Thread: Iraqi/Dinar news until March 1st, 2007

Kurdish deal raises hope for oil legislation


Sunday, Feb 25, 2007

Kurdish regional officials said on Sunday they had reached agreement on a draft of a law governing the oil industry, potentially ending a dispute that has for months held up the adoption of legislation deemed vital to Iraq's reconstruction.

Agreement has been reached on both the draft law and an accompanying memorandum, said Fuad Hussein, chief of staff for Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan Regional Government, which is responsible for administering northern Iraq.

Assem Jihad, a spokesman for Baghdad's oil ministry, however, said that the draft would need to be reviewed by the Iraqi cabinet and then by parliament, leaving the door open for changes as well as disputes.

The progress of the oil law has seen a number of false dawns. Last month, Baghdad said a draft was ready to be presented to parliament, but the KRG responded that this was "premature".

Kurdish officials have said some issues are still unresolved, which may be a reference to annexes to the law that are not yet drafted.

However, even a preliminary agreement between the KRG and the Ministry of Oil would be a significant step towards clearing a logjam that had blocked passage of the law since last summer.

Both sides are under pressure from the US to reach an agreement.

The Kurdish announcement followed a Saturday meeting between Zalmay Khalilzad, US ambassador, Mr Barzani, and Jalal Talabani, Iraq's president and a Kurd.

Details of the final agreement were not available, although both Kurdish and federal government officials said they would shortly release comments on it.

In recent months, much of the argument has centred on the right of regional governments such as the KRG to sign contracts independently with oil companies.

Baghdad had proposed that such contracts be reviewed by a committee, but the KRG has insisted it will not give the federal government veto power over the development of its local oil industry.

The Kurdistan government also reportedly wants guarantees that deals that it signed with foreign oil companies such as Norway's DNO to drill in KRG-administered territory would be honoured by Baghdad.

Outside Iraq, some watchdog groups have criticised clauses in the law that allow production-sharing agreements, which allow drilling companies to own a proportion of the oil they produce.

The Iraqi government says it should have access to as wide a range of contracts as possible to encourage the discovery of new oil resources in areas that are difficult or costly to explore.

However, once the law is referred to parliament, such contracts may encounter resistance from lawmakers who argue that they give too much away to foreigners.

Iraqi Kurdistan claimed in 2005 to have 45bn barrels in oil reserves. The country as a whole has 115bn barrels in proven reserves as of 2003, although government and independent estimates run to well over 200bn barrels.

Steve Negus, Iraq Correspondent


© Copyright The Financial Times Ltd 2007

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Originally Posted by shotgunsusie

in earlier articles the revalue was always linked with the law of retirement.

The revalue is linked with MY law of retirement too!!

Iraqi Ministry Casts Doubt on Oil Law
2 hrs 7 ago Iraqi Ministry Casts Doubt on Oil Law
1 day ago Kurdish Officials to Back Iraq Oil Law
28 days ago Iraqis: Oil Law Won't Favor Americans

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By BUSHRA JUHI, The Associated Press
Feb 25, 2007 2:35 PM (2 hrs 7 mins ago)
Current rank: # 807 of 18,899 articles

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Oil Ministry cast doubt Sunday on statements indicating the Kurds had agreed to support a draft oil law that would divide revenues among all Iraqi factions and meet a key U.S. benchmark in Iraq.


Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government had promised to enact a new oil law by the end of 2006 but missed the deadline due to objections from the Kurds. Many of Iraq's vast oil reserves can be found in the Kurdish north and the Shiite south, and the Kurds wanted a greater role in awarding contracts and administering the revenues.

Massoud Barzani, president of the self-governing Kurdish administration in the north, said Saturday that he and President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, had discussed the latest draft law by telephone with al-Maliki and "the results were good."

Barzani made the comments in a joint press conference with Talabani after a meeting with U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad in the northern Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah.

"We reached a final agreement," Barzani said, without elaborating. "We accept the draft."

An Oil Ministry spokesman, however, stressed that the draft law still needed to be discussed at the Cabinet level.

"Today, we got confirmation that Barzani said that they support the draft law but he mentioned nothing about agreeing to it," ministry spokesman Assem Jihad said. "The discussions and the negotiations are still ongoing."

It was unclear if Barzani was saying he supported the idea of a law or the draft as currently worded. Kurdish officials could not be reached for clarification.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she had stressed the importance of making rapid progress on the oil law with Iraqi leaders when she was in Baghdad last week. But she said she recognized the difficulty of the task.

"The oil law is not just an oil law. It's a law about dividing the resources of the country and therefore maintaining the unity of Iraq. So it's not easy," she said on "Fox News Sunday."

Once the Cabinet signs off, the measure goes to parliament for final approval once the legislators return from a recess early next month.

The Bush administration, facing growing pressure to end the Iraq conflict, has been urging the Iraqis to finish the new oil law.

A new law is needed, most outside experts believe, to encourage international companies to pour billions of dollars into Iraq to repair pipelines, upgrade wells, develop new fields and begin to exploit the country's petroleum reserves, estimated at about 115 billion barrels.

Sunday, February 25, 2007 · Last updated 12:30 p.m. PT

New Iraqi troops fly into Baghdad

By KIM GAMEL
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- About 130 fresh Iraqi troops from the country's Kurdish north flew into Baghdad on Sunday to join the fight for the nation's capital - with the promise of a $200 bonus, nearly a month's pay.

The mostly Kurdish soldiers - the first to arrive from the northern city of Irbil - were greeted by Iraqi commanders as they filed off the gray C-130 troop transport. They wore camouflage, with machine guns or rocket-propelled grenade launchers slung over their shoulders. Many carried belongings in plastic bags.

The troops represented a fraction of the expected influx of some 8,000 Iraqi reinforcements from the north, the Shiite south and the insurgent stronghold of Anbar province west of Baghdad.

The drafting of troops from the north - most former Kurdish guerrillas who fought for decades against Saddam Hussein's regime - to participate in the security crackdown in the capital has raised concerns as many speak no Arabic and are unfamiliar with the territory and urban warfare.

Many Kurds also refused to leave their autonomous region to fight in far-off Baghdad.

But Lt. Gen. Ali Ghadan, Iraq's ground forces commander, said the Kurds and other troops coming from outside Baghdad had a powerful incentive. Each would receive a $200 bonus in addition to their regular salaries and would only be deployed for three months, then allowed to go home.



The minimum salary for Iraqi soldiers is nearly $300 per month, although some get food allowances, according to the Defense Ministry.

Ghadan said the troops would get another bonus of the same amount if they signed on for another tour after their first deployment.

The bonuses underscore the eagerness of the Iraqi government to show it can rally sufficient forces to allow it to take the lead in the security sweep aimed at clearing the capital of Sunni insurgents and local Shiite militias who have killed thousands in rising violence between the two Islamic sects.

The inability of the Shiite-led government to deliver the promised number of Iraqi forces has been partly blamed for the failure of two previous security operations in Baghdad. President Bush has promised to send 21,500 more American troops to Iraq for the current effort.

Gen. Babaker Shawkat Zebari, the army chief of staff, stressed unity in the armed forces, addressing concerns the Kurdish troops might resent being called to Baghdad because they feel more loyalty to their homeland.

"Baghdad is a beautiful city that desperately needs your help," Zebari, himself a Kurd, said in Arabic after welcoming the troops in Kurdish. "If the terrorists are defeated here, all of Iraq will get back on its feet."

A brigade from Sulaimaniyah, also in the Kurdish north, has reached Baghdad, but it is only 1,000-men strong, not the expected 3,000.

Capt. Amir Wali, a 29-year-old former Kurdish guerrilla who has been integrated into the army, agreed. "I was glad to come here," he told reporters after the ceremony. "We came to defend Baghdad against terrorists."

The Iraqi troops were the first to be brought to the capital in an aircraft piloted by Iraqis, the military said, touting it as a sign the Iraqis are making strides toward taking over their own security.

"Instead of depending on the friendly forces to move such units, now the transportation is done by Iraqi planes. This is a historic event," Ghadan said.

25 February 2007 (AP Worldstream)
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Secretary of State Condoleezza said Sunday it would be a mistake for Congress to micromanage the Iraq war, and she encouraged lawmakers to support President George W. Bush's troop increase.

"I would hope that Congress would recognize that it's very important for them to have the oversight role," Rice said. "But when it comes to the execution of policy in the field, there has to be a clear relationship between the commander in chief and the commanders in the field."

Many Democrats, now the majority party on Capitol Hill, are unhappy with Bush's plan to send more U.S. troops to try to quell the violence in Baghdad. They are considering several options, including revoking Congress' 2002 vote authorizing the invasion of Iraq.

Another proposal under consideration would limit U.S. troops to fighting al-Qaida terrorists, training the Iraqi security forces, maintaining Iraq's borders and pulling out combat forces.

Rice said it would be a major mistake to disrupt the chain of command.

"Then you're going to have the worst of micromanagement of military affairs. And it's always served us badly in the past," she said.

Rice said it is impossible to distinguish what is going in Iraq from the larger fight against al-Qaida.

"Some of these car bombs may indeed be the work of an organization like al-Qaida," she said of the violence that continues to rock Baghdad.

"I think it's best to leave the flexibility of what to do on the ground to commanders on the ground who understand the situation, who understand the intricacies and the relationship among these various tasks that the American armed forces have to do," Rice said.

She appeared on "This Week" on ABC.

WASHINGTON, 25 February 2007 (Middle East Online)
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US Democrats have vowed to handcuff President George W. Bush's power to wage war in Iraq, raising the stakes and risking a constitutional showdown in their battle to bring troops home.

Key senators are aiming to repeal the 2002 congressional authorization permitting Bush to go to war, as they challenge his last-ditch surge of 21,500 troops into Iraq, and aim to end US involvement in the unpopular war.

"We gave him the authority to take out weapons of mass destruction which never existed, take down Saddam who is dead, and force compliance to UN resolutions that are already enforced," Democratic Senator Joseph Biden said in a CNN interview Friday.

"This president's policy is driving us into a box canyon, we have got to redefine the mission," he said.

The move was still being finalized Friday and it was not clear if the measure would be officially introduced next week. Draft plans would seek to limit the US mission in Iraq to battling terrorists, guarding Iraq's borders and training Iraqi troops, a congressional source said.

The legislation will also call for a pullout of US combat troops from Iraq by March 2008 -- in line with the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group last year, political news website Politico.com reported.

The Senate move is the latest attempt by Democrats, who grabbed control of Congress last year, to curtail Bush's war powers, and end US involvement in a war in which 3,100 US troops have lost their lives.

But it already looked unlikely Friday that Democrats had the votes to pass a measure which could spark an unprecedented showdown between Congress and the president over lawmakers capacity to shape military and foreign policy.

They have already failed to pile up the necessary 60 votes in the 100-seat Senate to enforce debate on a non-binding resolution opposing Bush's surge plan announced last month.

And there was not firm agreement about how to proceed with the new plan.

Senator Jim Webb of Virginia told The New York Times that Democrats had agreed that Congress must reassert its authority, but they had not yet figured out precisely how to do it.

The White House said it would "of course" fight any move to curtail Bush's powers, and argued US forces were in Iraq at the invitation of the government in Baghdad and authorized by the United Nations.

"The authorization in the Security Council resolution is clear," White House deputy spokesman Tony Fratto said.

Republican Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell dared Democrats to take the politically dangerous step of withhold funding for the war, even when troops are in combat.

"You can't unring a bell," McConnell told reporters when asked about Democratic plans to adjust the authorization.

"At this point the only thing Congress can meaningfully do ... is decide whether or not to fund the operation," he said.

Bush's Republican backers argue that Bush should be given the chance to see whether his surge plan, sending extra troops into Baghdad and restive Al-Anbar province, works.

But Levin, previewing the Democratic effort last week on Fox television, said the authorization had been overtaken by events.

"It's wide open, telling the president he can go to Iraq and basically carry out any mission that he wants to," said Levin.

"One thought is that we should limit the mission to a support mission -- in other words, an antiterrorist mission to go after Al-Qaeda in Iraq, to support and train the Iraqi army, to protect our own diplomatic personnel and other personnel in Iraq."

The 2002 joint resolution of Congress authorizes Bush to use US troops as he determines necessary and appropriate to "defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq."

It also says troops can be used to "enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq."

"The second part of that section, on authorization, is still important and envisioned the changing nature there," Fratto argued.

Though Senate Democrats have struggled to rebuke Bush, their counterparts in the House of Representatives have been more successful: a non-binding resolution criticizing Bush's war plan passed last week by a 246-182 vote.

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Security crackdown achieves 70 percent success -- Iraqi president

POL-IRAQ-KURDS-MEETING
Security crackdown achieves 70 percent success -- Iraqi president

IRBIL, Feb 24 (KUNA) -- The new Baghdad security crackdown was executed with a 70 percent success, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said on Saturday.

His remark came at a press conference after a tripartite meeting he held alongside with leader of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region Massoud Barzani and US ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad today.

Kurds; who effectively partook in the plan, were seeking to end disputes between Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites, Talabani told reporters, adding that amendments to the 'oil edict' occurred during the meeting.

Talabani expressed keenness for having strong relations with countries neighboring Iraq, especially Turkey.

Barzani; who praised the "positive" role played by Khalilzad in the region, said in turn that the oil law was complete. (end) sbr.

hb
KUNA 242019 Feb