WASHINGTON, Oct 21: A leading Democratic senator said on Tuesday he had asked the General Accounting Office, the US Congress’s investigative arm, to audit billions of dollars in contracts awarded to US firms to rebuild Iraq.

Michigan’s Senator Carl Levin released a copy of a letter he sent to the GAO in which he voiced concern that “important safeguards” had been ignored and excessive rates charged for work done under contracts in Iraq paid for by US taxpayers.

“We need an independent audit of these issues to ensure that the taxpayers’ hard-earned money is not being wasted,” said Levin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Most contracts for Iraq have been issued by the US Agency for International Development or the Army Corps of Engineers, whose main contractor is a subsidiary of Texas company Halliburton, once run by Vice President Dick Cheney.

Both of these government departments have come under heavy criticism over how contracts were handed out to rebuild Iraq, particularly ones given without any competition. Both departments say they have been fair in awarding contracts.

Halliburton’s Kellogg Brown & Root has so far clocked up more than $1.5bn from its no-competition contract issued in March to rebuild Iraq’s oil industry and Levin said this deal was the most worrying of all to him.

Carl Levin asked the GAO to look at, among other issues, how the contracts were awarded, profit margins, how much work was given to subcontractors and to what extent the US-led authority relied upon expensive consultants.—Reuters