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The world must do more for Iraq: Rice
 Stockholm, May 29 (MIA) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday acknowledged widespread skepticism about the improvement of conditions in Iraq but said the world must support the Iraqi government.
Despite those concerns, the Iraqi government should be rewarded for fulfilling pledges to boost security and enact political reforms, she said. Iraq, she said, was now a "fully functioning system" that should not be denied assistance from its friends and neighbors.
Such aid, in the form of development projects and technical expertise, should no longer be held back for security reasons, as much of it has, nor should debt relief or diplomatic recognition be further delayed, Rice said, noting that some donors still must be convinced.
"There are a lot of people who are having trouble making the transition in their mind ... from how Iraq looked in 2007 and how Iraq looks now," she told reporters aboard her plane as she flew to an Iraq conference in Sweden.
"There were questions about whether its security force would ever defend the Iraqi population, whether the state would ever create institutions that would function, like parliament, or whether they could pass reconciliation legislation, or whether they could reconcile with their neighbors, let alone reconcile among themselves," Rice said.
"Now, this work is not done and the international community needs to stand by Iraq as it moves ahead, but this is a functioning state," she said.
A main continuing concern for the United States is endemic corruption in the Iraqi government, which Rice said must be addressed if it is ever to develop.
"The Iraqis do have still considerable work to do in terms of matters of corruption," she said. "That is a kind of the next frontier, if you will, to improve not just economic performance and political reconciliation but really start to create the rule of law and an environment in which they can expect to attract major international investment."
The United States has had mixed results in trying to persuade potential contributors to help Iraq, particularly in getting Arab states to fully recognize the country by opening embassies and posting ambassadors to Baghdad. Some countries have been reluctant to forgive Iraqi debt.
Rice said she would raise all of those issues at Thursday's meeting of the International Compact with Iraq, a broad five-year economic and political reform package that U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon helped broker last year in Egypt.
At the time, amid widespread violence in Iraq, the concept was received with little enthusiasm. Some participants, including Arab states, have been reluctant to follow through on pledges to send technical experts and other personnel for security reasons.
But since then, Rice said Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government had made significant progress on security — including crackdowns on sectarian extremists — and passed nearly all the critical legislation it had vowed to pass.
"This is a fundamentally different situation than a year ago," she said. "With the improved security situation, it ought to be possible to make more progress on some of the pledges that were made for project and technical assistance."
The Compact laid out ambitious benchmarks to achieve a stable, united, democratic Iraq within five years. It defined international help for Iraq — including debt relief — but also set tough commitments on the Baghdad government.
The extent of unmet foreign pledges was not clear, but U.S. officials said one major problem was a lack of foreign experts to help rebuild Iraq's shattered agricultural sector. Other areas needing outside expertise include government efficiency and budgets, they said.
Much of Iraq's own ability to deal with these issues was destroyed even before the U.S.-led 2003 invasion and dates back to decades of misrule by Saddam Hussein and then U.N. sanctions imposed on the country after the first Gulf War in 1991.
As such, Rice argued that the entire world has a duty to help Iraq recover.
"The international community, because of that history, has I think an obligation to help the Iraqis get on their feet," she said. "This is not just an obligation of the United States. The sectors that were essentially put out of business now need to come back into being."
The session will be the Compact's second at cabinet level and some 96 delegations — from 83 countries and 13 organizations — are expected to attend, including from U.S. nemeses Iran and Syria, although Rice said she had no plans to meet with officials from either country.
The meeting is being held as the U.S. military says violence in Iraq has reached its lowest level in more than four years, following a series of crackdowns against Sunni and Shiite extremists in Baghdad, the southern city of Basra and the northern city of Mosul.
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