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

Wanted Shia leader caught in Iraq

A Shia militia leader accused of forcibly removing Sunnis from their homes north of Baghdad was captured in a raid, while another operation in the same area left 25 people dead, the US military said today.

The commander was detained yesterday after US forces raided Khalis, a Shia enclave of 150,000 people in the volatile Diyala province some 50 miles north of Baghdad.

The man led a group of 20 insurgents that was allegedly responsible for a July attack in which Sunnis were forcibly removed and their homes and farms were destroyed, the military said, adding no one was killed or wounded.

The commander, who was not identified, also was suspected of ambushing a Sunni van driver, shooting him and throwing his body in the Tigris River, the military said.

Another pre-dawn raid yesterday in the same town killed at least 25 people after troops met a fierce barrage while hunting suspected arms smuggling links between Iran and Shia militiamen. The military described those killed in air strikes as fighters, but village leaders said the victims included children and men protecting their homes. Also yesterday, the US military said it was investigating the deaths of three civilians shot by American sentries near an Iraqi-manned checkpoint. Iraqi officials said the victims were US-allied guards and were mistakenly targeted.

ireland.com - Breaking News - Wanted Shia leader caught in Iraq

US commander in Iraq pays first visit to Diyala

Amid ongoing violence in Iraq, top US Commander General David Petraeus paid a visit to Kirkush military camp in
northern Diyala province Saturday, an official security source in the province told local press sources.

According to the independent news agency Voices of Iraq, it was Petraeus' first visit ever to the camp, which lies between the
districts of Baldroz and Mandali and serves as a base for the fifth division of the Iraqi Army and commanders of the multinational
forces.

Details of the visit were not disclosed.

The visit came a day after the US Army said it killed 25 gunmen in an air raid on Jezani al-Imam village north-west of Diyala capital
Baquba, as witnesses and local TV broadcasters insisted that the dead were all civilians.

Separately, the local news agency - citing police sources - reported that a joint Iraqi army-police force arrested 11 gunmen,
including three who belonged to the al-Qaeda network in Iraq, during a raid on an area west of the holy Shiite city of Karbala.

The gunmen were inside a hideout in Aaskari neighbourhood when they were captured. A weapons cache was also discovered during the same operation.

In another act of violence, a group of unknown gunmen killed an Iraqi soldier near Hilla, 100 kilometres south-west of Baghdad, while
two beheaded bodies were found by a police patrol north of the city, a police source said.

One of the bodies belonged to a member of the anti-al-Qaeda Jarf al-Sakhr Awakening Council. According to Voices of Iraq, the corpse of the council member was found on a main road and bore signs of torture. The second body belonged to a college student.

Meanwhile, a civilian and a police officer were killed Saturday in two separate acts of violence in and around the northern province of
Kirkuk, police sources said. Twelve people were wounded.

In one incident, a parked car laden with explosives was detonated as a police patrol passed near a fuel station in the north-eastern
part of Kirkuk, 250 kilometres north of Baghdad, senior police officer Mahmoud Jassem told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

The blast killed a civilian and wounded 11 others, including four policemen.

In another attack, a police officer was killed and a civilian wounded when a group of gunmen opened fire on their vehicle in the
village of Seda village, 50 kilometres west of Kirkuk.

The police officer died immediately, according to Mahmoud al-Obeidy, a local official.

In another development, the two top Shiite groups in Iraq - both members of the ruling coalition known as the United Iraqi Alliance -
signed a pact that should end disputes between them and bring them closer, according to local reports.

The pact, between the Sadr faction loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, comes amid reports that the groups are vying for supremacy among the Shiites and are engaged in a power struggle.

The reports said the two parties agreed to bury the hatchet on Saturday and form a new body to be called the "supreme council" with
branches across Iraq in order to monitor the relations between followers of the two groups and prevent problems and "sedition."

The Raw Story | US commander in Iraq pays first visit to Diyala

Can't remember if already posted.

Iraq Kurds need nod from Baghdad, Turkey for oil exports

Iraq's Kurdish regional administration has signed new oil deals in defiance of Baghdad's wishes but the landlocked region still needs central government approval before it can export any oil.

The semi-autonomous Kurdish administration approved four oil and gas production sharing agreements with international oil companies this week, as it moved ahead with plans to lift output to a million barrels per day (bpd) from just a few thousand bpd in about five years. Iraq's Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani said last week that all deals signed by the Kurdish administration since February were illegal and that crude from the deals could not be exported legally. Iraq's draft oil law gives Baghdad's State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO) the exclusive right to export, he said. The Kurdish administration said its deals were legal and SOMO had no such right in the draft law.

The spat over export rights was of little consequence, as no sovereign government from surrounding countries was likely to strike an import deal with the Kurdish administration without Baghdad's approval, analysts said. "Getting oil and gas out of any landlocked region is always problematic," said Julian Lee, senior energy analyst at London's Centre for Global Energy Studies. "And it is distinctly problematic for the Kurdish region, especially if it is seen as carrying out that policy regardless of Baghdad."

Turkey would be the favored export route, as a pipeline already ex ists from Iraq's northern oilfields to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. But Baghdad holds the export agreement with Ankara, while Turkey is suspicious of the progress of Iraq's Kurdish region. Ankara wants to avoid dealing with the Kurdish region directly for fear of encouraging independence, which in turn could have a destabilizing effect on Turkey, analysts said.

"The major issue is that Kurdistan is still dependent on reaching agreement with the federal government to export its oil," said Alex Munton, analyst at global consultancy Wood Mackenzie. "This is also influenced by foreign policy. The Turkish government is strongly opposed to Kurdistan taking on greater powers of independence. When it comes to bilateral relations, it deals with Baghdad and not Arbil."

Iran and Syria may be less resistant than Turkey to doing a deal with the Kurdish administration, which is based in the city of Arbil, but they too have Kurdish minorities and would be unlikely to sidestep Baghdad, Lee said.

Already a problem

The Kurdish administration agreed four new oil deals this week, taking the total number of production sharing agreements its holds to 10. It plans to contract out all of its oil and gas exploration blocks by the end of the year. Its target of 1 million bpd would be well above Kurdish consumption and the region plans to export most of its future oil output.

Swiss-based Addax Petroleum is preparing to submit a $1 billion oilfield development plan to the Kurdish administration that could bring 200,000 bpd from the Taq Taq field. But the blueprint requires access to an export route.

The passing of the oil law was expected to eventually lead to an agreement on the export route for Kurdish oil, or at least establish the framework for a deal, analysts and industry sources said. Iraq's cabinet agreed a draft law for dividing the world's third-largest oil reserves in February. But rows with the Kurdish administration and objections from some Shiite and Sunni Arab politicians have delayed it.

The Kurdish administration was considering a privately financed, 1 million bpd pipeline from the Kirkuk oilfield north to link up with the Ceyhan line, industry sources said. This project too, would depend on the oil law and the approval of Baghdad, which has itself considered this route in the past. The line north would allow exports from Kirkuk to bypass the section of the Ceyhan pipeline that dips south towards Baiji and is the frequent target of sabotage attacks that have rendered it mostly unusable since the US-led invasion in March 2003.

TODAY'S ZAMAN

Syria Is Said to Be Strengthening Ties to Opponents of Iraq’s Government

Syria is encouraging Sunni Arab insurgent groups and former Iraqi Baathists with ties to the leaders of Saddam Hussein’s government to organize here, diplomats and Syrian political analysts say. By building strong ties to those groups, they say, Syria hopes to gain influence in Iraq before what it sees as the inevitable waning of the American presence there.

“The Syrians feel American power is much weaker in Iraq than in the past,” said Ibrahim Hamidi, the Damascus bureau chief of the pan-Arab daily newspaper Al Hayat. “Now they can take a bold public initiative like helping Iraq’s opposition organize without much fear, especially since President Bush has become a lame duck.”

In July, former Baathists opposed to the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki scheduled a conference for insurgent groups — including two of the most prominent, the 1920s Revolution Brigades and Ansar al Sunna — at the Sahara Resort outside Damascus.

The meeting followed two others in Syria in January that aimed to form an opposition front to the government of Iraq, and an announcement in Damascus in July of the formation of a coalition of seven Sunni Arab insurgent groups with the goal of coordinating and intensifying attacks in Iraq to force an American withdrawal. That coalition has since expanded to incorporate other groups.

The July conference was canceled at the last minute, however, indicating the political perils of Syria’s developing strategy. It was called off by the government of President Bashar al-Assad, participants, diplomats and analysts said, primarily because of pressure from Iran.

Iran is Syria’s chief ally and a staunch supporter of Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government. The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, visited Damascus just days before the conference was to have taken place.

Still, hundreds turned up for the event, including Harith al-Dari, the leader of the Association of Muslim Scholars, a major Sunni opposition group, and other high-profile figures wanted by the Iraqi government. Several said they hoped to reschedule the conference in Syria in the near future.

“The American project in Iraq is collapsing, and we decided it was important to reach out to fellow Iraqis now,” said Nizar Samari, the spokesman for the conference and a former media director for Mr. Hussein.

Syria, which the United States accuses of channeling Islamic militants into Iraq, denies any role in organizing groups opposed to the Iraqi government. Analysts and diplomats, however, said they strongly doubted that the groups could operate in Syria, a police state, without the approval of the government.

Western diplomats and political commentators differed on the extent of influence Damascus could ultimately wield over the opposition groups. But they agreed that Syria had been using them to show the United States and Iran, often described as the big brother in its longstanding alliance with Damascus, that it had the capacity to play a major role in Iraq’s future.

“Iran is the big player in Iraq,” said Mr. Hamidi, of Al Hayat, “but it lacks influence on the Baathists and the Sunnis.”

That would seem to create a natural opening for Syria, a predominantly Sunni country governed by its own version of the Baath Party. But its relations with the Iraqi Baathists have long been strained. Syria backed Iran in its war with Iraq in the 1980s and supported the United States against Mr. Hussein during the Persian Gulf war of 1991.

So Syria is walking a fine line, forging an “enemy of my enemy” relationship with the Iraqi Baathists and insurgents while still maintaining an alliance with Tehran. It is a risky strategy that carries the added danger of possibly incurring the wrath of Al Qaeda.

“The conference brought together those people with a stake in Iraq and some of those who have not allied with America’s biggest foe, Al Qaeda,” said one political commentator, who asked not to be identified out of concern for his safety, referring to the canceled July conference. “This was a risky move by Syria, because it could draw attacks.”

After the United States-led invasion of Iraq, which Damascus strongly opposed, Syria became a haven for a number of high-ranking Baathists from Mr. Hussein’s government, many of whom were wanted by the American military. Syrian political analysts say they brought with them millions of dollars stolen from Iraq and were given refuge on condition that they kept a low profile because Syria feared reprisals from American forces in Iraq.

The Iraqi government has in the past accused Damascus of harboring Iraqis who are aiding the insurgency. And Syria makes no secret of its sympathy for the insurgents.

“Syria looks to the resistance as freedom fighters, like George Washington fighting the British,” said Mahdi Dahlala, a former Syrian minister of information. “We understand that the rising up against occupation is a natural phenomenon.”

Syrian authorities have on occasion turned over wanted Iraqis when they wished to placate Washington or Baghdad. In 2005, Mr. Hussein’s half brother Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan, who was No. 36 of the 55 Iraqis most wanted by the United States military, and 29 other former Baathist officials hiding in Syria were handed over to the Iraqi government on suspicion of aiding the insurgency.

But during his visit to Syria in August, Prime Minister Maliki urged President Assad, to no avail, to hand over more wanted Iraqis widely believed to be hiding in Syria.

“Syria is not going hand over any Iraqis to the Iraqi government unless they produce evidence of wrongdoing,” Mr. Dahlala said.

Officials in the Bush administration say that Syria has had a mixed record recently, taking some steps that American officials see as helpful in Iraq and others that show that Damascus is seeking to build its own influence there.

In an interview, a senior Defense Department official praised Damascus for canceling the opposition conference and noted that the Syrians had cracked down to a degree on Islamic militants operating near the border with Iraq, a move long sought by Washington.

An intelligence assessment released in August in Washington said that the Syrian government had gone after Islamic smuggling networks. But it did so not out of a desire to help the United States, the report said, but because it feared the groups presented a threat to the Syrian government.

The report also criticized the Syrians for funneling money to Sunni insurgent groups inside Iraq “in a bid to increase Syrian influence.”

Syria has long had a regional strategy of influencing its neighbors’ politics by harboring their opposition groups. Washington imposed economic sanctions on Syria in 2004 for, among other things, its support of Hamas and several other militant Palestinian groups.

Suspected of orchestrating the 2005 assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, Syria has also come under increasing pressure from the United States and France for its support of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia.

Thabet Salem, a Syrian political commentator, said Syria was also exploiting a rift between two former Iraqi Baath Party leaders, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a former vice president under Mr. Hussein, and Muhammad Younis al-Ahmed, who is believed to be living in Syria.
The two men, accused by Washington and Baghdad of leading and financing terrorist operations in Iraq, have multimillion-dollar bounties on their heads.

“Younis al-Ahmed is trying to go under the umbrella of the Syrians as a way to unite the Baathists,” Mr. Salem said. “And the Syrians quietly support him, because they could have more control over their actions.”

In January, Mr. Ahmed held a conference in the northern Syrian city of Homs to try to revive the Iraqi Baath Party. Some Syrians speculated that he wanted to take a more conciliatory stance with the Iraqi government and the United States. His rival, Mr. Douri, who is suspected of having stronger ties with insurgent groups, rejected the conference.

“Douri deeply distrusts working with the Syrians because he distrusts the Iranians, who are strong allies with Syria,” Mr. Salem said.

Mr. Ahmed is believed to be garnering increasing support in Syria from former Iraqi Baathists, at the expense of Mr. Douri and other rivals, by offering cash incentives and Syrian residency permits. Loyalty to his leadership is said to be particularly strong among the poorer, Sunni Arab, segments of Syria’s two million Iraqi refugees.

“Syria could gain tremendous influence in Iraq if it could get control over the Iraqi Baathists,” Mr. Salem said. “It has much more in common, ideologically speaking, with them than it does with the Islamists in Hamas.”

A spokesman for Mr. Douri’s wing of former Baathists living in Syria, who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Muhammad, condemned Mr. Ahmed and denied suggestions that former Baathists were turning away from Mr. Douri or considering negotiating with Washington.

“We want every American soldier out of Iraq, and we won’t stop fighting until that happens,” Mr. Muhammad said.

Syria Is Said to Be Strengthening Ties to Opponents of Iraq’s Government - New York Times

The Plot Thickens.

Iraqi government to sue former head of CPI

The Iraqi government said it will file a lawsuit against the former head of the Commission on Public Integrity (CPI), Radi al-Radi, for allegedly smuggling official documents and defaming Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

"Al-Radi's testimony before U.S. congressmen is no more than a false allegation serving well-known figures and bodies, which are launching an organized campaign that aims to damage the reputation of the prime minister," an Iraqi cabinet statement received by the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI) said on Saturday in response to a testimony given by al-Radi before the U.S. Congress.

In his speech before Congress, al-Radi claimed that rampant administrative corruption in Iraq has reached al-Maliki's government and reported an $18 billion loss as a result of corruption, citing CPI figures.

Al-Radi accused al-Maliki of exempting some of his relatives, who were allegedly involved in corruption cases, from legal questioning.
"Al-Radi left Iraq without the approval of the prime minister in accordance with administrative practice in force," the statement indicated.

"He submitted a written request for retirement to the premier and then announced upon his arrival in the United States that he was on a training mission with a number of CPI employees to use lie detectors. He said he would return to Iraq after the mission was accomplished," it added.

Al-Maliki said last month that al-Radi had fled to the States and asked U.S. authorities for political asylum after entering the States with a diplomatic visa.

"Al-Radi's escape was intended to avoid a parliamentary vote on his dismissal," the statement said, adding "Members of parliaments were unconvinced of al-Radi's responses with regards to charges of financial and administrative corruption and the vote on his dismissal was postponed until after summer recess."

Media source quoted al-Radi as accusing al-Maliki of hindering the commission's work by preventing it from pursuing former and current ministers involved in corruption cases without his prior approval.

"Blocking interrogation with state ministers or employees is not in the capacity of the prime minister or the concerned minister. The court is authorized to issue an arrest warrant against any employee without a prior approval from any administrative body," the statement explained.

http://www.aswataliraq.info/look/eng...=2&NrSection=1

Government allocates $25 million for Iraqi refugees abroad

The government has earmarked $25 million for the millions of Iraqi refugees fleeing ongoing U.S. military operations and violence at home to Syria and Jordan.

$15 million will go to Syria where nearly 1.5 million Iraqis are seeking refuge. Jordan will get $8 million and Lebanon $2 million.

The exodus of Iraqis to Syria and Jordan is reported to have strapped the countries’ meager resources, strained their public utilities and caused steep prices hikes as well as shortages of some basic commodities.

The Syrian Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Abdullah Al-Durdi says the presence of the huge numbers of Iraqis costs his country $1.6 billion a year.

As the numbers of Iraqis fleeing their country surges, the occupying powers, mainly the U.S. and Britain, have shown no concern or moral responsibility towards their plight.

U.S. and British invasion of Iraq and the two countries’ inability to reinstate law and order is the main reason sparking the massive movement of Iraqi people.

It is estimated that more than 2 million Iraqis have fled since the 2003 invasion and at least as many have become internally displaced people, or refugees in their own country.

Azzaman in English

sittings resume today

The House discusses Arab Convention for the Suppression of Terrorism
Baghdad-Sabah

Parliament resumes sittings today after meeting yesterday for the first reading of the draft law transfers allocations within the Ministry of Interior and the second reading of the bill High Commission for Human Rights and the completion of the second reading of the draft Law on the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.


The agenda of the 14th meeting yesterday readings of some bills and discussion of the bill Arab Convention for the Suppression of Terrorism.

He informed President Sheikh Khalid Al-Attiyah meeting members of the Council proposal to allocate day in the working week for a vote on the draft laws proposed and will be transmitted to members of the Committee on Parliamentary and development to study it.
The MP condemned Jinan Abdul Jabbar murders of women in the city of Basra demand the government take action to stop those murders. The Board completed yesterday the first reading of the draft legal Iraq's accession to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol and the draft law on ratification of the revised International Health Regulations.

After the second reading of the bill Arab Convention for the Suppression of Terrorism and edit Council members discussed this law.

It also completed the second reading of the draft law the First Amendment to the Central Bank of Iraq Law No. 56 of 2004 issued by the Coalition Provisional Authority.
The members of the Council's discussions focused on the conditions and criteria for selection of the Iraqi Central Bank governor and his two deputies by the Council of Ministers or the proposal of the governor and the House approval to the appointment of the governor and his two deputies and the need to enact a new law by the Central Bank of Iraq as an independent body.

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

I honestly cannot read these boring articles that get copied and pasted, so all i want to know is do they have anything to do with the dinar RVing?

You really don't have to read these articles if they bore you. Of course they have everything to do with the economy improving therefore your dinar value should improve in time.

The bottom line - what is quite clear from these articles is that no sudden improvement in exchange rate will happen this year. The dinar is slowly becoming stronger and should continue to do so.

If you are losing patience or cannot figure out from the articles where this is leading then start posting and asking questions.

You arvie, who has spent a long time moaning about members hyping the 'rv' are now moaning about the news articles. Read and learn - I think it is pretty clear where all this is going - and riches over night is not in the plan as far as I can make out right now.

The pair of you - either start working it out from what you are reading, quit moaning and start contributing.

Iraqi Kurdish leader defends oil deals

Iraq's Kurdish regional government on Sunday defended its adoption of an energy law and the clinching of global deals, saying the moves were aimed at making oil "work for the people of Iraq."

"This is not an attempt to usurp the nation's oil resources, but rather our best effort to move the process forward," said Kurdish premier Nechirvan Barzani in an opinion piece written for the Wall Street Journal and posted on the regional government's website.

"(We are) leading by example... to make these valuable resources work for the people of Iraq. The resources that can ease the suffering of the people of Iraq lie beneath our feet," Barzani said.

He said the Kurdistan Regional Government had signed eight production-sharing contracts with international oil and gas companies since it passed an oil law in August, and another two were in the pipeline.

Iraqi officials have criticised the deals, saying the Kurds should have waited for the passage through parliament of a national hydrocarbons law.

Barzani said his government was "deeply disappointed by the negative reaction."

"In the last several months it has become clear to us that many in the Iraqi oil ministry are locked in a time warp dating back to the regime of Saddam Hussein, in which Baghdad holds tight control of all the resources of Iraq and uses these resources to create obeisance and loyalty to the centre," he said.

"The KRG production sharing contracts are fully consistent with the Iraqi constitution, which gives the regions of Iraq substantial control over natural resources," he said.

"The contracts are also fully consistent with the draft Iraqi oil law that was agreed to this March," he added.

The bill opens up the long state-dominated oil and gas sector to foreign investment and provides assurances that receipts will be shared equally between Iraq's 18 provinces, a measure Washington regards as key to efforts to reconcile the country's divided communities.

The draft law was approved by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's national unity cabinet in July but faces a tough passage in the 275-seat parliament, where the Kurdish bloc has 53 seats.

The bill is expected to come before MPs this month.

Barzani pointed out that under the regional law, as is the case under the national legislation, 87 percent of oil revenues go into the national coffers with regional governments only keeping 13 percent.

"If we had intended to 'go it alone,' why would we ever consider passing a law which requires us to give 83 percent of the revenues to the rest of Iraq?" he asked.

"We waited five months for the Iraqi Assembly to pass the agreed draft -- they have not acted, and there is no sign that they will act anytime soon.

"In 2003, we chose voluntarily and openly to remain part of Iraq, and we will continue to do so," Barzani said.

"But does this mean that we have to be held back by the chaos and bloodshed that dominate the rest of the country? Must we sit idly by, waiting for Iraqi politicians to waste months debating oil legislation that has already been agreed upon by the major parties?"

Barzani said that in the past oil in the Kurdistan region "has been more of a curse than a blessing."

"Successive governments in Iraq have deliberately left our oil in the ground in an effort to keep our people poor and to deny our aspirations for a better way of life," he said.

"Now, after so much suffering, we have a chance to turn this curse into a blessing. And we are asked to wait while the Iraqi parliament takes its vacation, and then considers new ways to manage our resources."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071007...hHMNIAahUPLBIF