Iraqi dept الديون العراقيه

[baghda]

عين الرئيس بوش , السيد جميس بيكر كممثل عنه في متابعه ملف الديون العراقيه

تصفح المقال نيويورك تايمز

 

ويقدر كاتب المقال تلك الديون بحوالي مائه بليون دولار لنادي باريس ومائه اخرى عن التعويضات للكويت والمتضريرين الاخرين.

ارغب في مناقشه مسأله الديون. يرجى المساهمه

Baker Is Named to Restructure Iraq's Huge Debt, please have a look to NT

The writer estimated the dept to be about 100 B$ for Paris club and anothe 100B$ for war reperations to Kuwait and others.

I would like to discuss the Iraqi dept issue, please contribute!

[mobileone]

I hope Baker has a chance to talk with the folks at Jubilee Iraq

as they have also been working on the issue of Iraq's debt

[Tom Penn]

I am a great admirer of James Baker. He is one of only a handful of men with the kind of stature and respect around the world to negotiate Iraq's debt forgiveness and restructuring. All these countries Iraq is now indebted to, loaned money to your tyrant for him to put in his pocket at the expense of the Iraqi people. Surely many can be shamed into forgiving this burden, and Baker is just the man to it. He is from my state, and so I have followed his career. He is a truly fine man of uncommon quality and character with exceptional negotiating skills. Bush could not have done better for Iraq.

[Final Historian]

My only problems with Baker are his overly close friendship with the Saudis and some supposed latent anti-semitism. Fortunately, that shouldn't prevent him from helping Iraq solve its debt problems. Many of them are odious debts anyway, so that should help in the long run.

[salim]

I just wanted to know about the following , please help me evaluate the situation.

From legal prospective, what is the complication of having the Iraqi government don't comply with what Saddam's government had signed and agree for .. I am not talking only about the financial issues, which is of concern under this topic, but also other , let explain.

 

Saddam use to have so may arrangments and aggrements that he used to brib people and other governemnts in order to support his regime. Something like the annual one b$ gift of oil to Jordan, The bribs to all Arab buisnessmen as Oil contracts. Arrangements to explore and investe in Iraqi OIl with Russia and France..

 

My point is that is there any internation legal way by the new government of not following what Saddam had signed? What was the case with pre Hitler government in Germany?

[salim]

Quoting Lee

 

Germany had no significant external debt that I know of after WWII. However, they had significant debt after WWI and the Nazi government repudiated the debts in 1934. It has never been paid.

 

The United States is still holding $11 Billion in unpaid debt from France for money we loaned them during WW1. France has not paid in 80-90 years and does not intend to pay.

 

http://www.jubilee2000uk.org/analysis/repo...eliefbefore.htm

 

I do not know why the U.S. can't give that debt to Iraqi ownership after an Iraqi government is formed. Iraq now owes France and French firms between $6-10 Billion. This would leave France owing money to Iraq after the debts were settled!

 

I don't know why this wouldn't work.

 

You may also want to search the net under the subject "odius debts" (dettes odieuses in French).

 

http://www.odiousdebts.org/odiousdebts/pub...bt_Doctrine.pdf

 

I have also heard that neither Czarist Russian, nor Imperial Chinese debts were ever paid after the monarchies fell, but I do not have any links on that

 

Sincerely,

 

Lee C.

 

This is a very valuable piece of info.. Thanks Lee

[Guest Guest_aabir sabeel]

i like what Lee suggests regarding the iraqi debts but i don't know if this could work within a practical political frame and i agree with salim in that it's kind of unfair that iraqis should suffer all these debts which they have nothing to do with it and it's all because of saddam's stupid policies. but other than this i'm wondering if the new iraqi goverment after being establish can reduce these debts by far by resuming the huge projects which were rejected or put on hold during saddam's period like "if i'm not being mistaken" the contract of majnoon oil field with japan and the replacing of elecricity rods with undergroud cables, also with japan for a considerable amount of money goes to iraq.

i'm sure there is a lot more projects that could be done to cover these debts and the sooner the better.

i apologize if my information is not right, i'm not well aware of politics.

[Guest Guest]

ترجمه مقطع "لي" الذي اورده سالم

الالمان لم يكن لديهم ديون خارجيه كبيره بعد الرب الثانيه. ولكن كان لهم الكثير بعد الحرب العالميه الاولى. حكومه النازي تبرأ ت منها عام 1934.

الولايات المتحده لها دين حوالي 11بليون دولار على فرنسا منذ الحرب الاولى والحكومه الفرنسيه لم تدفعه ولا تنوي دفعه.

 

http://www.jubilee2000uk.org/analysis/repo...eliefbefore.htm

 

لاافهم لماذا لاتجيير الحكومه الامريكيه ذلك الدين لصالح العراق حيث ان فرنسا تطلب العراق 6-10 بليةن وبذلك يكون العراق دائنا لفرنسا بعد تصفيه الدين الاول. لاادري لماذا لانعمل بذلك.

يمكنك البحث في الانترنت تحت

I"odius debts" (dettes odieuses in French)http://www.odiousdebts.org/odiousdebts/pub...bt_Doctrine.pdf

 

ايضا فان الحكومتين الروسيه والصينيه لم تدفعا ديون القياصره والامبراطوريه السابقه ولكن ليس لدي رابط على الانترنت حولها.

المخلص,

 

Lee C.

[Guest Tom Grey]

First off, there should be an immediate moratorium on debt repayment -- Iraqi international accounts are being used, today, to repay Saddam's debt.

 

I think there should be a referendum of the Iraqi people on the debt -- I'm sure they would repudiate it.

 

It would also be good to start legal proceedings against all organizations who lent money to Saddam after the 91 Kuwait invasions, noting them as accessories in his post 91 crimes. THAT would cause some rich country squealing!

 

Maybe after his Iran war in the 80s? (To include the USA, his anti-Iran ally?) If the US responsibility for Saddam was set to be about, say, $87 billion, which Iraq agreed the US paid -- this would be a huge precedent. Other countries (France???) would be extremely uncomfortable; good.

 

It would put financial teeth in Bush's policy of no longer supporting dictators, and would reduce such support. It's also a just cause that, potentially, many anti-Bush folk could get behind.

 

In fact, US, EU, World Bank support for dictators has long been disgusting. Loans or grants to humans, for houses, for instance, would be MUCH better. Let Iraq be the country that leads in an anti-dictator international financial revolution!

 

A world without dictators, in my lifetime. (my dream)

[Guest American Visitor]

In fact, US, EU, World Bank support for dictators has long been disgusting.  Loans or grants to humans, for houses, for instance, would be MUCH better.  Let Iraq be the country that leads in an anti-dictator international financial revolution!

Saddam's debts are not Iraq's debts, and Iraq shouldn't pay a single penny of them.

 

If financiers around the world realized they might lose their money, when they loaned money to a dictator, those dictators would lose power that much more quickly.

 

If I were Iraqi, I would fight hard to cancel the debt. After all, if France can, so can you!

[mobileone]

some info i found on the paris club..........

 

Anyway, the defining characteristic of Paris Club workouts is that they are slooooow. There are a number of reasons for this; the chief one is obviously that there is no urgency on the part of the creditors because it isn’t their crisis, but there are also institutional constraints. To understand the institutional constraints, it’s worth taking a look at the Paris Club principles

 

There’s five of them:

 

1) Debts are dealt with on a case-by-case basis, dependent on the individual circumstances of each debtor

2) The Paris Club works by consensus; no decision is taken unless there is unanimous agreement

3) Debts are only rescheduled given sufficient conditionality on domestic policy to ensure that the restructuring actually improves the prospects of the debtor. This usually means an IMF program.

4) Sounds obvious but isn’t; there is a principle of solidarity which ensures that members agree to actually implement the decisions of their Club representatives.

5) The Paris club has a comparable treatment principle; it only works on the basis that the debtor will not give any creditors a better deal than it agreed with the Paris Club. This is in order to ensure that the money put in by government creditors doesn’t just go straight out the door to some other class of creditor.

 

There are lots of other rules and conventions but these are the important ones. Of these, number 1 is a good thing; there are no hard and fast rules to get things stuck on a technicality, and it is considered bad form to make decisions based on possible precedent-setting. Number 4 is a good thing because its practical impact is that the people round the table in Paris actually have the power to get things done; there’s no dicky ratification process back home (democracy shmemocracy). Number 3 is a real pain in the arse because a) it ties countries into IMF programs which are often really badly designed for their purpose and it gives the IMF more negotiating leverage, because the IMF can hold out the prospect of scuppering the Paris Club talks in order to get a bit more cooperation.

 

Numbers 2 and 5 are the main reason that things take forever. The permanent members of the Paris Club are Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finaland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia[1], Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the Brits and the USA. Try getting unanimous agreement out of that little lot in a hurry. Furthermore, the debtor for its own part has a dicey game in negotiating because it knows that principle 5 means that the Paris Club agreement sets the tone for the whole debt workout; if you get the Paris Club terms wrong in either direction, it means that you’re going to end up with an unworkable debt reduction proposal and go back to square one.

 

Principle 5 also makes the specific case of Iraq more complicated because it’s not just a matter of James Baker going round the world saying come on you stingy bastards and Chirac saying oh go on then. Now that the debt’s entered the Paris Club process, it’s no longer really an option for France or Germany to unilaterally forgive a chunk of debt (that’s presumably why they did it). The Paris Club is a good process for making sure that the eventual restructuring is a genuinely workable plan, and for minimising free-riding by creditors, but it’s more or less completely incompatible with the piecemeal, quick-win style approach which Baker appears to be taking.

 

Le Club De Paris

[FreeArab]

Why all the Rif Raf about this? Its very simple:

 

Imagine a hostage taker who takes 10 people hostage. He then proceeds to take their money from their wallets, and threatens that if they dont, they die. Then he uses this money, to buy himself a big bomb, and blows up an adjacent building with this bomb. The lucky survivors of this explosion label the hostage taker a war criminal, and depand reparations for all the damages he has done.

 

The next day a sniper takes the hostage taker out, and free the hostages.

 

Who pays for the reparations?

 

..... the Hostage taker!! Yes, he did use the hostages money, but this was without their consent. They have nothing to do with it.

 

--------------------------

 

In our case, Saddam had the Iraqi people under his foot, he robbed them, and used that money to fund his military adventure into Kuwait. Now saddam is under arrest. HE is the one who is supposed to pay up. Not one fils should come from the Iraqi people. They didnt sanction Mr Saddam to power, so he did not do anything in their names.

 

To answer your questions: Who should pay reparations: Saddam, and his active Ba-ath cronnies. Simple.

[George B.]

There was no debt relief for Russia and the Eastern Bloc nations, after the fall of the communist tyranny! Why is Iraq any different? Most nations in Latin American and Africa were al under brutal dictatorships the United States funded and supported and the US still expects them to pay those debts even after their dictators were over turned. Why does Iraq have any more a special request than, say South Africa? Chile? Argentina?

[Guest Achillea]

Let me see if I understand correctly. Other countries' debts were treated unfairly, so Iraq's must be, too? Two (or more) wrongs make a right?

[FreeArab]

The just thing would have been for those former Soviet bloc countries to have their debt forgiven. They suffered injustice, so Iraq must too?