Posted by
Agamemnon on Friday, December 08, 2006 7:02:29 AM
editors note: Thucydides Project is my project to start to collect sources and eyewitness accounts of the War on Terror. I hope to put the sources together in some kind of contemporary and systematic narrative. I am starting with the 3-19-03 and the coalition invasion of Iraq. I hope to then move one day forward and one day back from this date.
3-19-03 Invasion of Iraq
I found a very interesting Oil for Food tidbit when looking at Russian reaction to the Invasion of Iraq. It is especially interesting if you have followed Claudia Rosett’s coverage of the UN Oil for Food Program.
Russian business interests in Iraq
Kommersant [Liberal broadsheet]: www.kommersant.ru - "The military operation against Iraq has not yet begun, but the UN's Oil for Food programme has already been terminated. Russian companies with projects in Iraq have started to count the losses which they will sustain after the military operation starts. Some of them are threatening... to seek the sequestration of assets held in Russia by the USA and its allies." [from an article by Denis Skorobogatko and Petr Sapozhnikov entitled "Russian business has left Iraq"]
Moskovskiy Komsomolets [mass-circulation daily] www.mk.ru - "From the economic point of view, the war is unlikely to have the fatal impact on Russia that many expect. In actual fact the interests of our companies in Iraq do not coincide absolutely with those of our country. Their main business is joint thieving in conjunction with the top Iraqi hierarchy. Under the Oil for Food programme Iraq is allowed, through intermediaries, to purchase goods on special lists in exchange for oil. The goods are bought on its behalf by our companies, only 10 times more expensively than they should be." [from an article by Aleksandr Budberg entitled "Not our war"]