WASHINGTON — After launching the ground invasion of Iraq, President Bush paused to have dinner Thursday with an unlikely guest, given the circumstances.
Bush and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell met in the White House with the leader of Cameroon for a discussion of "common interests."
Best known for poverty and corruption, Cameroon is among the nations being courted to support the war. But the country also figures prominently in a monumental new initiative to tap rich West African oil fields and reduce U.S. dependence on Middle Eastern oil, an aim that has taken on added urgency with the conflict in Iraq.
Construction is nearly complete on a $3.7-billion, 670-mile pipeline that will move hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil per day from landlocked Chad across Cameroon's tropical forests to its Atlantic coastline, where tankers will carry it to U.S. and European refineries.
The pipeline, which is being built by a consortium of Exxon Mobil Corp., ChevronTexaco Corp. and Petronas of Malaysia, also represents an ambitious attempt to avoid the corruption that has been a hallmark of energy development in Africa.
The participants, which include the World Bank Group, have pledged that, this time, pipeline revenue will benefit the poor and the environment will not be ravaged.
Chad, one of the world's poorest nations, has committed to spend its pipeline revenue on economic development and social programs. To guard against corruption, an oversight committee will control an offshore bank account for Chad, which owns the oil reserves and thus will collect most of the money. In Cameroon, residents were promised that development would be spurred by pipeline jobs, road-building and compensation to villagers affected by construction.
"We're going to be keeping a very close watch," the U.S. ambassador to Chad, Christopher Goldthwaite, said in an interview in N'Djamena, the capital. "If it works correctly ... it will be precedent-setting, and the experience here will be much, much better than in other oil-producing countries."
Already there are signs that achieving those lofty goals will be difficult.
President Idriss Deby of Chad spent $4.5 million from a "signing bonus" paid by the oil companies to purchase weapons to combat insurgents. On several occasions, the World Bank threatened to withdraw from the project if Deby didn't curtail human rights abuses. Security forces detained six opposition candidates after Chad's 2001 presidential election, and World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn had to phone Deby to win their release.
