World Bank Vows $900mill to Iran!?

750rider · 11-06-2007, 07:43 PM

Quote:

World Bank Vows a Big Loan to Iran

$900 Million for Mullahs, as Zoellick Snubs Inquiry
November 5, 2007

WASHINGTON — The World Bank is defying requests from an influential congressman to stall nearly $900 million in loans to Iran.

Earlier this year, the president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, who before taking that office served in a top Bush administration foreign policy post, declined a privately made request from Rep. Mark Kirk, a Republican from Illinois, to suspend the loans. World Bank spokesmen told The New York Sun that the bank will go ahead with the loans.
Mr. Kirk, who serves on the subcommittee that approves America's share of the World Bank's funds, is warning that the loans will undermine recent American and Western moves to exert pressure on Iran. American sanctions on Iran's largest banks and largest branch of its military are designed to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons and to punish Tehran for its support for terrorism and attacks on American soldiers in Iraq.

Mr. Kirk said that senior National Security Council staff told him that they did not think the World Bank loans were helpful to the American strategy of applying economic pressure to Iran to persuade the mullahs to end their enrichment of uranium in Natanz. A spokesman for the National Security Council offered no comment when asked on Thursday and again on Sunday.

"It sends a message that directly undercuts Western diplomacy with regard to Iran," Mr. Kirk told the Sun. "In the Iranian cabinet they will say, 'Although these governments have just criticized us, they just sent us a check from the World Bank.'"

For now, Mr. Kirk is pursuing pressure on the World Bank through his post on the appropriations subcommittee that funds foreign operations. The chairwoman of that subcommittee, Rep. Nita Lowey, a Democrat from New York, has yet to take a position on holding up funding to the World Bank.

Mr. Kirk said he has been pushing the World Bank since August to review the loans it initially made in 2004 and 2005 for earthquake relief. "When I initially talked to him, he said they are not approving any new loans," the congressman, who once served himself at the World Bank's International Finance Corporation, said. Then, when Mr. Kirk asked Mr. Zoellick, about the loans of about $870 million for Iran scheduled to be disbursed in the next three years, the World Bank president responded, according to Mr. Kirk, "Oh that."

World Bank Vows a Big Loan to Iran - November 5, 2007 - The New York Sun

hmm this could get interesting!?

SAHTT · 11-06-2007, 07:59 PM

900 million isn't much to be concerned about. The World Bank typically tries to avoid politics if possible. It makes loans like this all the time, it isn't some emergency loan to Iran to build nukes.

The federal reserve injected 42 BILLION [900 million is about 2% of that] in to the system just last week to help ease the credit markets. 900 million isn't what it used to be.