MEED launches Iraq reconstruction meet in Dubai

The event, called Iraq: Focussing on the Future, will provide the latest information about developments in the Iraq Infrastructure Reconstruction Programme (IIRP), the $18,600 million, multi-contract project unveiled in November and put out to tender at the start of 2004; the Iraq Infrastructure I and II schemes, which are being financed by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and the multi-billion dollar Restore Iraq Oil (RIO) programme run by the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE).

MEED has established the benchmark for timely and accurate reporting of economic reconstruction in Iraq. It was the first to publish details about the USAID programme, the first to report the initial contracts in the scheme, the first to report on the non-coalition boycott to be applied to the IIRP and the first to report on the major revisions in the IIRP which emerged in January.

MEED has assembled an authoritative team of speakers from Iraq, the US, the UK and the GCC who will address a wide range of topics relevant to companies seeking to do business in and with Iraq.

The speakers include:

• Judge Wael Abdulatif, elected governor of Basra and member of the Iraqi Governing Council
• Abdul Hafi Ali, deputy governor of Basra
• Andy Bearpark, director of operations in Baghdad of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA)
• Jabar Ali al-Lueibi, director general of the Southern Oil Company
• Tom Wheelock, director of the USAID Iraq Infrastructure programme
• Thomas Crum, chief operating officer of Kellogg Brown & Root, Middle East
• Dean Hagerty, project manager for Bechtel in the power sector of the USAID Iraq Infrastructure Programme
• Robyn McGuckin, deputy senior advisor, electricity, in the CPA
• Lt Col Richard Brown, head of essential services in the coalition forces in the multinational division for the south-east or Iraq.
• John Walsh, operations director, SSA Marine, Umm Qasr
• Kevin G Woeflein, senior banking adviser, CPA

Topics to be reviewed include macroeconomic management, major reconstruction projects, restoring Iraqi oil production, electricity services, repairing Iraq's ports, telecommunications, transport, industrial rehabilitation, privatisation, banking and finance, doing business in Iraq and developing a legal framework in the country.

MEED is working in collaboration with the Dubai Chamber of Commerce & Industry and the Dubai-based Iraq Business Council. It will be the first major conference about Iraqi reconstruction held in the UAE.

"MEED has done more than any other publication to report on the facts of economic reconstruction in Iraq and the best way for regional and international companies to work with the Iraqi people," says MEED Editorial Director and conference chairman Edmund O'Sullivan. "So it is natural that we should organise a major conference on these topics for our 70,000 readers and the many, many others who want to know more about what is going on in Iraq."