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Bush has pledged an extra US$1.2 billion for rebuilding and creating jobs in Iraq, but some Iraqis doubt it will make much difference unless it is spent wisely and security improves.

"The most important issue is providing security first. The US$1 billion from America won't do anything with bombs and suicide bombers terrifying people," Jamal Yaseen, head of a steel trading company in Baghdad, said Thursday.

Iraq, which has the world's third biggest oil reserves, expected billions of dollars in foreign funds to pour in after the US-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003. But instead of rebuilding, foreign companies have largely stayed away because of the relentless violence.

Millions of dollars have also disappeared into the pockets of corrupt officials or gone unaccounted for in the chaotic aftermath of the invasion, when large sums in hundred dollar bills were handed out with little accountability.

Yaseen said whether more US money would help depended on whether it was spent wisely. "Maybe a restricted number of people could benefit from this if the Iraqi government knows how to use it in the right way," he said.

US taxpayers have already spent more than US$20 billion on reconstruction in Iraq, but the Iraqi government has said it needs US$100 billion over the next four to five years to rebuild its shattered infrastructure. Iraq's US$41 billion budget for 2007 foresees revenues of US$33 billion, mainly from oil exports.

The troop expansion plan has drawn criticism from political supporters of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose Mehdi Army militias are said by the Pentagon to be the greatest threat to security in Iraq.

"Sending more troops to Iraq is a wrong decision and it is against the will of Iraqis and the American people," said Nassar al-Rubaie, spokesman for Sadr's parliamentary group.

"We consider it a dictator's decision to use force towards the Iraqi people, and a non-democratic decision towards the American people because it is against the American majority represented by the Democratic Party, which condemned and disagreed with sending troops to Iraq."

On the other side of the sectarian divide, an official of Iraq's leading Sunni religious gathering, the Muslim Clerics' Association, said in remarks typically critical of the US presence that sending more troops would not solve problems as long as Sunnis were disenfranchised from the political process.

"The American president is ignoring the dangerous political reality in Iraq," Mohammad Bashar al-Fhaidi said.

"Those who are on the ruling side today have taken the path of exclusion, of marginalization and pursuit of others. There are no links between the Sunnis and those participating in the political process," he told Al Arabiya television. "Bush is a prisoner of his own dreams."

(China Daily via agencies January 12, 2007)