Picket of Bechtel Conference in Hammersmith, West London

Friday, May 23, 2003, from 07:30 onwards, at the Novotel, 1 Shortlands, Hammersmith W6. Nearest tube: Hammersmith.

Bechtel are an American construction company headed by Riley P. Bechtel, whose recent contracts include building automated warehouses for ExxonMobil’s (Singapore) Chemical plant, the Reliance of oil refinery (India) and the Mayakan Pipeline (Mexico). They were recently handed major grants by USAID to rebuild Iraqi infrastructure, ie. Iraq’s water sanitation services, school and hospital facilities, government buildings and rail systems, electric power stations and road networks. (None of these are the supposedly military targets for "smart bombs", although they were somehow obliterated.) Their other projects in Iraq have not been exposed, but Bechtel have a vast experience with pipelines and oil refinery systems.

The conference in Hammersmith is to give an overview of Bechtel’s role and the status of the USAID’s "humanitarian assistance" efforts. This also involves the "maximisation of Iraqi resources", ie. OIL. It is crucially important to picket this conference in order to expose the exploitation of the Iraqi people and the natural resources that belong to them.

Organised by Stop the War Coalition