Don’t trust Americans…

Australia’s Trade Minister Mark Vaile's dismissive view of criticisms of AWB was "flavoured" by months of self-serving criticism of the Australian wheat exporter by the Americans, he said yesterday.
Vaile told the Cole (Oil for Food) inquiry the US Administration was a constant detractor of AWB (the country’s monopoly wheat exporter), but only because it wanted to deflect criticism of the subsidies it paid its own wheat industry.
In a written statement to the inquiry, Vaile said he first became aware of the American allegations of AWB’s, kickbacks to Saddam’s regime, in about June 2003.
"It was my view that the US Wheat Associates were particularly aggressive competitors and detractors of the AWB and Australia's single desk wheat marketing system," he says.
"The US Wheat Associates had been constant critics of the single desk system, accusing it of being a trade distorting mechanism and accusing AWB of unfairly using the system to their commercial advantage.
"It was my view that our wheat marketing system was not trade distorting and that aggressive complaints by the US were simply a means of deflecting criticism of the huge subsidies the US wheat industry received."
He said it was not until last October, when the UN handed down its final report into corruption of its oil-for-food program in Iraq which found AWB had paid nearly $300 million in kickbacks, that he no longer believed what AWB said.