US Considers Pouring 3.5 Million Into Iraq As Elections Approach: Official

WASHINGTON, Sept 9 (AFP) - A US review has proposed shifting up to 3.5 billion dollars in Iraq reconstruction funding over the next year to security forces and jobs-generating projects in local communities, a senior State Department official said Wednesday.
The shift proposed by US Ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte would pour at least 300 million dollars a month into the country as it heads into crucial general elections in January that officials expect will be the focus of an intensifying conflict with insurgents.
"In terms of the proposal on the table, there`s about three and a half billion dollars that`s in play," Ambassador Robin Raphel, who coordinates the reconstruction effort, told reporters.
She said the proposal calls for about half the money to go to building up Iraqi security forces and the other half for "quick disbursing" projects in local communities managed by US military commanders and through the Agency for International Development (AID).
The funds would come from 18.4 billion dollars authorized by Congress for Iraqi reconstruction that originally had been earmarked for large but slow moving projects to rebuild the country`s devastated infrastructure, she said.
She said Negroponte was "looking at what you do to increase the visible impact of our assistance over the next six months to a year -- this crucial period that is coming up."
He proposed taking funds that had been for projects scheduled to begin in 2006 and later, and reallocating it for security and small scale projects that produce jobs and goodwill, she said.
Big infrastructure projects already underway or about to get underway would still continue as scheduled, she said.
The plan is under discussion within the government but is expected to be approved by mid to late September, she said.
Only about one billion dollars of the 18.4 billion dollars authorized in fiscal 2004 for Iraq reconstruction have been disbursed so far, she said.
The ponderous pace of reconstruction spending has been the source of complaint from US military and others who see high unemployment in Iraq as fuel for an anti-American insurgency.
On average, about 100,000 Iraqis are currently employed each week by reconstruction projects, Raphel said.
However, she said reconstruction spending has climbed to about 300 million dollars a month.
"We expect the level of dispersal to go up," she said.
"The planning and deployment stage of all this with these big contractors. So once they are set up it`s easier to increase the amount of work done. So those numbers should go up," she said.
"Now, if there`s a huge security thing, or something unexpected, maybe not," she added.
Raphel acknowledged that large reconstruction projects have been slowed as a result of the insurgency.
Foreigners and Iraqis employed by contractors have been the target of kidnappings and assassinations.