US seeks to reassure donors ahead of Iraq reconstruction meet

Secretary of State Colin Powell and national security advisor Condoleezza Rice sought to reassure potential contributors that their donations would be helping the Iraqi people and not lining the pockets of US multinational firms.

"I hope they will come in a generous manner to help the people of Iraq, to make a statement to the Iraqi people that the international community is there with them and for them," Powell said in a speech to business leaders on the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum.

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"(I hope) that the international community will come together not only to give them funds, but to give them hope, hope for a better future," he said.

Powell, who will be leading the US delegation to the two-day conference which begins on Thursday in Madrid, said reconstruction and stabilization efforts in post-war Iraq would succeed but only with international aid.

"We will be successful in Iraq, let there be no doubt about that," he said. "But it does require the assistance of the international community."

In a bid to overcome resistance -- particularly from anti-war France, Germany and Russia -- to providing large cash and in-kind donations, the United States has endorsed two key provisions giving non-US actors some say in how reconstruction funds are spent, officials said.

Both provisions are to be discussed in Madrid, where conference organizers are hoping to come as close as they can to meeting the need for an estimated 36 billion dollars in reconstruction aid between 2004 and 2007.

The first is the creation of an oversight committee, recognized in the latest UN Security Council resolution on Iraq that passed unanimously last week, to be run by the World Bank and the United Nations that will monitor expenditures of the Development Fund for Iraq.

That fund, created shortly after Saddam Hussein's ouster, is made up of Iraqi oil revenue, seized Iraqi assets and some US reconstruction assistance to which President George W. Bush has pledged an additional 20 billion dollars.