Iraq to beef up policing of power facilities

By Missy Ryan

BAGHDAD, Dec 17 (Reuters) - The Iraqi government is likely to form a specialised police force to protect electricity and oil facilities in efforts to attract foreign investment and boost power supplies, a U.S. official said. A force of about 13,000 guards now under Iraq's electricity minister will early next year become part of the Interior Ministry, which is responsible for national and local police, said Major General Mike Milano, a senior government adviser.

Milano said he believed the force, which the government wants to retrain and reequip to safeguard electricity facilities, would be combined with a special Oil Police to form a power sector police directorate.

"Electricity is the number-one complaint in this country, is the number-one essential service shortage," Milano, who heads U.S. efforts to build up Iraq's police, said in an interview on Tuesday.

Many Iraqis still get just hours of state-provided power a day and must pay for costly private generation.

Providing protection for oil and power facilities, which have suffered repeated insurgent attacks in more than five years of war, will be important to convince foreign investors to put aside security concerns and come to Iraq.

The U.S.-backed government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki hopes to capitalise on a sharp fall in violence by inviting the world's biggest oil firms to bid for oil and gas fields and signing deals for expensive equipment needed to update its dilapidated power system.

The government said this week it had approved deals to acquire power generation equipment from General Electric Co (GE.N) and Siemens (SIEGn.DE).

The more than 55 GE gas turbines, alone worth $3 billion, will be installed across Iraq in the largest order GE has booked, the company said.

Milano said internal guard forces from all ministries, with the exception of the Industry and Minerals Ministry, would join the Interior Ministry as part of police reforms backed by the United States and other countries.

U.S. officials say they hope the Oil Police, which should grow by at least 5,000 next year, will be competent enough to take over guarding valuable sections of Iraq's oil pipelines by the end of 2010.

Rebuilding Iraq's security forces, dissolved after late Iraq leader Saddam Hussein was toppled shortly after the start of the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, has been one of the U.S. priorities in Iraq.

Milano said the police under Interior Ministry control, now numbering about 380,000, had grown in leaps and bounds from a security force of about 60,000 under Saddam.

The police were despised and feared by many Iraqis as sectarian or militia pawns for years after the U.S-led invasion.

But Milano said Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani, an independent Shi'ite, had made strides in purging the police of unsavoury elements although the police still lacked skills, training and basic resources such as fuel, arms and ammunition. (Editing by Michael Christie and Timothy Heritage)