Washington: The US embassy in New Delhi is looking into reports that Indians were lured into Iraq by US contractors and mistreated there, State Department has said.

"Our embassy has started to look into these reports and has advised the (Indian) Ministry (of external affairs) that it's doing so. Obviously, we take all such reports seriously, and we'll do our best to find out the facts of the matter," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said yesterday (May 5, 2004).

He said that India's Ministry of External Affairs had contacted the US embassy at New Delhi to discuss the alleged mistreatment of some Indian nationals in Iraq by US contractors.

Press reports in India said that some Indians had alleged they were lured into Iraq under false pretences and mistreated while working there, he noted.

Asked if there is any broader effort to find out in Iraq what actually happened to the alleged victims, Boucher said, "I think that's what the embassy would do is try to identify, first of all, who these people worked with, where they worked and what they were doing, and then use our folks on the other end of the equation to find those specifics of that circumstance, see what really happened."

Boucher said he did not know if Pentagon had been asked to help in finding out the truth about the Indians' alleged mistreatment in Iraq, "but I'm sure our embassy will follow up and get in touch with everybody that's appropriate."

Asked how much responsibility does the US Government has for the contractors operating in Iraq, apparently for the US military, Boucher said, "I think you'd better ask at the Pentagon. The contracts themselves are done over there, I think. It's conceivable that these were AID subcontractors or something like that.

"But since most of the money has been Pentagon contracts, I'd have to assume that's where it might be. But in terms of the standards in contracts, all contracts that the US Government signs have certain basic standards that we expect employers to meet."

And so, Boucher admitted, the US Government would have some authority over the contractors and would expect certain standards to be met by them "in terms of how they treat how they employ people".

"I won't go on from that. I'll just stop with that."