Fed: Possible US investigation into AWB is disturbing: Labor

AAP General News (Australia)
04-04-2006
Fed: Possible US investigation into AWB is disturbing: Labor

ADELAIDE, April 4 AAP - Reports that some senior US politicians want their country
to investigate whether the AWB broke US or international trade rules are disturbing, Labor
says.

An investigation of the United Nations' oil-for-food program identified Australia's
monopoly wheat exporter AWB, and other companies, has having made illicit payments to
Saddam Hussein's former regime in Iraq.

US politician Tom Harkin, the Democratic leader of the US Senate's agriculture committee,
said AWB's violations of the oil-for-food program showed "a clear willingness to break
international rules".

"This puts American wheat farmers at a distinct disadvantage," the Iowa senator wrote
in a letter to US Trade Representative Rob Portman.

The letter to Mr Portman was also signed by Democratic Senators Max Baucus, Kent Conrad,
Byron Dorgan and Ken Salazar.

The group want Mr Portman to investigate whether AWB broke any US or international trade rules.

Labor's foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd today said the development was worrying.

"You have always got to be mindful of the fact that US senators will be pursuing the
interests of the American wheat industry and wheat farmers," Mr Rudd told reporters at
Monarto, east of Adelaide.

"At the same time, it is a disturbing development if apart from the Cole Inquiry (in
Australia), the AWB now faces the potentiality of legal action in the United States as
well.

"None of this crisis would have occurred had the Howard government done its job in
preventing the AWB from breaching sanctions against Saddam Hussein's regime.

"The reason that we have now got problems being raised by US senators is because the
Howard government failed to respond to the 27 warnings that it got about the Saddam Hussein
scandal over the five years that scandal ran.

"So we are concerned about these reports from America. Unfortunately, that just creates
a greater difficulty for Australia's wheat industry now to contend with."

Mr Rudd said it remained to be seen whether the US would launch an investigation.

"But I have got to say that none of these problems in America would have occurred had
the Howard Government done its job in preventing the AWB from passing bribes to Saddam
Hussein," he said.

Mr Rudd and Labor's agriculture spokesman Gavan O'Connor met with wheat growers in
Monarto today as part of national consultations about the future of the wheat industry.

AAP sl/tnf/sp

KEYWORD: AWB RUDD

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