The strike was called by several grass-roots political organizations opposed to the privatization of state-run industries.

Public subsidies make up 30 percent of the budgets of 117 state-run industries.

They object to state-run industries being run by former Communist apparatchiks.

To a degree this is probably inevitable in state-run industry.

"And the area most likely to fail is agriculture and state-run industries."

Pemex, like many another state-run industry, is not a model of modern efficiency.

Almost the entire population were relocated from other parts of Iraq to work in state-run industries.

Most of the huge state-run industries produce at 10 or 20 percent capacity.

Yet it has faced resistance from the powerful trade unions that dominate most state-run industries.

But the obstacles to reform of the state-run industries are not so much economic, the critics say, as political.