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Tokarev said the U.S. was only after access to Iraq’s vast supplies of cheap oil.
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MOSCOW,
December 11 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The director of a
state-owned oil company with interests in Iraq on Tuesday, December 10,
accused U.S. companies of attempting to blackmail Russian oil majors
into financing Iraqi opposition parties in return for contract
guarantees from a post-Saddam Hussein regime.
The
Moscow Times quoted Nikolai Tokarev, head of the Zarubezhneft,
which has been operating in Iraq since the 1960s as saying that “The
Americans have tried to discuss the issue, including at a level of
[direct negotiations] with companies.
“They
even proposed we should finance the Iraqi opposition in return for being
able to continue work there.”
The
paper said that the statement reflected “a growing concern among
Russian officials and businessmen that a possible U.S. military
operation in Iraq could damage Moscow’s economic interests in the
country.”
In
an interview published in Vremya Novostei on Tuesday, Tokarev
said he had turned down such deals as “dishonorable.”
Some
other Russian companies, however, have accepted similar U.S. proposals
and have become involved in a “dirty game,” he said, without
providing further details, reported the paper.
In
addition, the paper said that Tokarev slammed the United States for its
plans to overthrow Hussein, saying the U.S. government was only after
access to Iraq's vast supplies of cheap oil.
“For
the Americans this venture, despite all the political rhetoric, is aimed
at gaining control over the oil market,” he said, reported the Times.
“Russia
fears that a new regime in Iraq might renege on Baghdad’s obligations
to pay off its $7 billion Soviet-era debt to Moscow and award lucrative
oil contracts to U.S. and other Western companies, snubbing Russian
firms,” reported the Times.
It
added that U.S. President George W. Bush has assured President Vladimir
Putin that Russia will be a major player in building a postwar Iraq,
U.S. officials say, but that Tokarev and other Russian businessmen
remain distrustful.
According
to Iraqi officials, Russian oil companies account for 35 percent to 40
percent of Iraqi oil exported under the U.N. oil-for-food program, said
the paper, adding that Tokarev said the rigid, U.N.-prescribed pricing
policy had made business difficult.
He
added that his company, together with another state oil company,
Rosneft, was discussing a contract to develop oil fields near the port
of Basra in southern Iraq.
