Bremer’s struggle with independent Iraqi oil watchdog

During three months of tough negotiations, Iraq's US administrator fought hard to trim the powers of an independent watchdog being set up to monitor how he spends Iraq's oil money, international agency officials said.
At one point, administrator Paul Bremer suspended the talks for six weeks to show his displeasure with efforts by the agencies -- including the United Nations and World Bank -- to ensure the independence of the new watchdog agency, to be known as the International Advisory and Monitoring Board, the officials said.

But in the end, the agencies got a deal on the ground rules they could live with, the officials said.
"The resolution says there must be an independent voice, and there will be," one official said. "One has to wonder whether this was a question of ignorance or ill will," this official said, referring to Mr Bremer's tenacity. US officials, however, said the negotiations dragged on only because of a desire to get things right.

"It was very important to have a transparent process put in place. These things take time, lots of people have to be consulted," US Treasury Undersecretary for International Affairs John Taylor told when asked why the negotiations had taken so long.
"It was a question of the extent of the board's oversight powers," said another international official involved in the negotiations. "We wanted to make sure it could ask the necessary questions and pursue special audits, for example, so it could obtain a complete and detailed picture."
But Mr Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority, which is running Iraq on behalf of the post-war occupation, wanted to confine the board's role to bookkeeping, the official said. As things turned out, "at the end of the day. I think the board should be able to exercise its duties as set out by the Security Council," he said. A May 22 Security Council resolution ordered the creation of the monitoring board to watch over how oil money and other Iraqi funds are used by the US administration in the absence of an Iraqi government.
Five months later, the board has still not been set up, although US and UN officials said an agreement had been reached in principle on its "terms of reference."