Insurance Commissioner To Help Out In Iraq

The Arkansas Insurance Department commissioner will spend the next two months in Iraq helping that country`s new leaders establish an insurance system. Mike Pickens, who has also helped officials in Egypt, China, Vietnam and India restructure their insurance laws, expects to leave later this week for Washington and then for Iraq. He will be working with Mike Carr, a reinsurance specialist from the United Kingdom, for the US Agency for International Development. Pickens said he and Carr have already started drafting the insurance code, modeling it after Jordanian law. He said Iraq`s old system was run by Saddam Hussein and people close to him. Pickens said he will live in the Babylon Hotel across the Tigris River from Saddam`s former palace. He will travel by armored van to his nearby office, a doublewide trailer, while wearing a flak jacket and helmet.