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By DAVID IVANOVICH
Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau
http://www.chron.com/
Thu May 22, 2003

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WASHINGTON -- A Houston geoscientist has been appointed to a special council of Iraqi exiles advising the U.S. administration in Baghdad on the effort to rebuild Iraq.

Saad Saleh, the principal geopressure analyst at Stafford-based Knowledge Systems, will leave for Baghdad within the next few weeks to lend his expertise in the oil and gas industry to the Iraqi Reconstruction and Development Council.

Working with the Pentagon's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, the council's goal is to get the various Iraqi ministries up and running again.

Part of the group's mission will be to help root out Baathist party members and identify qualified Iraqi candidates who can take over leadership roles in government ministries.

While he will serve as an energy adviser, Saleh could not say whether he will report to Philip Carroll, the former head of Houston's Shell Oil Co. who is now overseeing Iraq's oil industry.

"I am not at liberty to say that," Saleh said. "Up until this moment, there are safety concerns. ... Baghdad still is a hostile place."

Saleh, 47, left Iraq in 1979, a year before Saddam Hussein assumed power, to study at the Colorado School of Mines, where he earned a doctorate in petroleum engineering.

Because of his outspoken criticism of Saddam, Saleh knew it would not be safe to return to Iraq.

"That basically put me on the blacklist," he said.

Before moving abroad to study, Saleh had worked in Kirkuk, the prolific oil field in northern Iraq.

While he has lived more than half of his life outside Iraq and is now a U.S. citizen, Saleh wanted to do what he could to help his native land.

"Those people have suffered through three wars and three decades of oppression," Saleh said. "I feel compelled to lend a helping hand to those folks."

The emotions that come from being able to return to his homeland after so many years are "overwhelming" Saleh said.

"There is a mixture of joy and sorrow as well -- joy to be able to go back to a free Iraq, and the ... sorrow of the many years of torture and oppression that those folks have suffered."

Saleh plans to stay in Iraq for three to four months, perhaps longer.

He has tendered his resignation at Knowledge Systems, a small oil-field service firm specializing in geopressure analysis and prediction.

But company Vice President Jamey Webster noted, "If he wants to come back, we would accept him in a heartbeat."

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Direct Link:
--http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/1920288

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