Iraq ignores US technology for mobile phone license awards

IRAQ’S US-led government awarded licenses yesterday for firms to set up mobile phone networks, rebuffing calls by some American lawmakers to use US-backed technology to restore shattered communications.

Iraqi Communications Minister Haidar al-Ebadi said Iraq’s three regional networks would use the GSM system, already adopted across the Middle East. US-backed technology is based on the CDMA system.

The licenses are among the most potentially lucrative and high-profile contracts to be offered in post-war Iraq. A functioning national phone system, which Iraq has lacked since Saddam Hussein was toppled in April, could also allow guerrillas fighting the American-led occupation of Iraq to organise themselves better on a national level, although the US Army says guerrilla groups are only locally organised at present.

Iraq did not have a public mobile phone network during Saddam’s rule and much of the land-line network was destroyed in the war to overthrow the former dictator.

“Until now, we were denied mobile phones. Iraqis will welcome the chance to use mobile phones to talk to their family, friends and for business purposes,” Ebadi said.

The new networks, expected to be running within weeks according to Ebadi, will be a boost for businesses and government ministries which have been struggling to function in a country where only satellite phones can be relied on.

Asked if US intelligence services would monitor mobile phone traffic, Ebadi said: “I would be very reluctant to do that.”

He said he had already signed a decree banning the tapping of phone calls, and added that a functioning mobile system would make Iraq more secure, not less.

Also yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin was quoted as saying that the United States could face a prolonged and futile war in Iraq as the Soviet Union did in Afghanistan in the 1980s. In an interview in The New York Times, he called the US decision to invade Iraq “an error”.

Washington is seeking a new Security Council resolution giving the United Nations a broader mandate in Iraq, hoping this will persuade reluctant countries to provide troops and cash to stabilise and rebuild the country. But the US faces an uphill struggle getting enough votes after UN Secretary General Kofi Annan challenged the draft resolution last week.