July 9, 2003	Wednesday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 8,1424

BAGHDAD, July 8: Iraqis on the streets of Baghdad heaved sighs of relief Tuesday over the coalition’s plan to replace their battered currency with new banknotes, but worries remain over the dinar’s notorious instability and rumours of counterfeiting.

Three months after US troops rolled through Iraq and brought an end to president Saddam Hussein’s regime, there was near unanimity in the wish to exchange the New Iraqi Dinar — currently trading at 1,500 to the dollar — for a more secure, less counterfeitable currency, and one without a toppled dictator’s portrait on it.

“We will be happy to get rid of Saddam’s face and this useless money,” moneychanger Hillal Sultan told AFP, as he stacked rubber-bound bricks of 250-dinar bills worth 17 US cents a piece.

One man bounded out of his beat-up Chevrolet sedan to exchange 100 dollars for dinars, and expressed surprise upon learning they would be phased out.

“Good, let’s hope there’s no Saddam on the front,” he jeered.

The sentiment extends to Iraqi officials who are grappling with a growing public perception that the currency is caked in fraud.—AFP