Pay dispute shuts down Baghdad airport

[Kulapavana]

Pay dispute shuts down Baghdad airport

By Steve Negus in Iraq /Financial Times

Published: September 9 2005 19:04

 

Baghdad's international airport, the Iraqi capital's main link to the outside world, was closed on Friday for the second time this year after the British company responsible for guarding it stopped operations following a pay dispute.

 

 

“We've been waiting for payment for the last seven months, seven months outstanding,” said Giles Morgan, a spokesman for Global Strategies Group, the London-based security company guarding the airport.

 

“Discussions are ongoing [but] the company decided that we could not continue,” he said. “We have not put the airport under threat, there are personnel on duty [protecting the facilities]. What is ceased is the air operations side, screening, the luggage checks.”

 

Iraqi government officials could not be reached for comment, although Iraq's transport minister was earlier reported as saying that it was sending Iraqi forces to secure the facility.

 

The closure follows a long-running dispute between Global and a new Iraqi government which claims that its predecessors had been overly generous to foreign contractors.

 

In June, Global suspended operations for 48 hours in what company officials said was a way of getting the transport ministry's attention after failing to have been paid since February. Ministry officials confirmed that Global had not been paid but said that the contract, issued by the Coalition Provisional Authority, was too expensive. Iraqi ministries have been short of funds following an unexpected drop in oil revenue, the source of about 90 per cent of its income, earlier this year.

 

In addition, the incoming government of Ibrahim al-Jaafari, prime minister, has been reviewing contracts signed by Iyad Allawi's government, which it accuses of wasting or misappropriating hundreds of millions ofdollars of public funds. Investigations have focused on the Ministry of Transport.

 

About 50 civilian passenger and cargo flights depart Baghdad airport every day, heading to Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Syria and Egypt as well as Baghdad, Basra and the northern cities of Sulimaniya and Irbil.

 

Meanwhile, US forces reported that they were stepping up operations on Tal Afar, a predominantly Turcoman town in north-east Iraq, which has been the scene of heavy fighting for the past several days. Iraqi forces claimed yesterday to have captured 200 guerrillas, including non-Iraqi Arabs and Afghans, in a town they claim is a transit route for insurgents crossing the nearby Syrian border.