Thread: Iraq/Dinar News Until 5/31/2007 7:15 PM CST..

An official spokesman for the Iraqi government d. Skinner including the following : The cabinet held its third regular session Tuesday, 5/29/2007 adopted the following resolutions :
1.1. 0%.For the purpose of supporting the agricultural sector and farmers, the Economic Committee of the Cabinet to increase the purchase prices of agricultural crops of grain purchased by the State from farmers by 20%.
2.2. .The Cabinet discussed agricultural situation in the district of al-Zubayr and issued recommendations for the bodies related to the protection of domestic agricultural products and help farmers and support.
3.3. .Approval of the financial authorities to raise the ceiling for contracts Ladies and Gentlemen ministers and governors based on the proposal of the Commission of Economic Affairs.
4.4. .Approval of the amendment to articles 25.24 of the Constitution of the World Health Organization and the proposal to the parliament for approval on the legislation.
5.5. المة.Approval of the legal action is to cancel 9 of the revised 2004 issued by the Coalition Provisional Authority.
6.6. .Approval of the delegate power to the Prime Minister wrote Altekhauel audit issued by the coalition authority is based on the 9 to 2004 and revised on the use of real estate owned by the state has the power to delegate certain point of implementation.
7.7. .Approval of the draft Iraqi regime National Committee for Education, Culture and Science Committee with an amendment naming.
8.8. .Approval to postpone action when a general census of population scheduled in October 2007 with continued surveillance and preparedness
Translated version of http://www.burathanews.com/index.php?show=news&action=article&id=13578

Originally Posted by screwball

It is obvious that going below 1260 was done to shake speculators! Yes I heard the budget was set at this rate! Yes laws are coming into place! No talk about the HCL at all being debated in parliament which makes me think it has been passed! Yes I think the Retirement Law is the law which will cause the RV! They need to have a fiscall sustainable pension and secial security system in place before a RV! They have stated that they need a fiscally sustainable pension system! They can only do this with a stable currency! So this weekend is a very real possibility if not this weekend maybe next weekend! In the end we will get there! Just a little bit longer!

Gentlemen, I completely concur and confident in the RR and SGS sources. Good Luck to all in the near future......invest wisely and treat people fairly. We are all about to experience reality.......

Sorry if posted already\

Finance Minister announced the Iraqi statement carried Jabr said in a press statement yesterday that 45 countries had abolished the debts on Iraq with rates ranging between 80% and 100% exemptions totaled $ 140 billion • That was an important achievement in the framework of the agreement signed between the Iraqi government and the International Monetary Fund •
counterpart that the country's budget in 2007 is different from the budget last year and the proportion of the implementation of a number of ministries other than good budget unable to do so and will withdraw money and give it to other ministries • The current year saw relatively stable inflation in the range between 40% and 45%. pointing to the success of the Iraqi Central Bank in raising hard currency reserves reached 21 billion dollars could provide a reassuring stability
Translated version of http://www.burathanews.com/index.php?show=news&action=article&id=13578

An official spokesman for the Iraqi government d. Skinner including the following : The cabinet held its third regular session Tuesday, 5/29/2007 adopted the following resolutions :
1.1. 0%.For the purpose of supporting the agricultural sector and farmers, the Economic Committee of the Cabinet to increase the purchase prices of agricultural crops of grain purchased by the State from farmers by 20%.

One of yesterdays posts about the WTO - Agriculture was one of the strides they would have to make advances towards.
So there you go!!!!!!!!

ORB extends public opinion survey in Iraq


Author: BI-ME staff
Source: BI-ME
Published: 30 May 2007




IRAQ. London-based ORB has received the go-ahead to continue its annual tracking survey of public opinion in Iraq. Now three years old, the survey involves face-to-face interviews with a nationally representative sample of Sunnis, Shias and Kurds.

The poll includes feedback from 5,019 Iraqis aged 18-plus, but confidentiality and safety issues prevent ORB from disclosing its client’s name, or details of how the fieldwork is carried out.

Some of the latest results indicate that despite April being one of the bloodiest months since the end of the war, a majority (51%) believe that life is better under the current regime, with 23% preferring life under Saddam Hussein’s rule. In Baghdad those who prefer the new system has increased from 49% to 54% since the March poll.

Even amid the rising number of civilian deaths resulting from militia activity, just a fifth (21%) believe that their country is in a state of civil war. The proportion saying that ‘Iraq is close to a state of civil war, but not in one yet’, has increased from 22% to 26%.

One in two respondents (49%) believe that from what they have seen, read or heard, President Bush’s additional troop deployment is making Baghdad’s security situation ‘a great deal worse’. Only 11% of those questioned say it is improving the situation.

At last year’s ESOMAR Congress, ORB Managing Director Johnny Heald presented a paper entitled ‘Polling In A War Zone’ in which he outlined some of the dangers encountered by interviews in war torn situations

Hill International receives major new task orders for work on the Iraq Reconstruction Programme


Author: BI-ME staff
Source: BI-ME
Published: 28 May 2007




IRAQ. US-based Hill International, the worldwide construction consulting firm, announced today that it has been awarded significant new task orders to provide construction management support services in connection with the Iraq Reconstruction Programme.

These one-year task orders, which have an aggregate value to Hill of approximately US$23.6 million, were issued by Stanley Baker Hill, a joint venture of Stanley Consultants, Michael Baker Company and Hill.

These task orders were issued pursuant to an indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (ID/IQ) contract that was awarded in 2004 to Stanley Baker Hill by the US Army Corps of Engineers. The ID/IQ contract has a term of one year, with four additional one-year option periods.

“Hill is honoured to be involved in assisting the Corps in managing the Iraq Reconstruction Programme,” said Hans Van Winkle, President of Hill’s Project Management Group (Americas). “The expanding role of Stanley Baker Hill is evidence of the outstanding performance of our joint venture’s team on this critical programme,” Van Winkle added.

Hill International, with 1,500 employees in 70 offices worldwide, provides programme management, project management, construction management, and construction claims services. Engineering News-Record magazine recently ranked Hill as the 17th largest construction management firm in the United States.

Mud schools built in Iraq’s forgotten Samawa


Enterprising tribesmen, fed up with officials’ failure to address education needs, build own makeshift schools.


By Hussein al-Yasiri – SAMAWA, Iraq

The village of Ghadhari, in the province of Muthanna, has never had a school. “We hoped [after Saddam’s fall] that any new government would listen to our desire for [one],” said Sheikh Dhager al-Hashim from the al-Ziyad tribe, the largest in this long neglected part of southwest Iraq.

A month, a year went by, a few American and other coalition troops passed through, new governors took office in Samawa, the capital of the predominantly Shia province. But nothing happened in Ghadhari.

Until Sheikh Dha ger al-Hashim and his tribesmen did something unusual for Iraq, where there is a tradition of waiting for the government to solve any given problem. Locals – who scrape a living breeding sheep and camels, growing a few crops, making bricks and occasional smuggling - took matters into their own hands and built a school of mud and wood, the al-Hudaibiya primary school.

It has just a handful of classrooms, the windows have no panes and there’s little in the way of furniture, but it represents progress in impoverished Ghadhari where most people are illiterate. “I paid for the school, and [villagers] helped with the construction,” said a proud al-Hashim.

The whole village contributes to the running of the new school. Local families provide teachers - who are in short supply - with food and sometimes accommodation; and the sheikh pays the taxi fares for staff who commute from Samawa, 35 kilometres away.

Such self-reliance appears to stem from years of being ignored by the central authorities. This is a forgotten land, with no oil reserves, holy site, nor important road that has ever attracted the attentions of the ruling elite.

One of the few things that Saddam Hussein was praised for by the international community was raising education standards across the country, but he allocated little money to schools here.

What Ghadhari locals can’t afford to provide themselves they seek from other sources and vainly hope that officials in Samawa will help them.

School furniture, such as desks and blackboards, are borrowed from other schools. And the school manager, Mohammed Chaffat, says he’s asked the education authorities in Samawa to pay for the repair of the ceiling, which recently collapsed because of heavy rains and stormy winds - but has had no response.

Hulayel Jabbar, 16, a fourth grade student, says that despite there being a lot of problems, local kids are keen to go to school.

“Some of the [students] have to stand because there are not enough desks. When the weather is bad, [because the ceiling collapsed] we don’t go to school since the teachers don’t turn up either. Also the classrooms are very close together, so the teacher of the first grade annoys the teacher of the fourth grade. But even with all the difficulties, the students are enthusiastic,” said Hulayel.

Conditions are no better at the several dozen other “mud schools” in the area, which have been built by local communities who, like the Ghadhari villagers, have lost patience with the authorities’ seeming reluctance to address their education needs.

“[Some schools] are just tents, covered by woven camel-wool! One hundred and twenty are in need of reconstruction – 16 are close to total collapse,” said Abdul Hussein Jawad, planning manager at the Muthanna education office.

The situation in rural areas is particularly bad. The ministry of education promised to pay teachers extra for travel costs, but according to Jawad, “These amounts do not cover half of what the teachers pay for transportation and other expenses!”

There’s an urgent need for a school building programme in the countryside because ever since Ottoman times, the geographic distribution of schools has been unfair, said Furkan Faisal, a professor at the College of Education at Muthanna University. For instance, he said, there are 63 primary schools in Mosul but only four in Diwaniya province.

But everywhere schools are in bad shape, with most lacking drinking water and toilets – conditions in Samawa being he worst among the country’s 18 provinces, according to ministry of education statistics.

Hasan Fadhlalah Ma’ala, director general of school buildings at the ministry of education in Baghdad, says the ministry has commissioned a plan to replace the region’s mud schools with modern buildings – although he says there are still a number of security and financial problems to overcome. He estimated the cost would come to one billion US dollars, and that it would take a year to replace all the local schools.

While the people of Samawa await developments, at least one of their problems is being resolved – the teacher shortage. In the past, kids from rural areas would have to bussed to city schools. But now because of the deteriorating security situation in urban areas, teachers are willing to work in relatively peaceful villages.


Hussein al-Yasiri is an IWPR trainee. This article originally appeared in 'Iraqi Crisis Report', produced by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Institute for War and Peace Reporting

Iraqi ‘art for peace’ at Rome exhibit


Iraqi artists battle to keep culture alive in post-invasion Iraq despite difficult new challenges.


ROME - Let art be a vehicle of peace and understanding; this was the message that emerged from a meeting Tuesday at the Palazzo dell'Informazione in Rome between Giuseppe Marra, president of the GMC-ADNKRONOS media group, and Abdel Ahmad Alemeri and Ziyad Turkey, two of the artists showcased in a rare exhibition of Iraqi contemporary art.

The exhibit - 'Mondo da Trovare', (a world to discover) - displays the work of 12 Iraqi artists selected by a commission of Italian art critics. The venue is the evocative and symbolic Castel Sant'Angelo, a Roman mausoleum turned papal fortress near the Vatican.

The exhibition is organized by Adnkronos Comunicazione, and promoted by the Italian foreign ministry and Task Force Iraq, in cooperation with CVAS, the cultural organisation set up in Iraq after the March 2003 US-led invasion.

During the visit by the two Iraqis, one a photographer, one a painter, to Adnkronos International (AKI), Marra underlined the role that cultural ties can have in dialogue between the two shores of the Mediterranean and said he hoped that this initiative can spread understanding of Iraqi art and culture in Italy.

Marra also said he hoped that the process of pacification and return to normality within Iraq.

The two artists expressed their satisfaction at the chance to get to know Italian art.

Living against a backdrop of bombs, bloodshed and desperation, Iraq's community of artists face all the same problems as ordinary Iraqis.

Many have left the country, others have fallen victim to bombs or sectarian killings, but those who remain are doggedly committed to pursuing their art in the face of adversity.

"We are day-time artists" said Alemeri, introducing a recurrent motif in the difficulties facing ordinary Iraqis but which have particular significance for painters - light.

With the chronic shortage of electricity in Baghdad, where both live, there is no chance of continuing their creative output after the sun goes down. There are generators but these require petrol, and that means queueing for hours, and are prone to breakdown.

"Many artists cannot get to their atelier because it is so risky on the streets" he added.

This concern plays into another feature of the life of Iraqi artists "the lack of public contact".

While artists will take risks to make sure they attend other colleagues' shows or exhibits, "we cannot ask the public have the courage or the recklessness to come and see a show or a theatre performance".

"Putting on an exhibition requires electricity and also a minimum of security" Alemeri added.

Photographer Ziyad Turkey spoke of the general lack of security in which artists have to work. "The government does not act, not because it doesn't want to but because it is incapable of protecting us: on the streets there is the law of the jungle," he said.

Last month three Baghdad artists were killed in bomb blasts and attacks, including one of the most renowned calligraphers of the Muslim world, Khalil al-Zahawi.

Both artists underlined the importance of the Contemporary Visual Arts Syndicate - which groups most Iraqi artists - in generating a "sense of belonging and of hope" as well as protecting the artistic independence that its members demand.


As for the political religious and social fragmentation of Iraq, since the end of the Saddam regime in 2003, photographer Turkey recalls that Iraqi culture tends to be 'secular' and that by protecting the secular aspect "we try to protect the unity of Iraqi culture from the forces seeking to divide everything up along ethnic and religious lines."

"Many artists are striving to retain their independence from religious or political forces which try to appropriate them for their own ends, without any real understanding of culture" said Turkey.

(AKI)

Iraq is 'highest priority' for Crescent
by James Buckley on Tuesday, 29 May 2007

Workers on this drilling facility in Kurdistan are undisturbed by violence in the south. (SAFIN HAMED/AFP/Getty Images)Abdulla Al-Qadi, director of Crescent Petroleum's upstream operations, told delegates at a recent Dubai congress that Iraq is Crescent's highest priority.

Speaking at the Global Oil and Gas Expansion Congress in May, Al-Qadi said sectarian conflict in the south of the country had caused investors to think negatively about the more prosperous Kurdistan region.

"Northern Iraq, and Kurdistan in particular, is more secure than areas like southern Sudan, Nigeria and Colombia, yet these areas are not given the same negative press," said Al-Qadi. "The government of Kurdistan has control over security issues there. They have an obvious police presence."

Story continues below ↓
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He also observed that foreign firms have been operating in Kurdistan for three years without incident. But, he said, Crescent would not take security lightly.

"When considering our operations in Kurdistan, security is in a category by itself. It is the number one priority," he said. "The region is much safer than most people would anticipate. But even so we have assigned a security advisor in Kurdistan to manage all the security issues."

Iraqis granted extra 7 months to upgrade passports


30 May 2007
AMMAN -- Iraqi nationals who hold 'S' series passports will be allowed to enter Jordan until the end of December, according to the Ministry of Interior.


The decision, which was disclosed to the Iraq foreign ministry yesterday, cancels the original deadline set for June 1.


The seven-month extension was granted following requests from the Iraqi government to allow more time for its nationals to switch to the new 'G' series passport, said the ministry.


The new passport was introduced last year after several Western and European countries refused to accept the older passports, citing security concerns.


Substandard security features and a lack of control over production and issuance make the 'S' series passport extremely vulnerable to alteration, counterfeiting and impostors, according to the US government.


Earlier this year, the Iraqi government said all non-'G' series travel documents would be obsolete by the end of 2008. But according to the Iraqi embassy here, this deadline will not be met.


"We have distributed 4,000 'G' series passports to Iraqi nationals in Jordan from the 12,000 applications we have received so far," Iraqi Ambassador to Jordan Saad Jasem Al Hayani told The Jordan Times yesterday.


He added that the new extension granted by Jordan would help, but there would not be enough time to issue the 'G' passport to every Iraqi applicant.


The Iraqi ambassador said the new passport is currently taking from two to five weeks to process for Iraqis living in Jordan, adding that many have opted to travel to Baghdad to speed up the process.


"There are no guarantees. The Iraq embassy in Amman delivers hundreds of passport applications every week but it is in the hands of the passport department in Baghdad, the only place that the passports are made," Hayani said.


The Iraqi interior ministry has acknowledged that the process needs to be expedited. In order to address the problem, last month it approved the opening of 10 new passport offices to assist its consulates abroad, including in Jordan.


"We expect to be able to issue passports directly from Amman within two to three months according to promises made by the passport office in Baghdad," the ambassador said.


Passport confusion


Obtaining the latest 'G' passport, depending on which of the four types of passport (N, M, H, or S) an Iraqi has, can be a confusing, costly and often dangerous process.


Adding to the confusion, when the applications of holders of M, N or H passports are processed it does not necessarily mean they automatically receive a 'G' passport. Documents marked 'N' and 'M' may be upgraded to 'S' series due to massive demand and because of a decision to eliminate previous passports one at a time.


The handwritten 'S' series passport was introduced following the US-led invasion in March 2003 but was soon deemed invalid by many countries due to substandard features which make it vulnerable to alteration.


Iraqis in the Kingdom and abroad are crying foul about what they claim is an "unfair" system, with many forced to travel back to their war-torn country to obtain the new passport before they can travel abroad and start new lives.


Corruption in Iraq is also adding to their miseries. Last month, several Jordan Times sources in Baghdad confirmed that many individuals had been arrested and jailed for corruption and accepting bribes, resulting in the closure of the Baghdad passport office for several weeks. The office has since been reopened.


"Corruption is still occurring despite the arrests... with around $700 or a 'wasta,' your application is moved along quickly," one source told The Jordan Times.


The Iraqi ambassador in Amman, however, dismissed these claims as "rumours and nonsense." Hayani explained that although the option to travel to Iraq may be offered to Iraqis in Jordan, it is not necessary.


"Any Iraqi who wishes to change his passport can send his application from Amman and each new issuance requires the right identity documents, fingerprinting, a signature and JD15 [27,500 Iraqi dinars]," he added.

By Linda Hindi

© Jordan Times 2007