to prepare for such a conference "in the very early fall," he said.
The United States is looking for sizable support from other rich countries as well as from international lending organisations to contribute resources to rebuild Iraq's shattered economy.
But Larson said at this stage he did not think it was "especially productive to set out a us government expectation about what share of this effort other parts of the international community should carry and what share we should carry."
Bureau Report
They will hear assessments from Americans in the coalition provisional authority in Baghdad, senior Iraqi officials and a former polish finance minister, Marek Belka, who is working on donor coordination, said Alan Larson, undersecretary of state for economic affairs.
Larson said he expected Tuesday's one-day meeting to be a "crystallizing moment that will bring everyone together to hear really for the first time, face to face, from the coalition authority and Iraqis a status report on the situation in Iraq." Larson yesterday said that the officials will provide a "much sharper perspective than exists now" on Iraq's needs and anticipated revenues and expenditures.
Although the meeting would not be a pledging conference, participants would discuss how to prepare for such a conference "in the very early fall," he said.
The United States is looking for sizable support from other rich countries as well as from international lending organisations to contribute resources to rebuild Iraq's shattered economy.
But Larson said at this stage he did not think it was "especially productive to set out a us government expectation about what share of this effort other parts of the international community should carry and what share we should carry."
Bureau Report