'Large-scale looting' of building sites
SAHAB (Jordan) - The United States is spending billions of dollars to rebuild
Iraq's civil and military infrastructure.

'Large-scale looting' of building sites
SAHAB (Jordan) - The United States is spending billions of dollars to rebuild
Iraq's civil and military infrastructure.

But there is increasing evidence that parts of sensitive military equipment,
seemingly brand- new components for oil rigs and water plants and whole
complexes of older buildings, are leaving the country on the backs of flatbed
trucks.

By some estimates, at least 100 semi-trailers loaded with what is billed as
Iraqi scrap metal are streaming each day into Jordan, one of six countries that
share a border with Iraq.

US officials say sensitive equipment is closely monitored and much of the rest
that is leaving is legitimate removal and sale from a shattered country.

But many experts say that much of what is going on amounts to a vast looting
operation.

In the past few months, the International Atomic Energy Agency, based in
Vienna, has been closely monitoring satellite photographs of hundreds of
military-industrial sites in Iraq.

Initial results from that analysis are jarring, said Mr Jacques Baute, director
of the agency's Iraq nuclear verification office: entire buildings and
complexes of as many as a dozen buildings have been vanishing from the
satellite photographs.

'We see sites that have totally been cleaned out,' he said.

Recent examinations of Jordanian scrapyards have turned up an astounding
quantity of scrap metal and new components from Iraq's civil infrastructure.

'This is systematically plundering the country,' said Mr John Hamre, president
and chief executive officer of Centre for Strategic and International Studies,
which sent a team to Iraq and issued a report on reconstruction efforts at the
request of the Pentagon last July. -- New York Times