Moscow Believes Pentagon Can Finance Iraq's Restoration from Own Funds

The Pentagon is quite able to finance Iraq's post-war restoration from its own funds, said a source close to the Russian diplomatic circles in a conversation with RIA Novosti.

"Russia has always known that the Pentagon has a good appetite and recently it has significantly grown," the source said. He recalled that "the US Congress has just allocated over $80 billion to Mr. Rumsfeld's department for war in Iraq and then for restoring the facilities destroyed by the coalition troops".

"It seems that the Pentagon is quite able to pay for the sufferings and destruction inflicted on Iraq out of its own pocket," the interlocutor concluded.

He gave this comment in connection with yesterday's statement of US Defence Undersecretary Paul Wolfowitz. When speaking in the US Senate, Wolfowitz said that the US Administration believed that Russia, France and Germany could consider writing off Iraq's debt to them.

This step could be a possible contribution of Moscow, Paris and Berlin in Iraq's post-war restoration, Wolfowitz believes. He expressed his hope that at the meeting in St. Petersburg the three leaders could "consider whether it is relevant to write off this debt fully or partially so that it will not burden the new Iraqi government".