WASHINGTON — The Iraqi government could end this year with as much as a $79 billion cumulative budget surplus, based largely on ever-increasing oil revenues, congressional auditors say.
A report Tuesday prompted renewed calls from senators that Baghdad pay more of the bill for its own reconstruction, which has been heavily supported with U.S. funds.
The projected Iraq surplus, including unspent money from 2005 through 2008, has been building because of rising world oil prices, increasing Iraqi oil production, the government’s inability to execute budgets for spending its money and persistent violence in the country, the Government Accountability Office report said.
“The Iraqi government now has tens of billions of dollars at its disposal to fund large-scale reconstruction projects,” Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said in a statement. “It is inexcusable for U.S. taxpayers to continue to foot the bill for projects the Iraqis are fully capable of funding themselves.”
“It is time for the sovereign government of Iraq, using its revenues, expenditures and surpluses, to fully assume the responsibility to provide essential services and improve the quality of life for the Iraqi people,” Sen. John Warner, R-Va., said.
The GAO said Iraq had an estimated cumulative budget surplus of about $29 billion from 2005 to 2007 and could have another surplus of up to $50 billion this year.
The expected surplus could be lower if Iraq passes stalled legislation for a $22 billion supplemental budget for 2008 — and if the government then executes the budget.
Between 2005 and 2007, only 10 percent of Iraq’s expenditures went toward reconstruction, with just 1 percent spent on maintaining U.S. and Iraqi-funded investments in roads, water, electricity and weapons, according to the report.
The United States has appropriated about $48 billion for Iraqi reconstruction since 2003 and has committed all but about $6 billion.
But the report noted oft-repeated factors holding the government back on its spending plans.
The report noted that the United States has funded extensive efforts since 2005 to build Iraq’s capacity to budget and spend its money. It said that U.S. officials have cited several reasons for Baghdad’s problems, including a shortage of trained staff, weak procurement and budgeting systems, and violence.
The report also estimated that this year Iraq could generate $67 billion to $79 billion in oil sales.
“This substantial increase in revenues offers the Iraqi government the potential to better finance its own security and economic needs,” the GAO said.
CIA officials deny faking Iraq letter
Two former CIA officers on Tuesday denied that they or the spy agency faked an Iraqi intelligence document purporting to link Saddam Hussein with Sept. 11 bomber Mohammed Atta, as they are quoted as saying in a new book.
The White House issued the statement on behalf of the former officials after a day of adamant denials from the CIA and the Bush administration about the claim, made in “The Way of the World,” a book by Washington-based journalist Ron Suskind.
“I never received direction from George Tenet or anyone else in my chain of command to fabricate a document … as outlined in Mr. Suskind’s book,” said Robert Richer, the CIA’s former deputy director of clandestine operations.
Richer also said he talked Tuesday to John Maguire, who headed the CIA’s Iraq Operations Group at the time and who gave Richer “permission to state the following on his behalf: ‘I never received any instruction … to fabricate such a letter. Further, I have no knowledge to the origins of the letter and as to how it circulated in Iraq,’” the statement said.
Suskind claims the White House concocted the fake letter, meant to come from Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, director of Iraqi intelligence under Hussein, in the fall of 2003 to bolster its case for the invasion earlier that year as it was becoming clear that there were no weapons of mass destruction to be found in Iraq. Those weapons were a chief rationale for the war.
The letter was provided to a British journalist by an Iraqi government official, according to the book.
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