Pat Dollard | Young Americans

NYT:

BAGHDAD, Nov. 14 — Iraq will spend an unprecedented $19 billion on capital projects across the country in 2008, including $900 million in Baghdad, senior Iraqi officials said Wednesday, even as they warned that the fight against insurgencies, gangs and militias was far from over.

“We must confront the terrorism and extremism that hampers the building of a country of citizenship and law and that provides opportunity, water, electricity and fuel,” Barham Salih, the deputy prime minister, said in a speech to a gathering of senior Iraqi government and local Baghdad officials.

But Mr. Salih, who is also in charge of economic development for the Baghdad security plan, which began in February, added, “We still have a lot of security challenges.”

The government reached agreement late Tuesday on a $40 billion budget for 2008, including capital and operating costs, and sent it to the Parliament for review, said Mr. Salih, who made the announcement at the gathering. Those present included the two vice presidents, Adel Abdul-Mehdi and Tariq al-Hashemi; Gen. Aboud Qanbar, the military commander overseeing the security plan; and the United States ambassador, Ryan C. Crocker.

Although the city would get more money than ever for capital projects, as well as at least $300 million for its operating budget, it is not clear whether it could spend the capital funds. American development experts say that, at best, only 60 to 65 percent of the $450 million in capital funds allocated for 2007, half as much as for 2008, has actually been spent. Spending has been slowed by security problems, a lack of expertise in contracting projects and inexperience in delegating tasks — when a project manager is away, others are often afraid to make decisions, and work stops.

“People need to feel the value of peace,” said Mr. Hashemi, a Sunni Arab, describing the government’s intention to increase capital spending. “There needs to be quick improvement in electricity, in water, in health care.”

“The destruction of Baghdad has not been just a matter of its infrastructure, the damage to streets and buildings,” he added. “It is the social fabric that has been damaged.”

But he said that even though the social fabric could not be patched overnight, reconstruction could be a sort of peace dividend giving people hope for better times and encouraging them to eschew the violence that has traumatized the capital.

Mr. Hashemi’s presence at the forum was itself a signal of the efforts at rapprochement. The bloc he leads in Parliament had been boycotting cabinet sessions, but it appeared that an end to the boycott was under negotiation. His fellow vice president, Mr. Abdul-Mehdi, a Shiite, said that bringing back the Sunnis would “give strength to reconstruction nationwide.”