02/13/06 Head of AWB resigns

Farm and Ranch February 13, 2006 The managing director of AWB Limited, formerly the Australian Wheat Board, resigned last week. This comes in the wake of a U.N. investigation that found Australia's monopoly wheat exporter paid hundreds of millions of dollars in kickbacks to Saddam Hussein under the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food program. The Australian government has been conducting its own investigation. The president of U.S. Wheat Associates, Alan Tracy told that groups annual meeting of investigations into AWB bribes for wheat sales to Pakistan, Yemen, Indonesia and South Africa as well. Tracy: "It's really a sad chapter. I think we have a few individuals that have stepped outside the bounds of normal trade. Our concern with the Australian Wheat Board is really more their day to day use of their monopoly powers in the international marketplace in a way that disrupts trade and disfavors American farmers and believe doesn't help the Australian farmer out in the long run either." 24 At its annual meeting the board of U.S. Wheat Associates unanimously passed a resolution condemning AWB Limited, calling its kickbacks to the Saddam Hussein regime a moral outrage, which in in most countries would be a crime. The resolution also called for insisting that the Doha round of world trade talks dismantle the monopoly status of the AWB. U.S. Wheat also called on the U.S. federal government to take whatever actions are necessary to protect the integrity of U.S. development and export programs, some of which are used by AWB's U.S. subsidiary. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.