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.
School bullies in Singapore are to face caning under new guidelines, but the education minister on Tuesday said it would be meted out only as a last resort with strict safeguards. Human rights groups regularly criticize Singapore for the use of corporal punishment, which remains part of the school and criminal justice systems, but authorities have defended it as a deterrent to crime and serious misconduct. Caning was discussed in the parliament after legislators asked how it would be used in relation to bullying in schools. The debate followed stricter guidelines on serious student misconduct, including bullying, unveiled by the Singaporean Ministry of
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