August 9, 2003	Saturday	Jumadi-us-Sani 10, 1424

WASHINGTON, Aug 8: US President George Bush has appointed one of his major political fundraisers, Thomas Foley, to run the Iraqi state business sector and draw up a sweeping privatization.

As the director of Iraq’s public sector development, Mr Foley will effectively decide which of the roughly 200 state-owned companies, employing about half a million people, should survive or die.

Mr Foley, who expected to depart as early as Monday, is to report to the US governor of Iraq, Paul Bremer.

The 51-year-old corporate turnaround chief, chairman of the NTC Group, denied the job was any kind of compensation from Bush.

“Does this sound a reward? It sounds like the short straw,” he told AFP.

“I think that his picking me for this job had nothing to do with the fact that I have been a fundraiser for him, but more because he has known me and he knows my background and skills in business.

Bush had asked Foley to take the job after the US governor of Iraq, Paul Bremer, requested help, he said.

The president “knows that I have been involved in operating companies and particularly had done some turnaround work and managed companies in high-stress situations, and so he asked me if I would do this. So I said ‘sure’.”

All Iraqi state-owned businesses other than oil and the two state-owned banks would report to Foley, he said.

He had three main jobs: to get them up and running if they are viable, develop a privatisation plan and to develop trade and foreign commerce.—AFP