Thread: Iraq/Dinar News until 5PM CST May 10,2007

Official Document Of The International Compact
Working on translation from Arabic!!!! If anybody else can crack it post it here, Its 34 pages long!!!!

http://nahrain.com/d/law/nhr0503a.pdf

Originally Posted by mewannapeg

Blueprint on stabilizing Iraq stalls on debt issue

AP, SHARM EL-SHEIK, EGYPT
Saturday, May 05, 2007, Page 7 Saudi Arabia said it is still negotiating with Iraq over writing off billions of dollars owed it by the war-torn country, and major creditors Kuwait and Russia failed to offer immediate debt relief -- a key goal of an ambitious blueprint launched to stabilize Iraq.
The absence of major commitments to reduce Iraq's burdensome debt was a disappointment on Thursday at a major regional conference in the Egyptian resort aimed at showing support for Iraq -- and a sign that some, particularly Sunni Arab, nations are still keeping their distance from Iraq's Shiite-led government.
Still, the Iraqi government, the UN and many of the more than 60 nations and organizations gathered here hailed the launch of the blueprint as a milestone.
The International Compact with Iraq sets ambitious benchmarks to achieve a stable, united, democratic Iraq within five years. It defines international help for Iraq -- including debt relief -- but also sets tough commitments on the Baghdad government, particularly carrying out reforms aimed at giving Iraq's Sunni Arabs a greater role in the political process.
It was an initiative of Iraq's first elected government, launched soon after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki took office last June and strongly backed by the UN.
The US has stressed the Iraqi role in organizing the conference, but US diplomats and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's advisers have crisscrossed the globe and worked hard to increase support, particularly among Arab nations.
After delegates backed the compact on Thursday by acclamation with a round of applause, a smiling Rice approached UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, saying: "You did a great job. This is a wonderful day for all of us."
But the debt issue loomed large over the meeting's unfinished business.
The Paris Club of affluent lender nations has already written off US$100 billion of Iraq's debt -- most from former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's war against Iran in the 1990s.
But the government still owes a huge amount. Iraq's finance minister put the total remaining at roughly US$50 billion, but the numbers vary and in some cases are still not resolved -- with some estimates as high as US$62 billion.
Al-Maliki opened the conference urging ``all our friends ... to forgive our debts and allow us to launch our reconstruction and development.''
But the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia -- a major lender -- made no immediate public pledge. Saud al-Faisal said only that his country was in talks with Iraq "to have an appropriate solution to debts in line with rules of the Paris Club," which calls for forgiving at least 80 percent of Iraq's debts.

Taipei Times - archives

(My best Crocodile Dundee Voice) $50-62 Billion in Debt? Why that's not a debt. Look at the U.S. now that a debt!

Employment trumps privatisation in Iraq economic plan
BAGHDAD (AFP) - The UN-brokered economic compact signed this week with great fanfare aims to create a liberal free market in Iraq, but US officials admit that for now this approach will take a back seat to more statist job creation schemes.

The deal was approved on Wednesday at a conference in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh by the leaders of more than 50 countries, who agreed to fund reconstruction if Iraq meets certain economic benchmarks.

The agreement urged Iraqis to set up what the US State Department's pointman on Iraq, David Satterfield, described last month as "the basis for a liberal, investment-friendly, investor-friendly economic regime."

But, while the language echoes Washington's dreams for transforming Iraq before the March 2003 invasion, officials on the ground admit that, in the short term, reviving state-owned industries to create jobs will take priority.

"At this stage in Iraq's situation, I would argue very strongly that profitability is not the key aspect in assessing your state-owned enterprises," a senior US official in Baghdad involved in economic policy said this week.

"Employment in this situation is frankly more important in many ways than profitability," he told reporters.

Observers estimate that around 48 percent of Iraq's workforce is unemployed, creating an army of the dispossessed which is a fertile recruiting ground for the many illegal militias and insurgent gangs fighting in the war.

In March, Paul Brinkley, the US Department of Defence's undersecretary for business announced a plan to reopen dozens of Iraq's old state-owned businesses and initially re-employ 10,000 workers.

"There is a recognition that security and economic prosperity go hand in hand, and that unemployment in Iraq is contributing to the frustrations of people and creating sympathy for insurgents," Brinkley said, at the time.

"The factories served as the engine for the Iraqi economy and must be restarted."

The new US position, contrasts heavily with the neo-conservative influenced policy of early days of the occupation.
In the aftermath of the 2003 invasion, the subsidies and tariffs protecting local industries were lifted, forcing the state-owned industries to close and tossing nearly 100,000 people out of work.

Coming hard on the heels of policies disbanding the army and firing Baath party members from the their jobs, the result was a huge number of disgruntled, unemployed men that went on to swell the ranks of the insurgency.

"There was a lot of foolishness in 2003 and they failed to recognise the realities and be sufficiently practical in dealing with the situation," said the US official.

"The policy balance that is required in this period is rather more sophisticated than what you saw in the enthusiasms of the Coalition Provisional Authority in 2003," he added.

One of the biggest signs of a policy shift was the return of top US diplomat Tim Carney to Baghdad in January to oversee the reconstruction effort.

Carney spent two months in Iraq right after the invasion trying to restore the industrial sector and then resigned in disgust when it became clear they were just being left to close down or be sold off.

There are still hopes that Iraq will be able to sell off industries to private sector and foreign investors -- much to the chagrin of many Iraqis who fear their national patrimony will disappear in a fire sale.

US officials say that the ultimate goal still is a free market system and that privatisation must happen -- but not now, not when lots of unemployed angry young men are turning to violence.

Other efforts to boost employment include a 30-million-dollar micro-loan programme by the Iraqi labour ministry for entrepreneurs to start small businesses like electronics repair shops.

The industry ministry has a 20-million-dollar programme to help businesses hurt by violence.

The US military has a number of initiatives of its own, including the year-old Iraq First programme favouring Iraqi contractors instead of foreign ones.

"For the past 12 months we've made a concerted effort to increase our contracting with Iraqi companies," Major General Darryl Scott, head of military contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, told reporters recently.

"This has been a true shift in thinking about reconstruction and contracting in Iraq and movement towards developing capacity of Iraqi firms to provide for the needs of their own people," he said.

Now, half of contracts are awarded to Iraqi firms compared to only a fifth a year before, he said.

There is also a plan to create a secure area next to the massive US base at Baghdad airport for Iraqi businesses to provide maintenance and repair services -- something that could be extended to other bases around the country. The move comes after observers noted that, in contrast to other countries hosting US forces, Iraqis derive almost no economic benefit from the bases in their midst, which import nearly all their food and labour from abroad.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070505...PSCq71dCxX6GMA

Iraqi lawmakers reject US pressure on holiday plans
BAGHDAD (AFP) - Iraqi lawmakers said Saturday that they might yet cut short their planned summer recess in order to pass key laws, but warned the United States not to push them to do so.

Some members of parliament said privately that pressure from Washington might even persuade some anti-American parties to insist on taking the two-month break as planned, as a gesture of defiance.

"This is unnecessary interference," said Kurdish legislator Mahmud Othman. "Parliament has a sense of responsibility. If they find there is a need to legislate laws urgently they will not go on leave.

"This American interference is strange and could have negative results."
Some US politicians have angrily insisted that the Iraqi parliament cancel a recess due in August and September in order to have more time to pass bills designed to aid war-torn Iraq's quest for national reconciliation.

The Iraqi assembly is due to debate a law to rehabilitate former members of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein's ruling Baath Party and allow them to return to public life, and has a draft of a bill on sharing national oil revenues.

US policy-makers see these and other reforms as vital in convincing minority factions opposed to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government to get behind moves to defeat a violent insurgency and quell sectarian fighting.

At the White House on Friday, national security spokesman Gordon Johndroe noted that the US Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, had raised Washington's objection to a two-month recess with Maliki.
"US officials, including Ambassador Crocker, have said this may send the wrong signal not only to the international community but to the Iraqi people," he told reporters.

No decision on the recess has been taken, Iraqi lawmakers said, but they held out the possibility of extending the legislative session if voices in Washington stopped pushing for it.

"We asked for the holiday to be cancelled before the Americans spoke, to pass an abundance of laws. We must finish them by the end of the year," said Nassar al-Rubaie, a member of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's bloc.
First deputy speaker Khalid al-Attiya, a member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said: "The summer holiday is an internal affair. The council is the body to decide whether to go on leave or not.
"The internal rules stipulate a holiday, but there are a host of laws that have to be finished during this legislative term," he added.

"If we do not finish them in time, the council may shorten or cancel the holiday as it did in the winter term when the budget was in discussion and had to be finalised. The council cut the holiday from one month from two."
Wael Abdul-Latif a judge and lawmaker from the secular Iraqi List party, said: "If there are laws important for the country for us to debate we may not enjoy a holiday.

"The people elected us to work 24 hours per day. It is improper that America tells us to work for the interests of our country. We must do so anyway."

There has been pressure from politicians in Washington to tie future military and financial assistance to Iraq to its government meeting certain political "benchmarks" to prove that it is committed to finding peace.

This is an old article but very informative..


Hidden Devaluation

From OWS Magazine | January 1999 Issue

By Gary Scott
January 1, 1999 - The recent round of cuts in U.S. interest rates is a precursor of what's to come in currency markets over the months and years ahead. The U.S. dollar will fall, pushed by lower rates and the propensity of the Federal Reserve Board to stimulate global rather than just U.S. growth. If you're alert, however, some currencies may be well worth holding. Our view of currency rates is based on history. The interest-rate drops, along with the International Monetary Fund's bailout attempts in South Korea, Indonesia, Russia, Brazil and elsewhere, are suspiciously reminiscent of the post-World War II Marshall Plan. Secretary of State George Marshall in 1947 stipulated that the United States would finance the rebuilding of devastated economies all over the world.
Today, U.S. banks and U.S.-backed institutions are pouring billions of greenbacks into other markets. Is there a fundamental difference between now and the Marshall Plan era?
The only significant difference I can detect is that now Japan and rich European nations have also joined in the rescue, throwing big bucks into structural reform of the emerging world. But here's the catch. If history repeats itself with these worldwide do-gooder rescues, so, too, will economic outcomes. And that does not bode well for developed world currencies.
If the rescues work, emerging nations should boom, just as Japan, Germany and other Western European nations did after World War II. And if history repeats itself, the developed nations' currencies (the U.S. dollar, along with the yen and euro) should collapse relative to the emerging nations' currencies.
With dollar- and hard-currency-backed bailouts back in the picture, the world's currency systems should shift again. Too much money has been printed in the developed world, and it's mostly been wasted on too many grand schemes. What's worse, the deluge of new paper has not created any upturn in production.
So, how and when will the world currency system change this time?
In working on my recently published currency parity/interest rate study for 1998, I started to see how this "new currency system" might have, in fact, already begun, although its effects are not yet visible.
The study suggests that the new system devalues currencies through interest rate differentials, rather than by shifting parities. If you supplement this notion with a realization of how technology has improved the efficiency of currency markets, such a system makes a lot of sense.
Greater precision in currency markets, along with more transparent economic statistics in emerging countries--all delivered by super-fast, smart-programmed computers--could create just such a system. This new accuracy allows markets to accurately forecast a currency's potential devaluation. Once that is known, interest-rate adjustments could make a currency more valuable than other currencies, without a revaluation.
I first became aware of the interest-rate differential effect in Ecuador a couple of years ago. The nation's sucre was devaluing at about 24 percent per year vs. the dollar. Sucre rates were 44 percent. The real return of 20 percent was much better than earnings I could have made in the United States.
In 1998, this same kind of hidden revaluation took place several times. Some investment-grade Turkish lira bonds offered yields of 125 percent --while the lira devalued only 34 percent against the U.S. dollar--and investors earned a huge return of 91 percent.
Aren't these currencies with whopping interest rates more valuable--even after taking normal risk premiums into account--than major currencies that earn 3, 4 or 5 percent? For now, these are not hard conclusions, just theory. But we have to be aware that change is ahead. We need to be conservative and prudent, but we also need to acknowledge that the system will shift.
When there is turmoil in other markets while the U.S. dollar appears muscular, it's hard to consider investing in foreign currencies. But too many dollars, yen and ECUs have been thrown by the bucketful into wasted efforts abroad. Both fundamental economics and history tell us that this waste can be hidden for only so long. Eventually, the countries that printed too much currency must pay, and they usually do it by devaluation.
Perhaps the fall of hard currencies won't come from reduced parities this time, but through lower yields. Perhaps not. But mark my words, the fall will come. Smart investors and their advisers should know this and be ever alert. ?
The January 1999 issue of Gary Scott's World Reports is devoted to his currency parity, inflation-interest rate study.

On Wall Street - A SourceMedia and Investcorp publication

Cheers!
DayDream

Here is a link to what I think is the full translation of the English Version of the International Compact - 30 pages long :-

Although I think it's dated Dec 23rd.

http://www.iraqcompact.org/Document/...DecEnglish.doc



Here is an Annex JMM 2007 link - :-

http://www.iraqcompact.org/Document/...nglish2007.pdf




Here is another Annex JMM 2008 & after link - :-

http://www.iraqcompact.org/Document/...nglish2008.pdf

Good Luck.

Here is a link to a Legistative Timetable.

Table 1: Fiscal and Oil sector Accounts :-

http://www.iraqcompact.org/Document/...FF_English.pdf

Here is a link to the Reconciliation Process.

The National Reconciliation and Dialogue project

In order to confirm the coherence between the Iraqi people, establishing the basis of national unity among their different components, to treat the remains of terrorism and administrative corruption, spreading the spirit of the loyal nationality to Iraq in order to build wide national front to confront challenges and to regain the pioneer position of Iraq regionally and internationally …for all that we release the initiative of national reconciliation and dialogue that depends on two basic elements:

1- The reliable procedure.
2- Principles and required policies.


http://www.iraqcompact.org/Document/...tE nglish.pdf

Here is a link to the Principles and foundations of GoI political program.

Council of Representatives members,
GoI releases its program in a framework that maintains Iraqi people unity, its races
and fragments to build a constitutional, democratic, federal and pluralistic Iraq relying
on constitution and laws that assure rights and freedom for all Iraqis as well as ensure
active participation of women in order to enhance the role of civil societies and their
independency

http://www.iraqcompact.org/Document/...oI_English.pdf

May have been already posted.

http://www.iraqcompact.org/Document/...English_2_.doc

Joint Statement on the ICI meeting co-chaired by Dr. Barham Saleh and Ibrahim Gambari

On Sunday, 8 April 2007, a High Level briefing meeting for The International Compact with Iraq (ICI) was held in Baghdad, co-chaired by HE the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq, Dr. Barham Saleh, and HE Ibrahim Gambari, the Special Adviser of the United Nations Secretary-General.

The Baghdad meeting comes as a follow-up to the successfully held ICI meeting in New York at UNHQ on 16 March 2007, hosted by the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and co-chaired by Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi. During the New York meeting the Iraqi Government presented its vision for Iraq and its commitments to addressing the political, security and economic challenges that face Iraq. These were tabled in an ICI document that included a Joint Monitoring Matrix (JMM) which lists indicative actions that would enable the government to meet Compact benchmarks. This JMM will facilitate the monitoring and reporting of progress toward the successful implementation of the ICI.

Dr Saleh announced that the International Compact for Iraq would be formally launched in in a ministerial meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt on 3 May 2007. This meeting will invite the international community to express its support for the government of Iraq and the International Compact through commitment to various means of financial and/or technical assistance and debt relief. This launch of the ICI will be followed on May 4th by a ministerial meeting of Iraq, its neighbors, permanent members of the UN security, the G8 and Egypt and Bahrain.

The meeting was attended by representatives of number of States through their diplomatic missions in Baghdad, as well as multilateral institutions.

The International Compact for Iraq was developed by the Government of Iraq with the support of the United Nations and the World Bank, to deal with the serious challenges that currently face Iraq. The ICI represents the framework for a partnership between Iraq and the international community to achieve political stability, reconstruction and development.

The ICI's objectives, strategies and benchmarks were devised in response to these challenges and aim to meet the government’s vision for a ‘secure, unified, federal and democratic nation, founded on the principles of freedom and equality, and providing peace and prosperity for its people’.