UNITED NATIONS, June 22: The US-led civil administration in Iraq is sloppily managing billions of dollars of Iraqi oil money and moving at a glacial pace to guard against corruption, an international watchdog agency charged on Tuesday.

The Coalition Provisional Authority has left a door open to smuggling by failing to award contracts for equipment to meter Iraq's oil production despite having announced the contracts had been granted, the International Advisory and Monitoring Board said.

The authority has also put off for three months a request that it turn over US audits of sole-source contracts funded with Iraqi oil money and awarded to Halliburton last year without competitive bidding, the board said.

Finally, the US-led authority has delayed completing audits of the State Oil Marketing Organization, the state-owned firm that markets Iraqi oil, the agency said. Halliburton, the Texas oil services firm once headed by US Vice President Dick Cheney, has been accused by some Democrats of war profiteering after winning billions of dollars in contracts from the US military in Iraq.

The watchdog agency issued the statement after a two-day meeting in Paris, just days before the Coalition Provisional Authority was to shut down after handing power to an interim Iraqi government on June 30.

That timing makes it likely the civil administration that has governed Iraq since last year's US-led invasion would close its doors before having to answer to the watchdog agency.

The International Advisory and Monitoring Board was set up by the UN Security Council in May 2003 to ensure the US-led civil administration was not engaged in dubious practices in marketing the oil and was using the money for reconstruction.

Under a May 2003 Security Council resolution adopted after the fall of Saddam Hussein, all the proceeds of Iraqi oil and gas sales are now deposited into a special account called the Development Fund for Iraq, to be used by the occupation authorities to rebuild Iraq. Iraqi oil sales have totalled $10.8 billion since the US-led invasion. -Reuters