http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040111/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_baker&cid=540&ncid=1480WASHINGTON - Now assigned the task of reducing Iraq (news - web sites)'s debt, presidential envoy James A. Baker III once gave crucial support for continuing a billion-dollar loan program to Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s government that accounts for most of the money Iraq still owes the United States.
As secretary of state in 1989, Baker urged the Agriculture Department to offer $1 billion in loan guarantees for Iraq to buy U.S. farm products after Iraq said it would reject a smaller deal.
"Documents indicate he intervened personally to make sure that Iraq continued to receive high levels of funding," said Joyce Battle, Middle East analyst for the National Security Archives, a foreign policy research center with a vast collection of declassified documents from the era. snip
The guarantees were an important part of the first President Bush (news - web sites)'s effort to improve relations with Iraq in hopes of boosting commercial ties and gaining leverage with a powerful and strategically important nation.
U.S. officials were well aware at the time that Saddam had used chemical weapons against Iran and Iraqi Kurds. Iraq also was believed to have biological and nuclear weapons programs and to be harboring terrorists — reasons the current Bush administration has used to justify toppling the Iraqi leader.
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