Queue forming for post-war contracts

THE prospect of a share in the vast project to rebuild Iraq has heightened the anticipation of many companies. Some estimates put the cost of reconstruction as high as $100 billion.

This is more than the $90bn dollars spent by the US in the late 1940s and early 1950s on the famous Marshall Plan which kick-started the reconstruction of Western Europe.

Clearly the war has produced losers as well as winners. Both Russia and France are said to be owed around $8bn dollars each by the Iraqis and there are now suggestions from Washington that these debts, much of which were run up in the purchase of weapons systems, should be forgiven.