The United States amassed a flurry of financial pledges for Iraq Friday, as a Madrid donors' conference closed on a brighter note than some had expected.
Rough assessments by various media there totaled the aid at between $13 and $19 billion. Neither U.S. nor Spanish officials announced specific fundraising targets before the conference, gathering some 70 countries and international organizations -- possibly not to be embarrassed if they fell short.
But Friday's back-of-the-envelope tally appeared to fall far short of the estimated $56 billion Iraq needs over the next four years -- even throwing in the $20 billion the Bush administration is seeking from Congress.
Still, well before the commitments poured in, Bush administration officials struck a positive tone, stating they were certain the conference would end successfully.
"It's one of the biggest donors' conferences ever organized," U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said in an interview published Friday in France's Le Figaro newspaper. "I'm confident we'll end up amassing more money than any preceding conference."
And -- for some countries, at least -- appeals for generosity by U.S. officials and United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan struck a chord.
Japan offered a $5 million cash-and-loan package spread out over four years. Saudi Arabia pledged $1 billion in export credits and loans to Iraq. Kuwait and Qatar announced assistance of $500 million and $100 million, respectively.
The World Bank's President James Wolfensohn also said the institution would donate between $3 billion and $5 billion for Iraq. It seemed unclear what form the assistance would take, but Britain's Guardian newspaper reported it would be in loans.
The European Union also ended up giving slightly more than expected -- a total of roughly $826 million for Iraq -- thanks in part to a fresh pledge of nearly $240 million from Italy over three years. Spain previously announced it would donate roughly the same amount over the same period.
Both European countries staunchly backed the United States during the war in Iraq, and have since sent peacekeepers to that country.
But the donor's conference hardly represented a resounding endorsement of Washington's policy in Iraq, where questions about so-far unfound weapons of mass destruction, and a mounting military death toll are undermining public confidence in the United States and abroad.
In Madrid, too, development experts and diplomats raised questions about the accountability of aid sent to Baghdad -- and whether Iraq could really absorb massive new influxes of assistance.
"A staggering $4 billion in oil revenues and other Iraqi funds earmarked for the reconstruction of the country has disappeared into opaque bank accounts administered by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), the U.S.-controlled body that rules Iraq," Christian Aid announced in a statement Thursday.
The British-based charity group said it was basing its claims on its own inquiry into the whereabouts of the funds. "By the end of the year, if nothing changes in the way this cash is accounted for, that figure will double," it said.
Friday's rush of pledges left France, Germany and Russia -- three of the biggest critics of the war in Iraq, and the U.S.-led reconstruction efforts -- looking like spoilers.
All three sent junior-level representatives to Madrid. French Foreign Minister, Dominique de Villepin, for one, was instead in Slovenia, where he apparently had more pressing business.
As expected, neither Paris nor Berlin went beyond European Union funds previously pledged for Iraq.
"I think these two countries would have better served the cause of the international community if they had accepted to offer additional financial contributions," Powell told Le Figaro.
Still, Powell added of the two countries, "We are allies. The disagreement over going to war in Iraq is behind us."
But a top Iraqi official warned France and Germany would ultimately pay for their stinginess.
"I don't think the Iraqis are gong to forget easily that in the hour of need, those countries wanted to neglect Iraq," Ayad Allawi, the current head of Iraq's American-appointed Governing Council told CNN.
The ongoing diplomatic divide over dealing with postwar Iraq was reflected in the U.S. and European press as well.
"U.S. is confident on Iraq donations," ran Friday's headline of the New York Times-owned International Herald Tribune, which twinned its front-page story with an editorial calling on donor nations to be generous in Madrid.
"Iraq: America Wants Others to Pay," was the sharply different take offered by Le Figaro, in its own front-page headline.
"Isn't it incredible," the newspaper added in an editorial, "to watch (the U.S.) appeal for aid, and hope to reduce their own financial assistance to Iraq, without accepting to share advantages of either reconstruction contracts, or management of the crisis?"
Others took their criticisms to Madrid's streets. Thousands marched Thursday and Friday in peaceful protest against the donors' conference, brandishing such signs as "We Won't Pay for Your Pillage."
Many decried the meeting -- which gathered hundreds of businessmen trolling for future contracts in Iraq -- as a sellout to capitalism, rather than as a humanitarian gesture for the Iraqi people.
But for conference host, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar -- who defied much larger antiwar demonstrations earlier this year -- the conference amounted to a new diplomatic feather in the Spanish cap.
"Today, Spain wants to be one of the big ones," said Philippe Moreau Defarges, a specialist on multilateral issues, at the French Institute for International Relations, in Paris. "Spain has an old history, it's got a big influence in Latin America. Spain considers itself as a great country, a great power."
"And Mr. Aznar," Moreau Defarges added, "is quite an ambitious man."
