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

Turkish military maneuvers along Iraq borders

Military and Secuity 5/11/2007 1:54:00 PM



ISTANBUL, May 11 (KUNA) -- Turkish forces were engaged in military maneuvers along the borderline with Iraq near the Sirnak Province, local press reported.
The daily Zaman paper Friday said 50 tanks were active along the borderline some five kilometers off the province's Silopi town, taking part in maneuvers that lasted a whole day.
The paper noted that the drills came weeks after Turkish threats of conducting military operations in northern Iraq which, it maintains, is serving as stronghold and haven for militants of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
Turkey recently bolstered its security along the borders with Iraq and keeps watch through flights by army F-16s in daytime and thermo-cameras at night.
The confrontations usually escalate in the region with the coming of spring as the snow melts and enables smoother crossing into Turkey from the militant bases in the northern Iraqi mountainous region.
Ankara constantly calls on the US to launch campaigns against the militants.
Since the PKK started its strife for independent Kurdistan statehood in southeast Turkey, over 37,000 people were killed in confrontations between the PKK and Turkish forces.(end) ta.wsa KUNA 111354 May 07NNNN

MENAFN) The President of IHS Energy said that Iraqi oil production could increase to 4 million barrels per day (bpd), which is nearly double of what it currently produces if the security situation in Iraq improves and necessary facilities are developed, Iraq Directory reported.

He also went on to say that Iraq's known oil reserves amount to around 116 billion barrels, however, an additional 100 billion barrels could also exist in the western region of the country.

It is important to mention that the U.S. Geological Survey has predicted that the country's additional reserves amount to approximately 45 billion barrels.

Originally Posted by cooldolphins

to a not so pretty 1250. American Contractor

dont give that phoney airtime or hits.

Originally Posted by wciappetta

Truly I believe these guys have no clue.........I hate to say where they pull their info from but they ought to wash their hands before eating. so don't pay them any mind.

i had an opportunity to chat with this dude in the chatbox we used to have here. he didnt even know about daylight savings time in iraq or when it started, yet he claimed to be there presently. he said the time was an hour different from what it was and i corrected him at which time he told me he should know he was there and iraq didnt impose a daylight savings time. i then posted him an article which contradicted him. he disappeared.

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WTO accession meeting for Iraq 25/5.



http://www.wto.org/meets_public/meets_e.pdf

Iraq PM may face problems over ministerial changes
Web posted at: 5/11/2007 6:50:21
Source ::: REUTERS
BAGHDAD • Iraq's Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki may face problems in parliament over candidates he submitted to replace six ministers who quit in protest at his refusal to set a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops.

Some Shi'ite officials outside the government said yesterday parliament might reject the nominations because the candidates were not as independent as Maliki had promised.

Six ministers loyal to anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada Al Sadr resigned last month. Maliki also has to find a seventh after the justice minister, an independent, left the government for "professional" reasons.

"It may not be a smooth vote," said a lawmaker from the ruling Shi'ite Alliance, citing problems with Sadr's political movement, which has kept its 30 seats in the bloc despite quitting the government.

Maliki promised to replace the Sadrists – who did not hold vital security or economic portfolios – with independents and technocrats. But the names given to members of parliament on Wednesday raised eyebrows, some Shi'ite officials said.

"They are all Shi'ites. Most of them are not independent. This will anger the Sadrists," said a senior Shi'ite Alliance official who is not a Sadrist and who declined to be identified.

"We have one candidate loyal to the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), another is a Maliki aide and others are loyal to other groups," the official said.

Sami al-Askari, an aide to Maliki, was nominated as transport minister. The mayor of Baghdad, Saber al-Issawi, who is close to SCIRI, which is part of the Shi'ite Alliance, was proposed as agriculture minister, said the official. Officials in Maliki's office were not immediately available to comment. Sadr's movement, which draws support mainly from Iraq's Shi'ite poor, has a quarter of the parliamentary seats in Maliki's fractious Shi'ite Alliance, an umbrella grouping of Shi'ite Islamist parties.

"We are still committed to the decision of Sayed Moqtada to accept our ministers be replaced by independent and competent ministers," a senior official in the Sadrist bloc told Reuters.

"But the names we saw today were absolutely not like that.

He (Maliki) needs to change them."

The involvement of the young cleric's Mehdi Army militia in sectarian violence had made the bloc's presence in the government a political liability.

Originally Posted by oldskiier

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WTO accession meeting for Iraq 25/5.



http://www.wto.org/meets_public/meets_e.pdf

WOOT!

IT'S ABOUT TIME!

Iraqi Kurds fear bombs could shatter peaceful region
Web posted at: 5/11/2007 6:48:56
Source ::: REUTERS
ARBIL • Iraq's Kurds expressed fear yesterday that a truck bomb that killed 15 people could be the opening salvo in a campaign to spread the chaos gripping the rest of Iraq to their region.

Wednesday's blast in Kurdistan's capital, claimed by an Al Qaeda-led group, has shattered the sense of security in a region that has largely escaped bloodshed since the 2003 US invasion.

Kurdish officials said they had received intelligence indicating Sunni Arab militants were planning to smuggle vehicle bombs into their autonomous region of soaring mountains bordering Turkey and Iran.

More than 100 people were wounded when the 800kg bomb went off outside the regional government's interior ministry in central Arbil.

Ethnic Kurds, who were persecuted under Saddam Hussein but have enjoyed peace and prosperity in their autonomous oil-producing region since the war, were shocked to see firemen pulling bloodied bodies from piles of rubble. Such images are common in Baghdad and in other parts of Iraq, riven by sectarian violence. But not in Kurdistan-where rosebushes line roads to newly-built airports, families picnic at parks and drivers get tickets for jumping red lights.

The last attack that Kurds can remember in Kurdistan-which the Kurdish government promotes as "The Other Iraq"-killed 60 people in Arbil two years ago. Some Kurdish newspapers said Wednesday's bombing was a wakeup call.

"I think Kurdistan will be targeted because the destiny of Kirkuk will be decided within a short time," said Rebaz Ismail, a 21-year old public library worker, referring to the ethnically mixed city outside Kurdistan where Kurds want to hold a referendum on its fate despite opposition from Arabs.

The self-styled Islamic State in Iraq, an Al Qaeda-led group, claimed responsibility for the attack and said it was in retaliation for the participation of the Kurdish peshmerga forces in a US-backed security crackdown in Baghdad.

Kurds are allies in Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki's government, which is fighting a Sunni Arab-led insurgency.

Kurds' aspirations for greater autonomy of oil-producing Kurdistan is viewed with distrust by once-dominant Sunni Arabs, who fear a partition of Iraq would disadvantage them. In contrast to the rest of Iraq, where reconstruction has been slowed by violence, business is flourishing in Kurdistan.

Markets bustle, trade fairs draw businessmen from Europe and Canada and towering cranes dot Arbil, where Kurds and a Dubai firm plan to build a $400m "media city".

Kurdish officials have signed deals with foreign oil firms that have prompted criticism from Shi'ite and Sunni Arab nationalists in Baghdad.

Iraqi Christians demand protection from Al Qaeda
Web posted at: 5/11/2007 6:49:58
Source ::: AFP
BAGHDAD • The leaders of Iraq's Christian minority yesterday called on the country's beleaguered government to protect their community from attacks by Al Qaeda-inspired Muslim extremists.

In a joint statement, Patriarch Mar Dinka IV of the Catholic Assyrian Church of the East and the Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Emmanuel Delly of Babylon said Baghdad's remaining Christians were facing persecution.

They blamed the so-called "Islamic State of Iraq", an alliance of Islamist insurgent groups that serves as an Al Qaeda front, for much of the violence.

"Christians in a number of Iraqi regions, especially those under the control of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq, have faced blackmail, kidnapping and displacement," the statement said.

The churchmen expressed surprise that Al Qaeda's influence has "reached parts of Baghdad while the government has kept silent and not taken a firm stance to stop their expansion."

Before the US invasion in March 2003 there were estimated to be around 800,000 Christians in Iraq, around three percent of the otherwise largely Muslim population, living mainly in urban centres such as Baghdad.

Although there were some attacks on churches in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iraq's Christians were not especially targeted while rival Sunni and Shi’ite factions went to war.

As a relatively wealthy community, however, many Christians fell prey to kidnap and ransom gangs and many – probably more than half – of them have fled the country or moved to the relative safety of Iraqi Kurdistan.

"We see that today we are being sent from our houses and forcibly displaced from our homeland and alienated from our brothers with whom we lived together," Delly complained this week in a sermon, according to the Al Mutamer newspaper.

Originally Posted by shotgunsusie

dont give that phoney airtime or hits.

Got it!