Australia confirmed on Thursday it has tendered to supply 200,000 tonnes of hard milling wheat to Iraq after sources said US exporters had decided not to tender because of conditions attached to the contract.
US exporters were particularly concerned at a requirement that the winning tendered truck the grain from Iraq's only deep-water port of Umm Quasar to final destinations within the country, analysts and exporters said.
Australia's monopoly wheat exporter, AWB Ltd, said its bid had been lodged on the same terms as in previous tenders, but declined to give further details.
"We tendered on the same principles as we have in previous tenders," AWB's spokesman said. A decision on the tender had been expected about a week ago.
US exporters and analysts said this week that US wheat groups had not bid in the new Iraq tender because of onerous conditions placed on the sale.
Interest is running high in the tender because it is the first to be let by the Iraqi Grains Board, which has been reconstituted after the sacking of the regime of Saddam Hussein by US-led invasion forces last year.
Invasion allies Australia and the United States have been competing fiercely for the Iraq wheat market after Saddam's fall.
Australia held the Iraq market almost exclusively after authorities in the Saddam regime refused to buy US wheat after the Gulf War of the 1990s, which followed Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.