U.S. President George W. Bush is considering new economic initiatives to go along with a possible increase in troops to help stabilize Iraq, at a time when he puts the finishing touches on his revised Iraq plan, The Washington Post reported on Friday.

Among the steps being considered are short-term jobs and loan programs aimed at winning back the waning local support for the U. S. presence in Iraq, the newspaper quoted officials familiar with the administration's review as saying.

Officials said economic and political issues were among the key elements discussed on Thursday when Bush met with his top national security advisers to discuss the situation in Iraq, and the ideas were described as part of a classic effort to quell an insurgency through a combination of economic, political and military means.

The economic package now on the table focuses on three elements, and is separate from the long-term jobs-creation program being promoted by the U.S. military, the report said.

One element, traditionally linked to a counterinsurgency strategy, is to follow up any military sweep with a short-term work program that would immediately hire people in the neighborhood to clear up trash or do other small civil-affairs jobs.

The second part would be a micro-loan program -- involving modest loans to help individuals get businesses going -- to generate new economic activity in poor neighborhoods. Unemployment is worse today than during the rule of Saddam Hussein, Iraq's ousted leader, the report said.

The third part of the package, which has been developed in part by the Treasury Department, would review dormant state-owned industries to try and determine which ones are economically viable and worth reopening, according to the newspaper.

Source: Xinhua