Billionaire investor and philanthropist George Soros said on Tuesday he was setting up a watchdog group to guard against any abuses in how the US manages Iraq's oil resources while it occupies Baghdad.
Soros, at a news conference at UN headquarters, also said he hoped Iraq would not repay all its foreign debt stemming from former president Saddam Hussein's years in power, in order -- he said -- to discourage the practice of lending money to dictators.
Citing reports that a handful of US corporations were winning huge reconstruction contracts from Washington without competitive bidding, Soros said many people around the world feared the US might abuse its authority while it and close ally Britain occupied post-war Iraq.
"It is very much in the interest of the United States to allay these fears, and we want to help," he said.
A US-drafted resolution pending in the UN Security Council would give the US and Britain wide-ranging powers to run Iraq and control its oil industry until a permanent government was set up, a process that could take years.
Soros -- an outspoken critic of President George W. Bush's doctrine justifying a preemptive war against any country the US deems a threat, as occurred in Iraq -- said he planned to set up a watchdog group because the draft resolution failed to provide sufficient safeguards.
He called on the Security Council's 14 other member-nations to press for changes in the draft that would give the UN a greater role in monitoring Iraq's oil exploitation during the occupation.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion