PREVIEW: Al-Maliki to seek investment on Berlin visit

Jul 20, 2008, 5:07 GMT

Berlin - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who is to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday in Berlin, is expected to urge more German investment in his country, arguing that Iraq is now safe for business.

A state-owned coach-assembly factory in the town of Iskandariyah, about 30 kilometres south of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, is an example of those plants where the Iraq authorities would like to see German skills and money at work.

Using dated machinery, only 450 people work now at a site that used to employ nearly 3,500 in its heyday under the late president Saddam Hussein.

Baghdad has suggested to German auto group Daimler that it could be turning out gleaming Mercedes-Benz buses and trucks.

But Iskandariyah is an edgy place. In recent years, it was part of a zone of kidnappings and assassinations known as the death triangle, and German executives admit that they worry they could be still be seized and held to ransom by criminals.

A Baghdad spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, said, 'We're talking to Siemens, Daimler and German firms involved in farming, oil and gas.'

On Thursday, Germany's economics minister, Michael Glos, said one such company, Wintershall, had a 'big chance' of winning oil exploration rights in Iraq. It is part of chemicals group BASF.

'I hope that it and other firms get more involved in extracting crude oil in Iraq,' said Glos on his way back from Baghdad. He was the first German cabinet minister to visit Iraq since the US invasion of the country in 2003.

Asked if the time was ripe to invest in Iraq, Glos said, 'I think so. I felt in Iraq that Prime Minister Maliki has won the trust of the different ethnic groups. It seems to me that he has managed to largely suppress the terrorists.'

That view may however meet scepticism from other officials in Berlin. Germany fiercely criticized the invasion and has been impatient with the US-backed Iraqi government.

Running advice from the German Foreign Ministry to travellers to leave Iraq immediately and not to trust the security forces whose capabilities are 'limited' and loyalties are 'uncertain' have annoyed Iraqi politicians who insist the outlook is more positive.

Glos himself took no chances during his visit, wearing a bullet- proof vest and staying in safe zones, though he later told the German daily Die Welt in an interview, 'My impression is that the security situation is improving.'