Message Board

Is the US acting as a sole superpower by snubbing UN? Post your views

Geneva: UN Secretary General Kofi Annan criticised a US decision to bar countries that opposed the Iraq war from bidding for reconstruction contracts in Iraq.

"The stability of Iraq is everyone's business and we should pool our efforts and avoid steps and decisions that are divisive," Annan told journalists when asked for his reaction to Washington's move.

"We need to rebuild international consensus...to stabilise Iraq, so I hope that we will all take steps that are unifying, that bring us together to tackle this important issue in Iraq."

"No one is interested in a chaotic Iraq in the middle of that region," he said.

The US administration has decided that only countries that joined the coalition can bid for an estimated $ 18.6 billion of prime Iraq reconstruction contracts, according to a Pentagon memorandum made public today.

France, Germany and Russia, which led international opposition to the US-British invasion of Iraq in March, also sharply criticised Washington's move.

Annan also reiterated in the wake of his report to the UN Security Council on the world body's role in post-war Iraq, which was released in New York earlier today, that the country was too dangerous for humanitarian work.

"As soon as the security situation permits, we will be back," the Secretary-General told journalists, emphasising that the UN would carry out cross-border aid missions from bases in neighbouring countries in the meantime.

Agencies