Iraqi PM pleads for help
 |  Prime Minister of Iraq Ayad Allawi speaks to the U.N. General Assembly. |
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NEW YORK (CNN) -- Iraqi interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi has pleaded with other countries to help Iraq reduce or eliminate its foreign debt and to join the multinational forces fighting the insurgents.
Addressing the U.N. General Assembly in a largely empty room, Allawi on Friday said Iraqi officials hope to meet with members of the Paris Club at the end of the year to get debt reductions.
The Paris Club is an informal group of official creditors whose role is to find sustainable solutions to the payment dilemmas experienced by debtor nations. Paris Club creditors agree to reschedule debts due them.
"The problem with foreign debt emerges as the most serious obstacle. We are indebted in billions of dollars," Allawi said.
He thanked nations who have forgiven Iraq's debts and asked other nations to be as generous.
"We call on all friendly and peace-loving nations to stand fast by Iraq because we need their assistance, not in the next year, but right away. We need more assistance from the multinational force," Allawi said.
"I know some countries objected to the [Iraqi] war, and that is their right," Allawi said, but he asked that their opposition to the war not be an obstacle to support for Iraq's restoration.
The debts and need for further monetary aid are a great burden on Iraqis, who unjustly inherited the financial problems from the regime of Saddam Hussein, Allawi said.
Saddam "cast long shadows on Iraq and traumatized the people of Iraq for too many years."
He said 362 mass graves have been found so far.
Allawi is visiting the United States to garner support for Iraq at the United Nations, where the General Assembly is having its annual meeting, and in Washington, where he addressed Congress and met with President Bush.
Allawi said he hopes U.N. agencies return to Iraq in full force, and expressed sorrow at the bombing of their Iraqi headquarters in August 2003, which killed 22 people, including U.N. Special Representative Sergio Vieira de Mello.
The official devoted part of his talk to the destructiveness of terrorism, which he said is hindering Iraq from building a democracy. He also condemned militants who enter Iraq from other countries.
"These are not freedom fighters. They do not intend to liberate our country," he said.
"The aim of the terrorists is to destroy the aspirations of our people and to destroy the physical infrastructure of Iraq and to stop the economic life in Iraq and to create a state of tension, panic, instability."
