Thread: Archive Latest News - Think Tank - 16/08/07 - 03/11/07

American's Las Vegas-style casino opens in Iraqi Kurdistan

Sulaimaniyah, Kurdistan region 'Iraq' , -- Not to be outdone by the establishment of the American University in Kurdistan autonomous region so called 'northern Iraq' in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah, a ballsy Russian businessman, Vitaly Kouznetzov, has helped bring another, sexier, slice of American life to the Iraqi Kurds: he's brought a touch of Las Vegas to that same Kurdistan's cultural capital with the launch of an American-style casino.

Sulaimaniyah is located near the border with Iran (Iranian-Kurdistan), and has long been considered a bastion of liberalism in a part of the world known more for intolerance and chaotic bloodshed.

Public Radio International (PRI) interviewed Mr. Kouznetov today, and in it he explains to his bemused interviewer, Lisa Mullin, just how he has managed to open a casino in a Muslim country riven by civil strife and religion-inspired killing.

Money to be made?

Very good customers, he notes - just look at their cars. Good peoples, different people.

Not at all worried about security, huh?

Actually, security is very good, he says, much to Mullin's surprise. Of course everyone is armed. Everyone carries Kalashnikovs, but we have a room by the door where they can check them, one hour, two hours, however long they need.

Booze? Just beer. Well, that's better than nothing. We hear it's hot there.

Iraqi Kurdistan is a secular region, and the most secular city is Sulaimaniyah, the Kurdistan's cultural capital.

Since 1991, the Kurds of Iraq achieved self-rule in part of the country. Today's teenagers are the first generation to grow up under Kurdish rule. In the new Iraqi Constitution, it is referred to as Kurdistan region. Kurdistan region has all the trappings of an independent state -- its own constitution, its own parliament, its own flag, its own army, its own border, its own border patrol, its own national anthem, its own education system, its own International airports, even its own stamp inked into the passports of visitors.

The full interview, with Mr. Kouznetov can be found here in WMA Media Player .

American's Las Vegas-style casino opens in Iraqi Kurdistan by Russian businessman Vitaly Kouznetzov

Iraq oil city reports 100 new cholera cases a day

Ho****als in Iraq's northern oil hub are reporting up to 100 new cases of cholera a day as the bacterial disease continues to spread across the country, a top medical official said Monday.

Doctor Amir al-Khuzai, the health ministry's pointman in tackling the crisis, said the number of infections in Kirkuk had risen to 2,069 at the weekend from 1,671 earlier in the week.

"This means that we are seeing almost 100 new cases a day in the ho****als of Kirkuk," he told AFP.

Twelve Iraqis are confirmed to have died of cholera since the outbreak was first detected on August 23, but the disease struck in Baghdad last week and a mass awareness campaign has been launched.

The death of a 40-year-old woman in the capital one week ago was the second recorded in September. Nine of the 12 deaths since August were in Sulaimaniyah province in Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region with others in Nineveh and Kirkuk.

Khuzai said that the latest health ministry statistics up to Sunday indicated that a total of 2,839 people had now become infected with the disease.

WHO spokewoman Fadela Chaib told journalists in Geneva last month that the spread of cholera into Baghdad was to be expected because of the intense movement of people and goods between the northern provinces and the capital.

Iraq oil city reports 100 new cholera cases a day - Yahoo! News

Alawi to al-Hashimi: We’ll Support the Iraqi National Agreement Project

Iraqi Vice-President Tariq al-Hashimi held a fast breaking banquet on honor of Dr. Ayad Alawi, former PM and a number of al-Iraqia bloc members followed by talks and discussions on the latest developments in the political field.

In a press conference after the meeting, al-Hashimi stressed that the talks between him and Alawi is going to develop a project through the constitutional process, and he thanked the notes of Dr. Alawi on the Iraqi National Agreement Project.

”We are opened on the opinions and notes or amendments on the project, because it is very important that Iraqis deal on putting an end for this situation where everybody is paying the price”, al-Hashimi added.

On his side, Dr. Ayad Alawi expressed his full support for the National Agreement Project, and he stressed that there is a big similarity between this project and the projects were made by al-Iraqia bloc.

”We will be with and support this project, because we think it goes for the peace and security of Iraq and the whole area”, Alawi added.

PUKmedia :: English - Alawi to al-Hashimi: We’ll Support the Iraqi National Agreement Project

Zebari Worries from Tensions between International Committee and Iran

Iraqi foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari expressed his worry about the tensions between the International Committee and Iran about its nuclear dossier, and said “in the passed few days, we give advice to Iranian that they should take the committee’s announcements seriously, and to deal in honest and transparency with the International Committee, and learned from wrongs of Saddam Hussein about how he deal with the full destruction weapons.”

In an interview with CNN news TV channel, Zebari said that the Iraqis are making every effort to calm down this tension, so it reflects positively on the security in Iraq.

Zebari highlighted the evidences that show the role of Iran and other countries in supporting the terrorists in Iraq, and he mentioned that his country is going to face its neighbors with these evidences in the meeting of the Iraqi neighbors and the 8 group states in Istanbul at November.

PUKmedia :: English - Zebari Worries from Tensions between International Committee and Iran

Oscar Wyatt admits Iraq oil-for-food bribes

A Texas oilman whose playboy son was implicated in the divorce of the Duchess of York has pleaded guilty to paying millions of dollars in bribes to officials in Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Reversing his previous insistence that he was innocent, Oscar Wyatt admitted in a New York court that he paid kickbacks to Iraqi officials to win contracts connected to the United Nations oil-for-food programme.

Wyatt, 83, whose socialite wife is a friend of Lord Lloyd Webber and Sir Elton John, told a judge in Manhattan that he agreed in December 2001 to advise others to pay a surcharge into an Iraqi account in Jordan, violating a UN stipulation banning direct payments to Iraq.

In a plea deal with prosecutors, Wyatt faces between 18 and 24 months in prison, unless the judge decides otherwise when he is sentenced in November.

He must also forfeit $11 million (£5.5 million). “I didn’t want to waste any more time at 83 years old fooling with this operation,” Wyatt said outside court.

“The quicker I get it over with the better.”

A self-made, notoriously gruff billionaire who started out as a crop duster, Wyatt married Lynn Sakowitz, a Texan heiress, whose annual birthday parties in Cap Ferrat became a fixture of the celebrity scene.

Photographs of their son, Steve, on holiday with the Duchess of York in 1992 caused a media furore in Britain and the Yorks announced their separation within weeks.

The UN’s oil-for-food programme, which ran from 1996 to 2003, was created to help Iraqis cope with sanctions imposed after Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait.

Although it allowed the Iraqi government to sell oil in order to buy humanitarian goods, the programme was eventually undermined by corruption as Iraqi officials began demanding illegal surcharges in return for oil contracts.

During the trial, prosecutors showed that Wyatt had such a close relationship with Iraq that he was able to meet personally with Saddam in 1990 to argue for the release of American hostages.

The US government said Wyatt later took advantage of that relationship to secure the first contract under the UN programme and to continue to receive oil deals after other American companies were shut out prior to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Wyatt’s lawyers argued that their client was an American hero who tried to play a peaceful role in resolving conflict between the two countries.

Oscar Wyatt admits Iraq oil-for-food bribes - Telegraph

Biden explains oil in Iraq bill flap

WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 U.S. Sen. Joseph Biden said Iraq's oil strategy and revenue will be managed by the central government in an Iraq federalism amendment that has come under fire.

The Delaware Democrat and candidate for his party's presidential nomination held a conference call with reporters Monday after his amendment, widely approved by the Senate, met opposition from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and the Iraqi government.

The amendment to the 2008 Defense Authorization bill was approved by 75 senators last week. It calls for reaching compromise and reducing violence in Iraq via a decentralized form of government. The provinces and regions would control "police and certain laws, including those related to employment, education, religion and marriage."

The federal government's purview would include national defense and the oil sector. The amendment calls on Iraq to approve "a law providing for the equitable distribution of oil revenues."

Currently, a revenue-sharing law is stuck in the Council of Ministers, which must approve it before the Parliament takes it up. Parliament has been unable to agree on a separate oil law. It sets out the governance of the oil sector as well as the extent foreign/private oil firms are allowed to enter the sector, two issues on which the political factions have been unable to find consensus.

"The revenue law should be part of the oil law," Biden said, and all of the oil decisions "will be a central decision."

Iraq's Sunni Arabs populate land with virtually no known oil reserves. The Kurds, in the north, have more. Oil and natural gas is expected to be found in further exploration of both areas. The Shiite Arabs, Iraq's majority population who dominate the government in Baghdad, control land where most of the oil -- the third-largest reserves in the world -- is located.

Nearly every leader in Iraq's government, including Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the Iraqi ambassador to the United States, have panned Biden's bill. The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad did as well.

The Kurdistan Regional Government, a semi-autonomous region in Iraq, immediately issued support for it.

Biden and co-sponsor Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., also a candidate for his party's presidential nod, have requested a meeting with President Bush to discuss the amendment.

Biden explains oil in Iraq bill flap : World

Iraq foreign minister urges patience with rebuilding

Iraq's foreign minister said that a premature pullout of the U.S.-led multinational security force could send the country and region spiraling into chaos and called a U.S. Senate proposal to divide the country into three regions well-intentioned but a bad idea.

Iraqi Minister of Foreign Affairs Hoshyar Zebari also said Monday that de****e the strife roiling his country, he remains optimistic — even as he said Iraq should not be dragged in to any brewing conflict between the United States and Iran.

"The task facing us is challenging, but I'm confident about the future of my country," Zebari said during a speech at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. "No matter how close we came to the brink, the Iraqi people have risen to the occasion."

Crucial to helping the country maintain a path toward democracy and stability is the 160,000-strong U.S.-led multinational force, Zebari said, even as support for the war is waning among voters in the U.S.

A rapid withdrawal could lead to the collapse of the government, and allow terrorist groups like al-Qaida to set up permanent shop within Iraq, he said.

"If we fail we might have a country torn apart by civil strife," he said. "Terrorists will have safe havens that they will turn into death triangles."

Although he said a multinational force should remain, Zebari said Iraq would eventually like to negotiate a long term bilateral security agreement with the United States similar to other agreements the U.S. has with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt and other countries.

The speech comes ahead of a planned meeting in Istanbul, Turkey, in early November between Iraq and its neighbors where Iraqi officials will press for help in three key areas: security, refugees and energy.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and representatives of Iran, Russia, France, Italy, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are expected to attend the meeting, which Zebari said is another important step in gaining international recognition for the government.

"Iraq is now fully engaged internationally," he said. "Look at what we are aspiring to — a free country, a united federal democracy at peace with its neighbors and with itself. We are not there yet."

The high-level meeting is seen as a follow-up to a May meeting in Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt. At that meeting, Iraq's neighbors pledged to stop sending militants to the country, a promise the United States says those countries have failed to keep.

Zebari's visit also comes on the heels of U.S. Senate proposal calling for a limited centralized Iraqi government with the bulk of the power given to the country's ethnically divided regions.

The proposal has met with harsh criticism from representatives of Iraq's major political parties, saying it would seriously hamper the country's political stability. The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad also criticized the proposal.

The nonbinding resolution adopted by the Senate calls for Iraq to be divided into federal regions under the control of Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis in a power-sharing agreement similar to the one that ended the 1990s war in Bosnia.

Such a plan would be hard to make work in Iraq, Zebari said, given the fact that parts of Iraq have long been mixed, instead of being divided along the country's three major ethnic and religious groups.

"That is not a solution. There is no magical solution," said Zebari, who was born in Iraqi Kurdistan. "This decision should be left for the Iraqi people."

Zebari also urged Iraq's neighbors not to meddle in the country's affairs, especially giving support to insurgents or other destabilizing forces.

But he acknowledged that Iraq has no other option but to learn to live with other countries in the region, de****e tensions and disagreements — including Iran.

"We and Iran are two neighbors and are destined by geography and history to live together," he said. "We need to forge good neighborly relations based on mutual respect."

Zebari also said that with all the challenges facing his country, the last thing it needs is to be dragged into a conflict between Iraq and the United States.

"The message we have been sending out to both (countries) is to keep their differences away from Iraq because we have too much on our plate," he said.

Iraq foreign minister urges patience with rebuilding - International Herald Tribune

PM al-Maliki Stresses the Support for al-Anbar Tribes

Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki received today the head and members of al-Anbar Awakening Conference in his office, and said that the name of Sheikh Sattar Abu Reesha has been recorded in the Iraqi history for handling responsibility and fighting terror.

The PM stressed that the government will continue to support al-Anbar tribes, which has proved its national will by cooperating with the armed forces to disinfect the land of the province.

On his side, the head of al-Anbar Awakening Conference Sheikh Ahmed Abu Reesha said to the PM “you have helped al-Anbar tribes in ****e of some parts rejecting and making stresses on the government”, and he mentioned that al-Anbar tribes will continue to fight al-Qaeda terrorists and disinfect the province from them.

PUKmedia :: English - PM al-Maliki Stresses the Support for al-Anbar Tribes

IRAQ OIL FIELD ASSETS SALE STILL ON

08:50 - 01 October 2007





Iraq's minister of petroleum, Hussein Shahristani, used the Iraq Petroleum 2007 conference staged in Dubai last month to state that his ministry will issue a tender for the development of Iraq's existing fields this year regardless of whether the long-delayed new hydrocarbons bill is further postponed in becoming law or not.

About a third of Iraq's existing fields will be put up for bid, he said, pointing out that further delays would make an already difficult situation worse.



Shahristani said the target was to boost Iraqi oil production to 3million barrels per day in 2008 and 6million bpd within a decade. Current output is put at 2.5million bpd, but is frequently less due to the civil war and insurgency.

HOUSTON and Aberdeen energy investment bank Simmons & Company International has opened an office in Norway with a view to building on its already successful more than 30-year track record of deal-making that side of the North Sea.

The Oslo team is headed by Lars A. Saunes, director, and a Norwegian national.

Money to rebuild is finding ways to flow in provinces of Iraq

This mostly easygoing provincial capital, where the Euphrates River winds around as if it is in no hurry to go farther south, holds the latest sign that political power in Iraq is leaving its historical home in Baghdad for outlying regions. That sign is a local government that knows how to spend money.

Because of security threats and a seemingly immovable bureaucracy, the federal ministries in Baghdad largely failed to spend billions of dollars of Iraqi oil revenues set aside last year to rebuild things like roads, schools, ho****als and power plants.

Although some ministries have improved slightly, what has really caught the eye of Iraqi politicians is the way some local governments have begun bypassing the morass in Baghdad by using hundreds of millions of dollars of the reconstruction money from the government to finance regional projects.

The approach has found such favor among some political leaders that Iraq's deputy prime minister, Barham Salih, arrived here with an all-star cast of senior government officials Sunday to announce that Babil Province, whose capital is Hilla, would be rewarded with $70 million in new money and financing for a major loan program for small businesses and individuals.

Participants at a meeting where that announcement was made said they had seen modest effects of Babil's talent for spending money in the form of new schools, road repairs, small electricity projects and the improving commercial vigor of Hilla, where smoke can be seen rising from brick factories and the streets do not have the deserted feel of many districts in Baghdad, 80 kilometers, or 50 miles, north.

For a province whose entire 2007 capital budget is $112 million, $70 million is a stunning addition. In fact, the rate of spending has some authorities concerned that the push for provincial spending could drive a wave of corruption. They fear it could also unleash new centrifugal forces in a country already on the verge of breaking into a series of semiautonomous regions.

But in Salih's view, the degree of independence exercised by provinces like Babil in local rebuilding is consistent with Iraq's Constitution, which envisions a federal system with substantial powers granted to regions.

Those moves were an indicator of the increasing uselessness of the old Iraqi apparatus of centralized government, Salih said. "This central bureaucracy is broken," he said. "The national ministries have proven incapable of spending their budgets."

To illustrate his frustration, he related the case of a school in Babil that he said had been built with provincial money. But once it was built, the national education ministry proved so dysfunctional it could not furnish it.

As if to punctuate those statements, Iraq's finance minister, Bayan Jabr, who also made the trip, then announced that the portion of the capital budget that goes directly to the 18 provinces would increase to nearly $4 billion next year.

The capital budget for the entire country, including the provinces, was $6 billion in 2006 and $10 billion in 2007. But some national ministries spent as little as 15 percent of their share last year, citing problems like a shortage of employees trained to write contracts, the flight of scientific and engineering expertise from the country and the danger from militias and the insurgency.

There is also the sheer complexity of the Iraqi government bureaucracy, where gaining simple permission to speak with an official can take weeks and there appears to be little practical leverage over employees who collect salaries but do nothing. Some of those problems may be a holdover from a corrupt Baathist apparatus that drew everything out for months or even years so that each bureaucrat could take a cut.

In any case, it was by getting around some of those impediments that Babil was able to progress, said the provincial governor, Saleem al-Mesimawe.

"We jumped over the routine, the bureaucracy," Mesimawe said, "and we depend on new blood, a new team."

Other provinces that have been picking up the pace of spending, Salih said, are Diwaniya and Wasit in the south and Kirkuk in the north, along with Anbar in the west, where Sunni sheiks continue to work with U.S. forces to fight groups linked to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a homegrown militant group that American intelligence has concluded is led by foreigners. Surprisingly, Baghdad, which has its own municipal government and is also formally a province, is "generally among the good performers," Salih said.

Along with praise for the pace of spending in the provinces come concerns that local governments could repeat the mistakes of the centrally controlled reconstruction program that began after the invasion and has never had a widespread impact on improving services in Iraq.

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