IRAQ

Guardian: Fury At Iraq Ag Post To US Cargill Exec

Oxfam last night launched a scathing attack on the man the US has put
in charge of agricultural reconstruction in Iraq. Dan Amstutz is a former
senior executive of Cargill, the biggest grain exporter in the world,
and served in the Reagan administration as a trade negotiator in the
Uruguay round of world trade talks. Oxfam is concerned that his involvement is
an example of the potentially damaging commercialisation of the
reconstruction effort in Iraq, which it would prefer to see conducted under the
auspices of the United Nations. Kevin Watkins, Oxfam's policy director, said Mr
Amstutz would "arrive with a suitcase full of open-market rhetoric",
and was more likely to try to dump cheap US grain on the potentially
lucrative Iraqi market than encourage the country to rebuild its once-successful
agricultural sector. "Putting Dan Amstutz in charge of agricultural
reconstruction in Iraq is like putting Saddam Hussein in the chair of a
human rights commission," Mr Watkins said.