This is one of the best ideas to come out of the peace movement.

Iraq's biggest creditors happen to be Russia, China, France and Germany, in descending order.

No wonder they didn't want Saddam to fall.

Do you have any contact with reality at all?

Due to a total accident, nothing to do with the skill or industriousness of its people, this will be one of the richest governments in the world over the next 30 yrs, however hard the west tries to milk it..

If anything, it should sooner or later be paying off the debts of the genuinely poor countries of the world who have received no such bounteous present.

This country was destroyed by a personality cult got out of hand, and supported by the (probably still) unscrupulous west.

But have you noticed how they bring it on themselves? Will they never learn? Already we see pictures of Pesmurgas carrying the picture of their next great leader. I wonder how one of them would be treated if he showed it disrespect? Bullet?

is purely notional debt for reparations to the Kuwaiti usurers following the US inspired 1990 invaison.

Fuck the Kuwaiti carrion - the Iraqi people owe them nothing.

The French, Russians, et al should be able to cope with the debts - they should write them off as a bad investment in a bad regime.

What is really important is that the US is not allowed to impose a government on Iraq, especially not one based on the crooked and corrupt INQ.

Now that the invasion is nearly over, we need to ensure that the Iraqi people get the deal they deserve, not the deal that suits Halliburton, Exxon et al.

Russia gambled and all those other nations gambled, and the debts of the loser are now passed on to their kin, nothing wrong with that! American intentions are a gamble, bycotting American goods and services now with the focus on nationalised Iraqi oil industry instead of the quik fix policy of privitization will make the US the losers and enable the pride of Iraq to stand alone while they pay the old debts and have the strength to object to paying for the war.

'the Iraqi people get the deal they deserve"

What's all this talk about deserve in the context of Iraqi's and money?

How do they deserve the wealth resulting from oil beneath their land. Oil discovered by others, rendered useful and so valuable by others, refined at first and transported by others. How do they deserve this wealth in some way that other inhabitants of the earth do not?

Imagine all this wealth accidentally had to be accessed through one ten-foot hole at the bottom of one persons garden. Would this one person obtain the personal right to one tenth the riches of the world, leaving everyone around him to become his servant or starve?

The iraqis have the right to determine their own destiny and govern themselves in their own way, within sensible and sensitively designed borders, and providing they to not infringe upon the safety or freedom of others.

Thats the same right we all have.

But it could well be argued that the natural resources of the world should be shared by all its inhabitants, or at least those special few resources which are critical to development, geographically rare, and worth much more than their extraction cost.

"Imagine all this wealth accidentally had to be accessed through one ten-foot hole at the bottom of one persons garden. Would this one person obtain the personal right to one tenth the riches of the world, leaving everyone around him to become his servant or starve?"

Yes - this one man would control the riches of the world.

If he was an Iraqi, and a Muslim, his riches would allow him to enrich himself and those around him, as his religion dictates.

If he was an American, and a notional Christian, his riches ought to allow him to enrich others, but he probably would not do so, since American culture is so far removed from morality and Christianity as to be unrecognisable.

Morally, you have a point, but the problem lies in who has control - the corrupt and criminal Americans, or the virtuous and realistic followers of Allah?

I for one would prefer the Iraqis to control their own destiny, and since (by an accident of fate) they own a large slice of the world's oil, we should hope that they end up with an enlightened and friendly government - God forbid that the crook Chalabi should end up in power, as the Americans wish.

Here in the UK, we are sat on 300 years of energy supplies in the form of coal, which the witch Thatcher threw down the drain for the sake of pride in the miner's strike. Are you arguing that we don't own that?

If it meets my three criteria, YES.

Even though we did discover it, and learn how to extract and use it, by ourselves through our own efforts and intelligence.

On the issue of gambles being made and people loosing out I wonder if people are aware that investment in Iraq by UK companies was underwritten by the Export Credit Guarantee Department.

Yes thats right, taxpayers money made sure that if Saddam failed to pay for the 'gadgets' he bought (as he often did as a result of the massive debts he built up) the companies which had been kind enough to provide him with them didn't lose out.