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U.S. Vice President Firm Did Business with Iraq
WASHINGTON, June 23 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The oil concern Halliburton held stakes in two firms that contracted to sell more than 73 million dollars in oil production equipment to Iraq while U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney headed the Dallas-based company, the Washington Post reported Saturday.
Cheney insisted while on the presidential campaign trail year that the oil-field supply corporation had imposed a "firm policy" against trading with Iraq.
"I had a firm policy that we wouldn't do anything in Iraq, even arrangements that were supposedly legal," he said in a July 30, 2000, interview on ABC television's "This Week" talk show.
"We've not done any business in Iraq since UN sanctions were imposed on Iraq in 1990, and I had a standing policy that I wouldn't do that," Cheney said in the interview.
As secretary of defense in the first Bush administration, Cheney helped to lead a multinational coalition against Iraq in the Persian Gulf War and helped to plan the economic embargo to isolate Saddam Hussein's government.
After he was named in 1995 to head Halliburton, he promised to maintain a hard line against Baghdad.
The Post quoted an oil industry executive however, as saying he was certain Cheney knew about the business dealings with Iraq.
The newspaper also said that two former senior executives of the Halliburton subsidiaries say that, as far as they knew, there was no policy against doing business with Iraq. One of the executives also says that although he never spoke directly to Cheney about the Iraqi contracts, he is certain Cheney knew about them.
It also said that the trade was perfectly legal. Indeed, it is a case study of how U.S. firms routinely use foreign subsidiaries and joint ventures to avoid the opprobrium of doing business with Baghdad, which does not violate U.S. law as long as it occurs within the "oil-for-food" program run by the United Nations.
Halliburton's trade with Iraq was first reported by The Washington Post in February 2000. But confidential United Nations records obtained by the daily show that the dealings were more extensive than originally reported and than Vice President Cheney has acknowledged, the Post said.
Cheney resigned as chairman and chief executive of the giant oil concern in August 2000.
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