News

BAGHDAD (AFP) - A US congressman called on Friday for Iraq to repay a portion of the "mega-dollars" that Washington has spent since the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, at a news conference in Baghdad.

Republican representative Dana Rohrabacher's remarks stand in stark contrast to those by senior American officials, including most recently CIA chief Leon Panetta, who has said the United States should seriously consider any Iraqi request for US troops to stay beyond a year-end deadline for their departure.

"Once Iraq becomes a very rich and prosperous country... we would hope that some consideration be given to repaying the United States some of the mega-dollars that we have spent here in the last eight years," Rohrabacher told journalists at the US embassy in Baghdad.

"We were hoping that there would be a consideration of a payback because the United States right now is in close to a very serious economic crisis and we could certainly use some people to care about our situation as we have cared about theirs (by killing more than amillion+ Iraqis Islamist ed)."

He said he raised the issue in a meeting with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Rohrabacher, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the US House of Representatives, declined to give specifics on how much should be paid back, or over what timeframe.

Rohrabacher added that the same principle held for Libya, saying: "If the Libyans for example ar... >>>