China co building $ 160m power plant in Iraq

China's state-run Sichuan Dongfang Electric Corp. is building a $ 160 million gas powered electricity plant in Iraq, company officials said Thursday, reports AP.

The plant at Rashidiya, in the northern outskirts of Baghdad, is the first by China since the United Nations imposed sweeping trade sanctions on Iraq for invading Kuwait in 1990.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said construction of the new station, with a generating capacity of up to 400 megawatts, falls within the framework of UN exemptions to Iraq sanctions.

Iraqi and Chinese officials say equipment, generators and parts needed to build the plant have cleared the UN sanctions committee.

Under the UN-approved oil-for-food deal, worth $5.2 billion every six months, Iraq can import spare parts to revamp its power grid devastated by the 1991 Gulf War bombing and nine years of embargo. Periodic blackouts continue to darken Baghdad.

Iraq has earmarked up to 1 billion for electricity repairs and building since the start of the oil deal in December 1996.

Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of parts have arrived and more than half a billion dollars of contracts have passed the sanctions committee. Most of these come from China and Russia, Iraq's main backers on the UN Security Council.

Russia's electricity corporation, Technopromexport, renewed this month a $ 419 million contract with Iraq for the construction of a power plant of 1,680 megawatts.

Iraq has bought six gas turbine generators from China worth $ 74.9 million with a combined capacity of 200 megawatts.