By Susan Cornwell WASHINGTON, Aug 5 (Reuters) - Iraq has spent little of its growing oil revenues on rebuilding its war-ravaged infrastructure, while the United States has paid billions of dollars for reconstruction, a new U.S. report said on Tuesday. Since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, American taxpayers have paid about $48 billion for stabilization and reconstruction activities in Iraq, said the report from the Government Accountability Office, a congressional watchdog agency. The report said despite oil revenues that will give Iraq an estimated budget surplus of $52.3 billion this year, its government ministries have made minimal outlays for reconstruction, including just $896 million last year. Senior U.S. senators from both political parties who requested the report said it showed U.S. taxpayers should stop footing the bill for rebuilding things such as Iraqi sewage plants and electricity power lines. "Despite Iraq earning billions of dollars in oil revenue in the past five years, U.S. taxpayer money has been the overwhelming source of Iraq reconstruction funds," said Sen. John Warner, a Virginia Republican. "We should not be paying for Iraqi projects, while Iraqi oil revenues continue to pile up in the bank, including outrageous profits from $4 a gallon gas prices in the U.S.," said Sen. Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat. "We should require that U.S. taxpayers be reimbursed for the cost of large projects." The war in Iraq, where the United States has about 144,000 troops, is a major issue in the campaign for U.S. presidential and congressional elections on Nov. 4, along with the flagging economy, a housing crisis and the price of gas. The Iraqi government generated an estimated $96 billion in revenues from 2005 to 2007, with 94 percent of that attributable to oil, the GAO report said. For 2008, the GAO estimates Iraq will generate $73 billion to $86 billion in revenues, primarily driven by the high price of oil. Iraq's government has been slow to spend on rebuilding and outlays have been only a fraction of what Baghdad planned in its capital investment budgets, the GAO said. Earlier this year, Washington's ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, said the era of U.S.-funded major infrastructure projects was over. Levin and Warner said they wrote to the Pentagon this week to complain about a notable example in which U.S. taxpayers are paying about $33 million for the development of an "economic zone" at Baghdad's airport, including funding for two hotels and improvements to a business center that the Iraqi government will own. The most recent war funding bill passed by Congress requires that reconstruction aid from the U.S. State Department and the Agency for International Development be matched dollar-for-dollar by the Iraqi government. (Editing by John O'Callaghan)
A demonstrator chants slogans during a protest in Baghdad's Adhamiya district August 4, 2008. Hundreds people took to the streets supporting the passage of the provincial council elections law, which includes ...
