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

Congress, State Department in Conflict Over Iraqi Corruption
A key Democratic lawmaker says the State Department risks an escalating confrontation with his committee over the issue of U.S. government assessments of Iraqi anti-corruption efforts. VOA's Dan Robinson reports, the warning came during a hearing in which a former anti-corruption judge said rampant corruption is blocking progress in Iraq.

In his first appearance before U.S. lawmakers, Judge Radhi Hamza al-Radhi described corruption as rampant, affecting virtually every government ministry, and involving some of the most powerful officials in Iraq.

He estimates this has cost Iraq as much as $18 billion, contributing to sectarian militias, hampering political reconciliation, and infecting Iraq's oil industry.

"On economic reconstruction, on basic services, amenities and infrastructure and the rule of law," said Radhi Hamza al-Radhi. "Corruption has contributed to the failure of the Iraqi government to control the militias that control parts of the government in fact."

Radhi himself has been accused of corruption by an Iraqi parliamentary committee. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki recently replaced him, asserting that Radhi fled Iraq to avoid corruption charges.

Radhi says he has been in the United States on a diplomatic visa under the auspices of the U.S. Justice Department, but is seeking U.S. citizenship for himself and his family, with support from Congressman Henry Waxman and two other Democratic committee chairmen.

While stopping short of accusing Prime Minister Maliki of being personally corrupt, in this exchange with Congressman Waxman, Radhi repeated allegations the Iraqi leader has interfered with anti-corruption cases.

TRANSLATOR : I cannot say that someone is engaged in something unless I have evidence and proof, however, Maliki has protected some of his relatives that were involved in corruption endeavors.

WAXMAN: And he has allowed other ministers to protect their employees from any investigation?

RADHI-TRANSLATOR: Yes, and for that reason the Council of Ministers, the Prime Minister, has closed cases related to 100-billion Iraqi dinars, and in Iraqi currency such an amount is not a small amount.

Congressman Waxman has led efforts in the U.S. Congress to determine how billions of dollars in U.S. and Iraqi government funds have been spent since the ouster of Saddam Hussein.

He accuses the Bush administration of trying to cover up details of Iraqi government corruption, and raises broader questions about the impact on U.S. efforts in Iraq.

"The Maliki government is our ally in Iraq, but we need to ask, is the Maliki government too corrupt to succeed," said Congressman Waxman. "And if the Maliki government is corrupt, we need to ask whether we could in good conscience continue to sacrifice our blood and tax dollars to prop up his regime."

The State Department has refused to provide documents to the committee, including a now classified U.S. Embassy document sharply critical of Iraqi government anti-corruption efforts.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Larry Butler pointed to bilateral diplomatic sensitivities and national security concerns in refusing to discuss specifics in a public hearing.

"Mr. chairman, questions which go to the broad nature of our bilateral relationship with Iraq are best answered in a classified setting," said Larry Butler.

An angry Congressman Waxman warned that the State Department risks new confrontation with his committee on the issue, calling refusals to provide testimony in public hearings, even on broad questions about Iraqi anti-corruption performance and commitment, unacceptable.

During Thursday's hearing, Stuart Bowen, Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, spoke of a rising tide of corruption in Iraq.

"We did not bring corruption to Iraq and it will not be gone whenever we leave, but it is an issue that can fundamentally undermine our efforts to build a democracy, a fledgling democracy," said Bowen.

Ranking panel Republican Tom Davis said it is not enough to point out Iraq's culture of corruption.

"Good government and democrats in Iraq don't need to be lectured by this committee on the extent of corruption in their country," said Congressman Davis. "They need our help in building the structures, policies and processes to fight it."

Some committee Republicans questioned Radhi's qualifications and background. But panel Democrats responded by pointing to Radhi's record, and death threats against him and family members, also noting that he had been tortured under Saddam Hussein.

VOA News - Congress, State Department in Conflict Over Iraqi Corruption

State Overhauls Security in Iraq

An internal State Department review ordered by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recommends overhauling U.S. diplomatic security practices in Iraq because of the Blackwater USA shooting incident that killed Iraqis, a senior U.S. official said Friday.

Rice has ordered that the recommendations be follow, including requiring U.S. diplomatic security agents to accompany Blackwater-escorted convoys in Baghdad, said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

The government security service also will bolster the monitoring of private security escorts, installing video cameras in cars and recording radio traffic between convoys and the U.S. embassy.

News from The Associated Press

Iraqi Official Says Iran Has Escalated Involvement in Iraq

Iran has significantly escalated its involvement in Iraq, "raising the heat" by supplying more sophisticated weaponry that is used against U.S. targets and undermining progress made by the current U.S. troop increase, Iraqi National Security Adviser Mowaffak al Rubaie said today.

The number of detained Iranian agents and intercepted Iranian arms shipments this year represents only the "tip of the iceberg" of Tehran's activity in Iraq, Rubaie told editors and reporters at the Post. "What we have arrested is a peanut," he said. Iran's meddling has increased particularly since the U.S. and Iran reached a stalemate after tense talks in Baghdad in August, he said.

Rubaie's remarks came as U.S. forces killed at least 25 Shiite militants in an operation that targeted a cell suspected of smuggling arms from Iran. The air strike was aimed at the commander of a militia linked to Iran's Quds Force, which is accused of conducting clandestine military operations in Iraq.

Iran has repeatedly denied meddling in Iraq, and even some U.S. officials have questioned whether the activities of the elite Quds Force are specifically authorized by Tehran's top policy makers. But Rubaie asserted that Iran's top officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have approved of Iran's current strategy.

"There is one policy in Iran and others execute that policy, and that's done through the National Security Council. And its chairman is the Supreme Leader," said Rubaie, a Shiite Muslim who has had close ties with Iran in the past.

Rubaie said Iran's war supplies to militants include upgrades from RPG-7s, a shoulder-fired, rocket-propelled grenade first used by the Soviet Union in the 1960s, to the much more deadly RPG-29, a larger, new generation anti-tank weapon with warheads capable of penetrating American tank armor.

Iran also has provided militants with 240 mm missiles that can hit targets 25 to 30 miles away, the longest range missile now used against U.S. troops in Iraq. Several have been fired in recent months at the fortified Green Zone where U.S. and international officials are headquartered. Iran also has provided Iraqi militants with more advanced surface-to-air missiles, Rubaie said.

Iran is now "everywhere" in Iraq--politically, economically, socially, culturally and in support of militants and insurgents, Rubaie said, adding that he also could not rule out Iran's infiltration of Iraq's fledgling intelligence agencies.

Rubaie also had tough words for Saudi Arabia, claiming it had done nothing--"a big fat zero, zilch"-- in fostering the so-called Sunni "awakening" in Anbar province, where tribal sheikhs have begun turning against al Qaeda. The neighboring kingdom also has not done enough to foster the political reconciliation of Iraq's minority Sunnis.

"Saudi Arabia's role in the political progress has been negative. They're not helping," he said.

Rubaie, who has served in all of Iraq's governments since the 2003 invasion, predicted that the next few months are going to be particularly difficult. The more pressure the United States applies on Iran--at the United Nations and with punitive sanctions--because of Tehran's controversial nuclear program, the more tensions are likely to play out in Iraq, he told editors and reporters at the Post.

"Iran will have no choice," Rubaie said. "We are going to pay a heavy price for the escalation between Iran and the United States."

Rubaie said a resumption of a more meaningful U.S.-Iran dialogue is critical to stabilize Iraq. "The U.S. government needs to have serious engagement with Iran, not about wishy-washy things, not just to keep them busy," he said. Both Washington and Baghdad need to develop a carrot-and-stick approach that makes Iran "feel the pain" and "pay a heavy price" for its intervention in Iraq while addressing Iran's security and economic concerns.

The third and last meeting between U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Iranian Ambassador Hassan Kazemi Qomi on Aug. 6 was particularly difficult, Rubaie said. "They were both reading from scripts," he said.

Although both Washington and Tehran have left the door open to further talks, the first public bilateral diplomacy is for the moment moribund, he added. "We believe that when they stopped engagement in the beginning of August, that's when [Iran] upgraded the arms," he said.

Iraq is not willing to confront Iran militarily, Rubaie said. At a Nixon Center conference yesterday, he also said there should be "absolutely no--bit fat no, N-O--bombing of Iran" by the United States.

The U.S. military, along with Iraqi forces, should move gradually with a plan this year to set up about six more joint security stations inside Baghdad's large Shiite district of Sadr City, where many Iranian-controlled "special cells" of the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al Sadr are believed to have taken refuge, he said.

On the sensitive issue of the tens of thousands of Sunni fighters who have volunteered to join local police forces, Rubaie charged that the U.S. military was effectively arming former Sunni insurgents by paying them, and expressed concern that the fighters were more loyal to the U.S. military than to the Iraqi government.

"The Iraqi government needs to have the opportunity to win them first and their allegiance" as well as to command those local forces, he said.

Tension has flared in recent days as Iraqi political leaders have demanded that the U.S. military halt its recruitment of the volunteers, considered by top U.S. commanders to be the most promising development for security in Iraq in the past six months. Although the Iraqi government has hired many of the volunteers as police in the western province of Anbar, which is 95 percent Sunni, it has proven far more reluctant to endorse the Sunni fighters in mixed sectarian provinces such as Diyala, which lies between Baghdad and Iran.

A senior U.S. commander who oversees Diyala said some local Sunni volunteers have quit in frustration at delays in the government's willingness to hire them as police.

"They stood up to fight against Al Qeada. They have been in a tough fight here, shedding blood with their comrades against this despicable enemy, and they have not been compensated for that. They are looking for recognition, and they have not seen it yet," Brig. Gen. John Bednarak, deputy commander, Multinational Division North, said in an interview Thursday.

Bednarak said more than 3,000 primarily Sunni volunteers -- including tribal members and former insurgents -- have been vetted, but none has been hired by the Ministry of Interior. Instead, the U.S. military is putting them on temporary 90-day contracts under which they earn less than $300 a month.

Diyala is authorized to have 13,000 police and has requested an increase to 21,000 because of ongoing violence, but the Ministry of Interior has "held up on that for several months," said Bednarak.

"They are worried . . . that we are arming civilians that would rise up" against existing security forces. "I don't see that happening," he said.

Bednarak said it is essential to "get through this current roadblock so we can continue with additional personnel" to maintain control in Diyala towns and villages that the U.S. military and Iraqi forces have cleared in recent months. "The threat is still very real," he said.

Iraqi Official Says Iran Has Escalated Involvement in Iraq - washingtonpost.com

3.Title: Iraq: Letter of Intent, Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies, and Technical Memorandum of Understanding, July 17, 2007
Date: July 17, 2007 Type: PDF Size: 219KB

This link takes you to IMF websight. Supposedly it runs for 90 days which brings it to Oct. 15, 2007 I believe.

Ice

Thanks Icemann 30

Oversight in Iraq Projects Has Proven Difficult

President Bush has directed the State Department to establish provincial teams across Iraq with the aim of answering concerns over a raft of ill-conceived projects, bureaucratic confusion, and lack of oversight in the country's reconstruction.

Tom Timberman, who heads one of the reconstruction teams, is based 40 miles south of Baghdad, where the State Department has set up a sort of "mini Green Zone" — a large, heavily fortified regional embassy that houses foreign service officers charged with overseeing development in the key regions of Babil, Najaf and Karbala.

Timberman said the operation has been hobbled by insufficient staffing and travel restrictions.

"Some of [the officers] have not been able to visit their provinces since sometime last year," he said. "[It's] key because if you can't move around and visit places in your province, then you're not going to be terribly effective."

At 66, Timberman came out of retirement to work here. He has years of development experience, but he says the foreign service is simply too small to produce enough people with the necessary skills.

He cites other problems — a lack of overall planning, and, more importantly, the state department's relationship with the U.S. military has not been spelled out. Instead of pooling their resources, the two have often worked at crossed purposes.

Timberman said the State Department teams working out of the provincial capital, Hillah, were grounded most of the time because the State Department regional security officer would not permit them to travel de****e their high-priced security personnel and armored vehicles.
"His standard is to keep as many people alive and unharmed as possible. Unfortunately, if that becomes your total objective, then getting out becomes somewhere down at the bottom of the priority list," he said.

Lt. Col. Tom Roth, also based in the area, said he is on standby to help but has been repeatedly frustrated by the State Department security officer, known as the RSO, who will not allow his teams — known as PRTs — to travel with the military.

"I was always right here," Roth said. "I can take them anywhere."
"There were many times … the PRT would [not] … give me permission, and I'd say 'You got to be kidding me,' " he added.

Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. ambassador Ryan Crocker have now agreed that State Department officials can travel with the military. In the meantime, however, Roth says development has been conducted by remote control.

"Security in a vacuum is no security at all, if you are just maintaining the conditions that created the problems in the first place," Roth said.

Gen. Edward Cardon said an obvious missed opportunity is an airport in Najaf that could be providing jobs and economic growth.

"After four years, we are still not landing airplanes at the Najaf airport. I think there is now recognition that perhaps we can do something faster," he said.

With the help of military convoys, State Department officials are now finally meeting face-to-face with local leaders to sort out these kinds of projects. But the governor of Karbala complained that progress is still slow.

He said his most recent meeting with the State Department Reconstruction team produced nothing concrete.

Cardon, however, does see progress. He has seen the greatest success among civilian development teams embedded directly with military brigades.

"We would have done a lot better if [we'd put the] right experts early on into these brigades and allowed them to work in a coordinated fashion."
Timberman agreed, saying embedded reconstruction teams are key. He said the State Department's late arrival has cost local communities important training and preparation.

Timberman has signed up for another year, saying he is just now hitting his stride and the State Department is finally on the right track. Still, he worries that it could be too late to do what is necessary.

NPR : Oversight in Iraq Projects Has Proven Difficult

Iraq official says "big fat no" to attack on Iran

Iraq's national security adviser said on Friday he strongly opposed any military attack on Iran and, in contrast to the Bush administration's policy, said the option should not even be considered.

"Attacking Iran? I say a big fat no. It's a fatal mistake," Mowaffak al-Rubaie said. "It should never be an option at all."

The United States accuses Iran of using its nuclear program to develop atomic weapons and of funding, training and equipping militia groups that attack U.S. troops in Iraq. Tehran denies both charges.

President George W. Bush has said repeatedly that he is committed to diplomacy to resolve the dispute over Iran's nuclear program but all options remain on the table.

The United States has also said it will aggressively target Iranian agents fomenting violence inside Iraq, but so far U.S. officials have said they see no need for military action inside Iran to disrupt support networks.

Rubaie said any attack on Iran would set the whole Middle East ablaze and Iraq would suffer most.

"It is not a strategy. It's a mistake of Chernobyl magnitude," he said, referring to the 1986 nuclear disaster in the former Soviet Union.

"The whole area will be in flames, and Iraq will be the battlefield for all this, and we will pay heavily," Rubaie said at an event in Washington hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.

"What we need from the United States government is to engage seriously with Iran," he said.

U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker has held several meetings with his Iranian counterpart over Tehran's role in Iraq, but Crocker said last month that the talks had yielded little.

Rubaie suggested the United States should engage in a broader dialogue with Iran to see what Tehran would be prepared to accept in return for acceding to U.S. demands.

"We need to discuss these issues seriously and we need to unify our position and coordinate our position -- we, the government of Iraq, with the United States government," he said.

http://ca.today.reuters.com/news/new...archived=False

Kurdistan Region Presidency Invites Iraqi Parties to Discuss the Federalism for Iraq

The Kurdistan Region Presidency invited the Iraqi political parties and sides for holding a wide conference for discussing the federalism system for Iraq during a statement today.

“We invite representatives of all the Iraqi parties to a general conference in Erbil, the capital city of Kurdistan region, for discussing all those issues which are related to ways of establishing a federalism system in Iraq.” the statement quoted as saying.

The statement, meanwhile, criticizes those voices that reject the decision of the US congress for dividing Iraq into three federal states.

The statement did not set a certain date for holding the conference.

PUKmedia :: English - Kurdistan Region Presidency Invites Iraqi Parties to Discuss the Federalism for Iraq

Iraq Security Head: Oil Law blues a Deal

Iraq's national security adviser says a deal is "very close" on a federal oil law -- one where "everybody goes home partly unhappy."

Mowaffak al-Rubaie was largely optimistic Friday in a speech during a Washington visit, including on plans to protect and bolster the crucial energy sector.

The most prominent part of this has been a national oil law. It's stalled in Parliament over concerns private and foreign companies will be allowed too much access to the currently nationalized oil sector and a larger debate over how much control the federal, regional and provincial powers will have.

"I wouldn't like to say the hydrocarbons law only needs to cross the t's and dot the i's," Rubaie said at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, a Washington think tank. "We've been saying this for long. But I'll tell you what: There is a huge pressure from everywhere, inside and outside the country."

The U.S. government has pushed the Iraqi government on passing the controversial law both publicly and behind closed doors. It is billed as a way toward reconciliation, since sales from the world's third-largest reserves last year brought in 93 percent of the federal budget.

"We need to apply more pressure, on everyone, to agree on a compromise hydrocarbons law whereby all parties go home partly unhappy," Rubaie added. "That's the best compromise I think, whereby everybody goes home partly unhappy. And that compromise, I think we are very close to that. We need some tweaking on that."

He said the debate is more a constitutional one than political. The Kurdistan Regional Government interprets the constitution whereby federalism is decentralized. Many more nationalist blocs in government want the central government to set oil policies.

This week the KRG signed two more oil deals on their own with foreign firms. These and many others it has signed are considered illegal by Baghdad.

http://www6.lexisnexis.com/publisher...572557&start=5

Oil security improves, Iraq chief predicts

Security of the oil infrastructure in Iraq is to be less of a priority than the economic factors, Iraq's national security adviser predicts.

"Probably the last two years, one and a half years, we were talking about security, security, security," Mowaffak al-Rubaie said Friday at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, a Washington think tank.

Rubaie, in a mostly optimistic speech and answers to reporters' questions, said the trend in Iraq is that the security situation is improving, along with help and partnership with the United States.

"If we can sustain this level of security until the end of the year, I can tell you next year is going to be about services, services, services. Economy, economy, economy," he said. "And then security."

Iraq's vast oil and natural gas reserves have been hit hard by decades of misuse by Saddam Hussein, stunted by U.N. sanctions, and have survived thus far in the post-invasion war zone. While they need tens of billions of dollars in investment, the hydrocarbons and electricity sectors need a break from the regular attacks that are keeping out investment and hurting repairs.

"We're going to have more capital investment for next year in 2008 in the oil sector," Rubaie said. Iraq has been unable to turn capital allocations into expenditures, another setback.

He said he met with U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman while in Washington this week, and from the meeting produced a list of small "quick fix projects Â… to try to increase the number of barrels every day we get out."

"Protection of the pipelines and the infrastructure, gas as well as oil pipelines, as well as the power lines, these are issues we prioritize for next year," he said.

Iraq currently produces about 2 million bpd, though its reserves could handle much more. A five-year strategic plan has Iraq producing more than 6 million bpd.

http://www6.lexisnexis.com/publisher...572563&start=4