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US Solicits Bids to
Rebuild Post-war Iraq
President George W. Bush’s administration has asked five US companies to bid on
a contract to rebuild a post-war Iraq, an official said Monday. The US Agency
for International Development (USAID) had sent out the detailed "request for
proposals," USAID spokeswoman Ellen Yount said, confirming a Wall Street Journal
report. The newspaper article, which said the contract could be worth up to 900
million dollars, was accurate, she said. Five companies were asked to bid:
Houston-based Halliburton Co.’s Kellogg Brown and Root; Bechtel Group of San
Francisco; Fluor of Aliso Viejo, California; Louis Berger Group of East Orange,
New Jersey; and Parsons Corp. of Pasadena, California, Yount confirmed.
The rebuilding would start immediately a war ends, the paper said. The plan
would restore water, roads, ports, hospitals and schools. Planners expected to
finish the rebuilding in 18 months. The government had asked only a small number
of US, security-cleared companies to bid under a special legal provision for
"urgent circumstances," the paper said.
‘SMOKING GUN’
Meanwhile, the British newspaper, The London Times reported on Monday that
Britain and the United States were planning on Monday to press chief UN weapons
inspector Hans Blix to admit that he has found a "smoking gun" in Iraq, The
newspaper said British and US ambassadors plan to demand that Blix reveal more
details of an undeclared Iraqi unmanned aircraft, whose existence was only
disclosed in a declassified 173-page document circulated by inspectors on
Friday.
The discovery of the drone, which has a wing span of 25 feet, will make it much
easier for waverers on the UN Security Council to accept US and British
arguments that Iraq has failed to meet UN demands to disarm, The Times article
said. It said Blix had failed to mention the drone in his oral report about Iraq
inspections to the Security Council on Friday.
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