Thread: Iraq/Dinar News until 5/23/07 Midnight CST

Originally Posted by rvalreadydang

Parliament discusses a number of laws and reconvene next Tuesday
أخبار و تقارير - عدد القراءات: 38 - 14/05/2007News reports-and the number of readings : 38-14 / 05 / 2007


برسBaghdad-file Press

.Lifting the First Deputy Speaker Dr. Khalid Al-Attiyah meeting, today, Monday, to next Tuesday after discussion of a number of laws included in the Council's agenda.

.Yesterday, headed by Dr. Attiya absence, the Chairman of the Council, Dr. Mahmoud Almchidani for undisclosed reasons discuss some draft laws, including the first reading of the draft law on social protection network, which provides for "minimum livelihood for Mwatinin of unemployed, the disabled, widows, and divorced .. The new law grants a monthly rate them according to the number of family members.

..I read of the social protection in the meeting of the House of Representatives, provides for a payment of an amount (50) thousand Iraqi dinars a month for a family consisting of one individual, and the amount (70) thousand Iraqi dinars for a family consisting of two .. .As well as the payment of an amount (90) thousand dinars for a family consisting of three members, and the amount (100) thousand dinars for a family of four, (110) thousand dinars for a family of six and over.
."Dr Khalid al-Attiyah during the meeting said that "will be reading Althaineh of the project next week to vote on its end of the week." كما .Also during today's meeting, the first reading of the proposed Act to amend the Criminal High Court (No. 10) for the year (2005), which aims to provide protection to the staff of the High Criminal Court.

وشه.The meeting also saw the first reading of the draft law to amend the first ministerial order No. (10) for the year (2004), which includes compensation affected by the "terrorist" acts and the military in terms of identifying the vulnerability before or after the fall of the former regime on April 9 April 2003.

.It was the second reading of the draft amendment to the Civil Service Act (No. 24) for the year (2004), which includes pay for the officer who resigned did not enjoy the holidays during the service.

.Also saw a second reading of the draft Accession Iraq to the two Optional Protocols to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which aims to protect children from sexual abuse, and their involvement in military conflicts


البرلمان يناقش جملة من القوانين ويعاود الانعقاد الثلاثاء المقبل

ok, move the decimal place three times on these figures and they are very close to being accurate wouldnt you say??

Originally Posted by stargate-sg13

I agree there have been many things that have been accomplished and that patience will pay off. I hope my family will benefit from this because I don't think I will, it's unlikely I will be alive for more 2 years. Health stuff. Sorry for bringing my depressed state to this thread. I will shut up now.

Sorry for your situation. I'll put you on my prayer list. Don't be sorry, there's lots here who will lift you up. So all prayer warriors out there this ones for you.

Originally Posted by snottynose

could this be them announcing the reval?

Naw, probably just another round of pin the tail on the reval

Iraq makes progress on crucial constitution plan
15 May 2007 17:45:51 GMTSource: Reuters
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Background
Iraq in turmoil
More (Edits)

By Mariam Karouny

BAGHDAD, May 15 (Reuters) - An Iraqi committee agreed on Tuesday to send to parliament a plan to reform the constitution, an important step towards implementing national reconciliation laws that Washington says are critical to ending violence.

Once-dominant Sunni Arabs, who make up the backbone of the insurgency, have long demanded changes to a constitution they say concedes too much power to majority Shi'ites and ethnic Kurds, who were persecuted under Saddam Hussein.

U.S. President George W. Bush, under pressure to show tangible progress in the four-year-old war, has piled pressure on Iraqi leaders to agree power-sharing legislation.

Such laws, which include sharing Iraq's vast oil wealth and ending a ban on former members of Saddam's party from public office, are particularly aimed at assuaging Sunnis Arabs and bringing them firmly into the U.S.-backed political process.

Saleem al-Jubouri, from the Sunni Accordance Front, said the constitutional reform committee had agreed to pass its draft to parliament next Tuesday -- albeit with some passages unresolved.

He said this would allow it technically to meet a May 15 deadline set by the constitution.

"There is a preliminary report that has been approved by committee members," he told Reuters. "Members now have to consult their political parties on the proposals."

SOME ISSUES LEFT OPEN

But he said some thorny issues had been left open, for parliament to resolve. These included a Shi'ite-backed law that allows provinces to form federal regions, and wording on the Arab identity of Iraq, opposed by Kurds.

In another sign of political progress, Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi said the presidential council would soon send to parliament a draft proposal to allow thousands of ex-Baath party members to return to public jobs, another Sunni demand.

The council comprises Hashemi, President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, and Shi'ite Vice President Adel Abdul al-Mahdi.

Hashemi's Accordance Front had warned it might quit Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government if Sunni grievances were ignored, but a visit by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney to Iraq last week appears to have softened the Sunnis' stance.

The bills are likely to face fierce debate in parliament.

Some lawmakers from the ruling Shi'ite community, who were oppressed during Saddam's rule, have expressed virulent opposition to seeing former Baathists take up government jobs.

Meanwhile non-Arab Kurds, also persecuted under Saddam's pan-Arab policies, have resisted wording on the Arab identity of Iraq.

But Sunni Arabs fear federalism will allow Kurds in the north and Shi'ites in the south, where Iraq's oil reserves lie, to break away into their own states. Sunni Arabs live mostly in central and western Iraq, which is poor in oil.

Pressure is growing in the United States to pull troops out of a war in which more than 3,300 U.S. soldiers have been killed. Some Republicans have suggested they will desert Bush unless he shows political and military progress by September

Hi Gert

Originally Posted by Hkp

MP Fried Raundozi :

The constitutional amendments submitted a working paper and one in the coming days

Baghdad-Sabah.
Member of the House of Representatives from the Kurdistan Alliance Fried Raundozi member of the Constitutional Commission that the Commission will provide all proposals and amendments to be agreed upon by all political parties to the Chamber of Deputies in time within a single package


The added Raundozi : that the Committee is a mini-committee include everyone and study the proposals and to the other members could be involved in this committee and express their views. He Raundozi : The Commission on the amendment of the constitution will continue to meet intensively to achieve all the demands of the parties with regard to the amendments, which will occur on the Iraqi Constitution, especially those matters that were the subject of controversy and differences, but it did not have deep differences, but only the difference in views regarding federalism. He added Raundozi : the Committee had agreed on the question of personal status law and federalism start and used the political system with any member of the Constitutional Review Commission and the parliamentary blocs, but there
Some of the issues on the mechanisms of implementation and application of federalism will enable the Commission within several days of this month to submit all the amendments as a single presidency of the Iraqi parliament.

Translated version of http://www.alsabaah.com/

Profits and loss
The big oil companies expect to profit from Iraq's oil reserves using laws they helped create. But what is the human cost?
Ewa Jasiewicz

Comment is free: Profits and loss

About Webfeeds May 15, 2007 2:30 PM |
Today, shareholders are converging in London and The Hague for Shell's annual general meeting. As investors hobnob in the Champagne Suite of the Hammersmith Novotel, those working in the oilfields that the company seeks to control are ready to strike over an oil law that Shell has helped to craft.

The focus is the culmination of four years campaigning by the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions (IFOU). Demands range from bread and butter issues such as land allocation, unpaid wages, holidays, health and safety and full-time status for temporary workers, to wider political issues which have been the founding bedrock of the union: protection of Iraq's oil wealth from foreign companies and a say in the future of the oil industry. Shell is one of the companies that the union has cautioned against entering Iraq "under the guise of so-called production sharing agreements".

Yet Shell has had a say and a proposed stake in the future of Iraq's oil industry for as long as the union has been organising. Whereas the demands of the union have been ignored, Shell, through doors blown open by the war and occupation, has accessed government decision makers and lobbyists on a regular basis.

Shell has been positioning itself to sign long-term exclusive contracts with the Iraqi government for the past four years. Ever since Shell misled investors over its reserves to the tune of 4bn barrels, it has been seeking replacement reserves. With 115bn barrels of proven reserves, occupied Iraq is where the prize still ultimately lies.

February saw the Iraqi cabinet approve a controversial hydrocarbon law. The law will grant foreign companies the dominant role in developing Iraq's reserves. If approved by parliament, foreign companies will have access to the largest reserves open to private control on the planet.

Neighbouring Saudi Arabia and Iran (first and second in the world oil-wealth stakes) do not have production-sharing agreements, the type of contract that the oil law proposes. They use technical service agreements, or buyback contracts, that leave decision-making powers including development, rates of production and extraction, to the state. Private oil companies there act as contractors rather than controllers.

The current Iraqi oil law will allow foreign companies to control production, with potentially unlimited profits in Iraq's undeveloped fields - accounting for two-thirds of Iraq's known reserves. This is to be done by production-sharing agreements - defined by critics as a form of privatisation by stealth. Under production-sharing agreements, foreign companies will put capital upfront to explore for oil and shoulder the risk if none is to be found or it is difficult to extract.

Iraq, however, is home to some of the easiest oil to access. Known as "low hanging fruit" by the industry, extraction costs range from $1-$1.50 per barrel. Under terms to be agreed by contract, the state would then relinquish a fixed percentage of profit to oil companies for a period of up to 30 years. The terms and conditions agreed in 2007 - under conditions of war and occupation - could last a generation until 2037, with virtually no opportunity to renegotiate.

Companies like Shell would expect concessions to offset the risks of working in a dangerous country like Iraq. Risk, as with all capital ventures, presents opportunity. The risk represented by massacres in Haditha and Fallujah, the car bombings and terror on the streets of Baghdad, military air raids, sieges, walls of separation, kidnappings and assassinations all figures into the balance sheets of companies like Shell.

Shell was a key player in moulding the current oil law. Shell representatives, along with those of eight other oil majors, the US and UK governments and the International Monetary Fund, saw the law just weeks after it was written in July 2006. It would be eight months before the law would be presented to Iraqi MPs. Shell commented upon and influenced the law throughout its drafting process.

Since July 2006, the British government has worked earnestly to influence the law, repeatedly consulting with Shell on the type of contracts it would like to obtain. Through the oil industry lobby organisation International Taxation and Investment Centre, Shell - along with six other major oil companies - has been pressuring the Iraqi government to grant long-term contracts that would give them exclusive rights to extract Iraq's oil. The British government, through the Foreign Office, has been helping, delivering a report strongly advocating production-sharing agreements to the Iraqi government.

Shell's involvement in shaping domestic economic policy in Iraq stretches back to March 2003. Just days before the bombing of Baghdad, senior Shell managers met at 10 Downing Street to insist that Iraq's oil should benefit not just US companies, but European companies too. A month later, 100 workers activists from the Southern Oil Company formed the Southern Oil Company Union, with the explicit aim of securing workers rights and defending Iraq's oil from privatisation. American companies were shown the door by the union when they tried to work in the fields. The Union faced down British soldiers in protests over three months of unpaid wages and won. Membership leapt from 100 to 3,000.

From February to September 2003, former Shell CEO Philip Carroll worked with the coalition provisional authority on plans to restructure the Iraqi oil industry. Meanwhile, Iraqi oil workers embarked on a reconstruction effort - rebuilding drilling rigs, pipelines and refining and port equipment.

Union leaders also deconstructed Bremer's order 30 wage table - arguing that Iraqi oil workers needed more than the occupation set minimum wage of 69,000 Iraqi Dinar (approximately £30 per month). After threatening to shut down exports, the union succeeded in eliminating the last two categories of the wage table and won a new minimum rate in the oil sector of 102,000ID (£45) per month. Membership and confidence swelled.

In 2004, Shell hired a Dubai-based exploration and production executive to act as its "country chairman" for Iraq - the most senior overseas post in the business. To assist the new chairman, Shell sought an Iraq lobbyist, advertising for "a person of Iraqi extraction with strong family connections and an insight into the network of families of significance within Iraq". In the same year, workplace elections were held in the Maysan, Basra and Dhi Qar provinces, creating the General Union of Oil Employees (GUOE). Candidates with strong connections and credentials among the workforce were chosen to lead in nine oil and gas companies. The establishment of the GUOE significantly strengthened networks of influence and organisation for working people in the southern oil sector and their communities. Union membership now stands at 26,000 across four governorates in the south.

So the view of a black goldrush that may have glittered from The Hague and London just got hazier. The organisational strength of the IFOU could be a major spanner in the works of Shell's lobbying and legal mechanisms. The IFOU has repeatedly warned companies like Shell to keep out of Iraq's oil fields. Union president Hassan Jumaa recently said of the strike: "The federation calls on all unions in the world to support our demands and to put pressure on governments and the oil companies not to enter the Iraqi oil fields."

Questions will be asked both inside Shell's AGM and outside, through a peaceful protest, about the ethics of its policies in Iraq. Likewise, through the efforts of Iraqi unions, the debate in Iraq will expand on who really does have the right to control Iraq's oil. Who will decide the fate of the resource that accounts for 95% of government revenue? And who should have a say in the future of Iraq's economy - Shell or the people of Iraq?

it was posted by rvalreadydang and commented on by someone else or vice versa about ten pages back from where you posted this.

Originally Posted by RollsRoyce

Sorry if posted before . . . The info below came from OldSkier / elsewhere . . . No date or link was given . . . has anyone seen this before?? . . . If true/& recent, sounds pretty good . . .

Found the link [ I think ] as follows . . . http://66.249.91.104/translate_c?hl=...aspx%3Fid%3D75 . . .
It's a record of meeting with shabibi from Jan., 2007 / a bit old, . . . but still good!! ] . . .


Mr. Sinan Shabibi (Governor of the Central Bank of Iraq):

I am very happy to stand before representatives of the people and put them out of economic ideas with regard to balancing the relationship or the Central Bank.

After the budget was briefed them is undoubtedly ambitious and the large volume of investment, and development process will be a lot of changes in the basic infrastructure in the area of production, and this is the kind of economic instability, technically, the Central Bank is the primary work to achieve development in a stable environment that is aimed at achieving economic stability in spite of all the disruptions caused by the process of economic development.

The Bank is the central institution interested in achieving economic stability and development through economic stability.

Please be clear that the Bank Central is not the Ministry of Finance or the Ministry of Planning, is an unfinished developmental and then there is some kind of consensus that the Bank Central and interested by all means and policies to achieve Alastaqraralaguetassadi Israel and the moderate price category and be moderate and low inflation, our truth balancing First maintain real resources of the budget, as well as inflation which we live must be fought and reduced in order to have the budget resources have value and we have a lot of measures including raising the exchange rate of the Iraqi DINAR (IQD) after many discussions in the Ministry of Finance and other economists, but the decision is the decision of the Central Bank of Iraq.

And raising the price of the Iraqi DINAR (IQD) impact on the budget without a doubt, affect the purchasing power of the government of Iraqi DINAR (IQD)s because we also produce good name DINAR (IQD) When the government comes to its supplier dollar comes to the Iraqi Central Bank to meet disbursement procedure, which is essentially Iraqi DINAR (IQD)s, but when inflation reduces the purchasing Their capability and the ability revenues the truth will increase and exchange rate policy will, in fact, neutral to a certain extent, of course, this policy essentially makes DINAR (IQD) is the storehouse of value in this case there will be confidence in Iraqi DINAR (IQD)s antibody Badjarh people and withdraw kind of liquidity go to the banks in order not to contribute to inflation, such as, in fact, reduce the government's ability to buy Iraqi DINAR (IQD) lead to rationalize government expenditure, and will provide individuals and will have a positive impact on inflation.

The other thing is, in fact, lead to a reduction in import prices. Import, which is the dollar will not be affected, but the import of the private sector, which relies on imports convert dollars to the DINAR (IQD) will cost less and in fact this important developmental key to that when we try to implement development projects in the budget will have input in the implementation of investment projects and many requirements, many of which are imported When The government is implementing these projects and importing these necessities imported Bassarastiradi less because of the high rate of the Iraqi DINAR (IQD), this is our budget any government would be its ability to buy Iraqi DINAR (IQD) less, but the purchasing power of the DINAR (IQD) will be the biggest on the one hand, and on the other there will be a means coffers of the citizens, We do not work in a national goal but also impact on the dollar in the economy lifting When citizens accept the Iraqi DINAR (IQD) and therefore will be a CBE large, we want to make a way to minimize the impact on monetary policy by which make DINAR (IQD) store of value.

Best to all . . . RR . . .

PUKmedia Leila Shamari / Baghdad :

Dr. Abdel Hassan farmer Sudanese, Iraqi Trade Minister optimism on the success of future negotiations with the World Trade Organization to be held in the Geneva late this month ..

The Sudanese announcement during the Iraqi negotiating team that Iraq had completed all the mechanisms and questions addressed to him by the International Organization addition to updating laws and legislation and sent to the State Consultative Council and the Council of Ministers to be studied in order to keep abreast of Iraq's participation in the WTO ..

He added that the negotiating group established for three years and succeeded in completing all'll requirements of the World Trade Organization and develop appropriate responses for each organization offers Therefore, we are optimistic that the outcome of future talks to be held in Geneva with a team represented by the exit of the recommendations of the task could accept Iraq in the light of the implications of the results.

The Sudanese to the importance of education and public awareness through the media and Iraq accedes to the WTO that this economy will gain (strength and evolution), and inform the experiences of the developed countries of the Organization for the freedom to control the operations of the economy and world trade.

Pointing out that the Iraqi government has issued many laws that serve the Iraqi economy and facilitate coordination with the global economy, where the form of the investment major turning point future results will be significant movement of the market economy and to develop the country and most of the provinces that suffered greatly as a result of their negligence and self central control of the State on the economic movement ..

The minister stressed that the accession of Iraq to the World Trade Organization does not mean necessarily accept the new restrictions imposed on the Iraqi economy, laws and regulations of the organization and believes that some Ha Thus Thus but some team work places this side the best interest of the country and the interests of the Iraqi rights before taking any action addition, we find that the economy Iraqis have great potential capable of overcoming the problems and come back to the top of the economics of the region's countries.

Stressing the importance of Iraq's presence in international organizations being shunned for many years and it was unacceptable that this move away from what is happening in the world of enormous economic developments will seek to make use of it to serve the Iraqi economy, and thus determine the feasibility of presence in these international organizations.

The meeting was considered a range of topics and mechanisms put forward by the negotiating team representing the Iraqi government before the World Trade Organization in Geneva and already sent to the government many of the questions asked and answers in order to consider the request seriously Iraqi ..

Originally Posted by shotgunsusie

ok, move the decimal place three times on these figures and they are very close to being accurate wouldnt you say??

Yes, because without that those numbers look pitifull!

Originally Posted by PAn8tv

Nice to see the THANKS button up and running again :

WOoT!!!!