Al-Arab Blog - مدونة العرب

US launches 22-million-dollar employment program for Iraqi WMD scientists: "US launches 22-million-dollar employment program for Iraqi WMD scientists

WASHINGTON (AFP) Dec 18, 2003
The United States on Thursday formally launched a two-year program that will spend up to 22 million dollars to employ former Iraqi weapons scientists in peaceful civilian fields.
The State Department said the program was aimed at keeping those scientists from selling their expertise to terrorist groups or rogue states and assisting the reconstruction of Iraq's shattered infrastructure and technology sector.
'This is a program to put people to work to give them more productive uses of their expertise, their intelligence and their energy, than work on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction programs,' spokesman Richard Boucher said.
It is not, he said, intended to pay Iraqi scientists for providing evidence that Saddam's ousted regime possessed weapons of mass destruction.
Under the program, which is similar to schemes initiated with scientists from the former Soviet Union, the department will spend two million dollars to establish an office in Baghdad, identify those eligible and point out possible projects for them to work on, he said.
Those aspects of the program -- which will include workshops, training and preliminary work on a desalination plant -- is expected to begin in February, Boucher said.
An additional 20 million dollars is envisioned to be spent over the course of the program on stipends for the scientists and other expenses but the exact funding mechanism for that money has not yet been determined he said.
'Over the next two years, the Iraqi International Center for Science and Industry will work closely with the Iraqi government to identify, develop and fund activities in support of Iraqi reconstruction,' Boucher"