Washington, May 07: Security and insurance could eat up as much as a quarter of the US-funded reconstruction budget in Iraq, said America's Chief Inspector in Iraq where some projects have been delayed by surging violence. Stuart Bowen, the US-led coalition provisional authority's inspector general, said his office and others were looking at how to trim security and insurance costs without jeopardizing the safety of contractors on the ground.

In a report to Congress in March, Bowen estimated security and insurance consumed 10-15 percent of the total cost of Iraqi contracts but violence over the past month had likely pushed up this rate further. While security could not be compromised, Bowen said he was looking at how to reduce insurance costs via a number of strategies, none of which has been agreed on yet.

One option was to introduce a government-sponsored centralized insurance plan as a means of getting away from current ad hoc purchases of insurance. No final details had been worked out. Bureau Report