Soros goes on Iraq watch
Concerned that Iraq's oil might fall under the control of US-led coalition forces, financier and philanthropist Georges Soros has launched an "Iraq Revenue Watch" to ensure that the Iraqi people will benefit from their own resources.
Watch will monitor the defeated country's oil industry, which should be managed "with the highest standards of transparency and that the benefits of national oil wealth flow to the people of Iraq".
Soros, who made a fortune from foreign currency trading, is well known in Eastern and Central Europe and Central Asia for his humanitarian programs, which are managed by his New York-based Open Society Institute.
The institute has criticised oil-rich countries like Nigeria and Venezuela for squandering their natural resources and for the lack of proper stewardship, which has often led to political abuses, corruption and a failure to raise living standards.
The institute has called on the United States to set up rules to ensure completetransparency in using Iraq's oil to benefit the Iraqi people.
Soros called on the UN Security Council to modify the latest draft of a resolution written by the US and Britain to give an explicit and important role to the UN and to define the responsibilities of those two countries as the occupying powers in Iraq.
He said at a press conference at UN headquarters that the revised draft was still too vague on the UN role.
"If approved (by the council), the resolution ... would establish an indefinite American protectorate of Iraq sanctioned by the United Nations and paid for by Iraq's oil revenues," the Open Society Institute said in a press statement.
"It would also undermine international law," the statement said.
"The UN and the secretary-general should be given a more substantial role in Iraq."
Source: AAP