Oil is emerging as the key factor in US attempts to secure the support of Russia and France for military action against Iraq, according to an Observer investigation. The Bush administration, intimately with the global oil industry, is keen to pounce on Iraq's massive untapped reserves, the second biggest in the world after Saudi Arabia's. But France and Russia, who hold a power of veto on the UN Security Council, have billion-dollar contracts with Baghdad, …
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…US would hold sway over a new government in Baghdad. But it would not want to alienate the Iraqi public by dictating oil policy, and its influence would inevitably wane. "This isn't the 1800s. We're not talking about a colony. We're talking about an independent country," said Amy Jaffe, senior energy analyst at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy, site of last week's conference. President Bush "is not going to be president of Iraq."