May 27, 2003	Tuesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 24,1424

BAGHDAD, May 26: Iraq’s US overseer, Paul Bremer, announced the establishment of a major credit facility for foreign trade on Monday to show the country was open for business after the lifting of UN sanctions.

Capping a whirlwind first fortnight on the job, Mr Bremer also set up a new Iraqi body to institutionalize the coalition’s 10-day-old policy of rooting out senior members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party from public life.

The post-war reconstruction of Iraq was “now nearing the end of the first stage” with government ministries, most power and water supplies, and a new police force up and running, he said.

“The task now is to help the Iraqis rebuild their economy after decades of state control and mismanagement.”

Mr Bremer gave no figure for the size of the credit facility but said it would be funded by a raft of private banks as well as the Central Bank of Iraq. “It will be a substantial credit facility that first symbolically indicates to the world that Iraq is open for business and also provides a practical incentive to people who want to trade with Iraq,” Bremer told a news conference.

“Encouraging robust trade between Iraq and the rest of the world is a key part of our strategy,” he said, adding that a market economy was the “best protection for political freedom” in Iraq.

Mr Bremer said last week’s lifting of the UN sanctions imposed on Iraq after Saddam’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait had been a “big step along this road.”

“Oil revenues will now all be used for the Iraqi people as we work to establish the first free economy here in years.”—AFP