IRAQ: Foreign entrepreneurs in Baghdad looking to get rich in a post-Saddam Iraq unfettered by UN sanctions say the likely rewards outweigh the dangers in a country gripped by lawlessness.
Some businessmen said they had not waited for Thursday's UN decision to end the 13-year economic embargo to start work.
Hundreds of trucks and trailers are already plying the main routes into Iraq from neighbouring countries such as Jordan, laden with everything from cars to satellite dishes.
"We are not waiting around for somebody to tell us, 'Yes, go ahead you can work'," said an international businessman, an agent for one of Iraq's largest families in business since the country was ruled by the Ottoman Empire last century.
"This is an opportunity of a lifetime. You will not get it again unless President Bush goes to attack another country, and there is no country quite like Iraq."
The potential for profit is vast in a shattered economy that has undergone three major wars in the past 23 years and whose 26 million people are in the market for everything from consumer goods to a new communications systems.
The businessmen outlined several possible projects that would attract investment from outside and inside Iraq, including the start-up of foreign-language newspapers, private airlines or the creation of a wireless telephone system.
The drive for contracts and profits in Iraq is not only going on inside the country. In London yesterday more than 1,000 representatives of building firms pressed their case for work at a meeting organised by the US construction giant, Bechtel.
The UN plan lifting sanctions gave the United States and Britain unprecedented control over Iraq's oil wealth - drawn from crude reserves second only to Saudi Arabia - and wide discretion over how to spend the billions needed for reconstruction.
"We are not waiting for a handout. We have our own money to use and are using it, although we still want to see more normal conditions, more security," the Iraqi family agent said.
A US businessman who did UN-sanctioned business with Iraq under the oil-for-food programme being phased out with the end of sanctions said he had driven to Baghdad on May 1st, the same day President Bush declared the end of major combat in the country.
"He who is fearful and waits, will only become last," said the investor, who asked not to be identified.
Three members of one London-based investment group said their firm had been created expressly to take advantage of potential profits.
But a member of the group, a European, warned that without a bigger commitment from the US-led civil administration to improve security, businesses would be prey to extortion by shadowy armed groups already entrenched in the capital.
"Otherwise, you can end up with a most bizarre hybrid of an economy, where you have US contractors under the protection of the US military and below that smaller players trying to get by, perhaps with the requirement to pay protection money to a home-grown mafia," the European businessman said.
He said the privately owned Iraqi conglomerate he represents took matters into its own hands after US troops toppled Saddam Hussein's government on April 9th.
"The family kept paying out paychecks, and their own workers protected the business from the looters," he said.