10.2 |
Reconstruction: July 2004 to July 2009
137.
On
Mr Blair’s suggestions that the UK needed to find more
effective ways of getting
the US to
spend its funds more quickly and with greater impact, and that DFID
should
use its
experience of post-conflict situations across Iraq (not just in the
South), Mr Benn
responded:
“We will
get closer to the Project Contracting Office (PCO). Our Basra
sector
specialists
are working with the PCO there, and the DFID Office in Baghdad
has
close
relations with PCO counterparts in Baghdad, including the new
(good) head,
Bill
Taylor. He has declined our offer of a senior reconstruction
specialist but we
are
offering technical help instead. This could help the PCO implement
effective
reconstruction
projects in areas where the Iraqi Interim Government regains
control
from the
insurgents.”
138.
Mr Benn’s
reply highlighted a number of decisions taken before Mr Blair
wrote his
letter:
•
DFID’s
projects to create jobs and provide essential services in the South
had
been
announced in early September.
•
The
decision not to channel further funds through the UN and World Bank
Trust
Funds had
also been made in early September.
•
DFID’s work
with MND(SE) to help implement QIPs was under way by
13 October.
139.
The FCO
advised the British Embassy Baghdad on 15 November that,
following
the meeting
of officials on 28 October which had agreed that the UK should make
an
open-ended
offer of support to the PCO, DFID had confirmed that it could
provide:
•
technical
expertise (for example a water or health expert); and
•
expertise
on post-conflict reconstruction, to help deliver reconstruction in
cities
and towns
where the IIG had regained control.78
140.
On 16
November, following a visit to Fallujah, Lieutenant General John
Kiszely, the
Senior
British Military Representative, Iraq, reported to the MOD and IPU
that the scale
of the
damage to buildings dramatically outstripped the figures that the
US had used in
its press
statement.79
Soldiers in
Fallujah had told him that between 90 and
95 percent
of
civilians had left before the fighting had started.
141.
General George
Casey, MNF-I, had decreed that MNF-I’s main effort should
be
humanitarian
assistance and reconstruction, and had appointed
Lt Gen Kiszely “in
charge of
reconstruction”.
78
Telegram
126 FCO London to Baghdad, 15 November 2004, ‘Iraq Reconstruction:
UK Assistance for
the PCO’.
79
Minute
Crompton to Private Secretary [FCO], 16 November 2004, ‘Iraq:
Fallujah’.
219