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Baghdad deadlock stops marshland donor conference

A donors conference to coordinate the revival of southern Iraq's once-lush marshlands has been canceled because of the ongoing stalemate in Baghdad over Iraq's constitution.

The summit was to be hosted by the Japanese government yesterday and today in Tokyo, but was postponed after Iraqi Environment Minister Nermin Othman was needed at home for constitutional negotiations, said Robert Bisset, a spokesman for the UN Environment Program (UNEP).

A new date and location have not been decided. Japan, which called off the meeting in consultation with UNEP, may offer to host a rescheduled event but must first discuss the matter with Iraq, the UN and other donors, Foreign Ministry official Yoshiko Nagayama said.

The UN had hoped the conference would raise money for restoration and coordinate projects by Japan, the US, Canada and Italy.

The delay follows a UNEP announcement on Wednesday that the marshlands have made a rapid recovery since being nearly decimated under the regime of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.

"Everybody's waiting to see what happens in Iraq with regard to the constitutional process and the question of elections there," Bisset said. "There are a lot of challenges ahead, that's for sure."

Saddam drained much of the Mesopotamian waters between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the 1990s -- building dams and canals to pull away water -- in an apparent punishment because the marsh inhabitants supported a Shiite rebellion after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Of the almost 9,324km2 of marshes in 1970, the area shrank by 90 percent to 700km2 by 2002. As recently as 2001, some experts forecast the marshlands would disappear by 2008.

Instead, the new satellite imagery shows a rapid increase in water and vegetation cover, with the marshes rebounding to about 37 percent of their 1970 reach, the UNEP said on Wednesday.
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