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

Prime minister receives number of American congressmen

Prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, stressed that the government gets the priority for security file delivery and rebuilding the armed forces and activate the national reconciliation and the development of the political process are to accelerate the reduction of the multinational forces, the Prime Minister added during his meeting yesterday, with a number of Congressmen that the success of democracy in Iraq is the biggest blow the dictatorship.

On the same level President Jalal Talabani declared yesterday, Sunday, in press statements that the American army can withdraw a large part of its troops stationed in Iraq by the end of 2008.

Iraqi Media Net

The establishment of an electricity station in Amarah

Chairman of the Investment Committee in the province of Maysan said,last Saturday, that the establishment of an electricity station with the capacity of 400 Watt was approved, within the projects of developing regions and reconstruction projects.

Taha Al-Dheif explained that "negotiations between the Union of businessmen in the province and an Indian company resulted in the approval of the establishment of an electricity station with the capacity of 400 Watt." But he did not reveal the cost of the project.

According to Al-Dheif, work on the station will begin by "early next year, and last for no more than (12) months." He added that in case this station is completed, it will "reduce the hours of power cut offs in Maysan as well as reducing the load on the national electricity network."

The Ministry of Electricity had previously agreed to establish electrical station in the governorate of Maysan with the capacity of 250 Mega Watt, consisting of two generating units and the capacity of each one is 125 Mega Watt.

Al-Dheif said that the implementation of these two projects "will provide self-sufficiency for Maysan governorate of electric power, as well as not to rely on neighboring governorates in supplying it with electric power."

The actual need of Maysan for electricity is more than 200 Mega Watt, while it receives no more than 100 Mega Watt at the present time; it obtains 20 Mega Watt from Al-bezarkan electric station in the province and the rest 80 from the neighboring governorates.

Maysan governorate is witnessing continuous interruptions in the supply of electric power, where cutting hours reach more than 12 hours a day.

The city of Amarah, the center of Maysan governorate, lies 390 km to the south of the capital Baghdad.

http://www.iraqdirectory.com/DisplayNews.aspx?id=4685

The distribution of loans for the unemployed

Salem Al-msalmaoui, governor of Babel, announced in a press statement last Saturday the formation of a committee to develop mechanisms for the distribution of facilitated loans for the unemployed registered in the social protection network.

It should be noted that the Cabinet allocated $30 million to cover these loans in each governorate and $50 million for the capital Baghdad.

http://www.iraqdirectory.com/DisplayNews.aspx?id=4682

The 2008 budget is ready to be submitted to the Cabinet

The Budget Service in the Ministry of Finance announced last Saturday, the completion of the 2008 budget to be submitted to the Economic Committee and the Cabinet, and the appointment of three associates to the Director-General for Management and Follow-up, to the ministries' affairs and to the provincial affairs in the ministry for the organization of work and rapid disbursement of the 2008 budget.

A statement of the Iraqi Ministry of Finance said that this budget will be a quantum leap in the completion of projects and the rehabilitation of infrastructure in Iraq. The statement added, "The Iraqi government has made great effort in 2007 to write off Iraq's debts due to the policy of the former regime." The statement noted that the coming days will witness a declaration concerning the writing off of the debts.

The Finance Minister stressed, according to the statement, "On the bank managers to take all necessary measures to protect public money through tightening security guard to prevent terrorists and thieves from stealing the money of the Iraqi people, and measures had been taken to maintain security on banks."

http://www.iraqdirectory.com/DisplayNews.aspx?id=4683

From what I can recall from an article I posted a couple of days ago the 2008 Budget is $42 Billion

The sabotage of Iraqna towers in Diyala

A security source in Diyala attributed, last Saturday, the interruption of cell-phone service in some parts of the province to the sabotage of the mobile phone company's towers at Al-Khalis.

The source, who asked to remain anonymous, said that "armed groups destroyed, on Friday, the communication towers belonging to the mobile phone company "Iraqna", in the district of Al-Khalis (15 km north of Baquba), which led to interrupting telephone service of the company within the judiciary and in Baquba."

Ahmad Jamal, a resident of Baquba, said, "Iraqna telephone service has been cut off for two days, and Baquba is living in complete isolation from the outside world ... especially that most ground telephone lines do not work also because of armed operations."

The city of Baquba,the center of Diyala province, lies about 57 km northeast of Baghdad.

http://www.iraqdirectory.com/DisplayNews.aspx?id=4684

Iraq's 2008 budget is less dependent on oil revenue

Iraq's new budget for 2008 will depend less on revenue from oil exports than the previous years, at around 88 per cent compared to 94 per cent in 2007, Finance Minister Bayan Jabor said.

Jabor told Reuters in an interview on Sunday average exports had fallen so far in 2007 from an expected 1.7 million barrels per day to 1.6 million bpd due to the halt of exports from the north for the first half of the year.

Iraq calculated the 2008 budget based on 1.7 million bpd of exports at $50 per barrel.

"We have it based on exports at 1.7 million barrels per day with a barrel at $50. The average in 2007 has been 1.6 (million bpd), but what helped us this year is the rise in prices," he said.

"This has helped Iraq a lot. If it were not for the high prices, we would have been in crisis."

Jabor said the $42 billion budget was estimated first at $37 billion due to the decline in oil exports, but a recent push in exports from the north raised the budget level.

"We first set our budget at $37 billion because of the decline in oil revenues in the first half of the year. We did not export a single barrel from Kirkuk in the first half of 2007, from January 1 of 2007 until June 30 of 2007," he said.

He said budget dependence on oil in 2006 was 97 per cent, in 2007 it was 94 per cent and next year it would be between 88 to 90 per cent.

"The rest is going to be revenues from the mobile (phone sector), which will make us less dependent on oil," he said.

Gulfnews: Iraq's 2008 budget is less dependent on oil revenue

UPDATE 1-Iraq awards 5 mln Kirkuk oil in tender, new sale soon

Iraq has sold nearly 5 million barrels of Kirkuk crude to buyers in Europe and the United States and plans to issue a new sales tender in the coming days, an Iraqi oil ministry source said on Monday.

Shell, BP, Cepsa, Tupras, Erg and Exxon Mobil had been awarded a total of 5 million barrels, he said.

A new tender for 5 million barrels of Kirkuk crude -- the fourth such sale in six weeks -- will be announced in the next few days, the source said.

Through the three previous sales, Iraq's State Oil Marketing Organisation has sold about 12.5 million barrels of Kirkuk crude that is pumped from its northern oilfields and piped to Turkey for export.

Repeated sabotage attacks along Iraq's northern pipeline to the Turkish terminal of Ceyhan have kept the export route mostly idle since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

But intermittent flows through the line over the past month have allowed Baghdad once again to ship crude to world markets.

"We're moving volume to Ceyhan at a steadier rate," said the source. "So we're studying the possibility of term contracts."

The Iraq-Turkey pipeline is Iraq's secondary export route. It relies on its main terminal in the south at Basra for exports of about 1.5 million barrels per day.

UPDATE 1-Iraq awards 5 mln Kirkuk oil in tender,new sale soon | Markets | Reuters

Police Arrest Gunmen for Blowing up Oil Pipelines in Kirkuk

Nine gunmen suspected of having been involved in blowing up oil pipelines were arrested near the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, a security source said.

"A police force, backed by U.S. troops, arrested nine gunmen on Sunday during a security crackdown in Dibs district, 35 km northwest of Kirkuk," the source, who requested anonymity, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).

The source added, "The arrested armed group was involved in blowing up oil pipelines’ electricity towers."

The source, who provided no further details, said "the detainees are under questioning."

Pipelines carrying crude from oil-rich Kirkuk to Turkish Ceyhan port on the Mediterranean Sea have been a target of gunmen attacks, causing huge losses to Iraqi petroleum industry.

Iraq now exports roughly 250,000-350,000 bpd from Kirkuk oilfields to Ceyhan port.

PUKmedia :: English - Police Arrest Gunmen for Blowing up Oil Pipelines in Kirkuk

KUT, Iraq, Oct. 8 — The United States has found an unlikely ally in the struggle to block what American commanders suspected to be Iranian weapons smuggling in this rural agricultural region south and east of Baghdad: soldiers from the former Soviet republic of Georgia.



At a time when other countries are pulling troops out, Georgia has more than doubled its troop levels in Iraq, to 2,000 soldiers from 850, and agreed to send them from the safer Green Zone in Baghdad to this area along the Iranian border. That gives Georgia, a tiny Caucasus mountains nation, the second-largest troop presence among American allies in Iraq, behind Britain.
At a ceremony marking the formal start of their mission on Monday, soldiers knelt and were sprinkled with holy water by their Eastern Orthodox priest.
But it is hardly fear of Iran that impels the Georgians to contribute so significantly to the war. As the United States is searching for allies, so is Georgia, which aspires to NATO membership as a security guarantee against Russia.
“As soldiers here, we help the American soldiers,” Cpl. Georgi N. Zedguidze explained, peering past the sun-scorched checkpoint where he was guarding a bridge over the Tigris River. “Then America as a country will help our country.”
The United States supports NATO membership for Georgia, but neither nation has formally linked the deployment in Iraq with that. Georgian officials play down the idea of even an informal quid pro quo. They say that after their initial decision to send troops in 2003, the current contingent reflects a commitment to maintaining security.
“We should show everyone that we are not stepping back and running away from a difficult situation,” Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, said March 9 when he announced the troop buildup.
However, for Georgian soldiers risking their lives to interdict what is described as the southern Shiite trafficking in bombs made with explosively formed penetrators, the sense of making a down payment on their own security is strong. The penetrators are armor-piercing weapons that are a leading cause of death for American soldiers.
A dozen or so of the Georgians said in interviews that they understood their service in Iraq as directly linked to their own security — as a means of helping Georgia join NATO when Russia’s international ambitions are stirring again.
Sgt. Koba Oshkhereli, looking out of the dusty gate of Forward Operating Base Delta at the trash-strewn streets of Kut and all the danger it holds, put it this way: “The bear was sleeping. Now the bear is awake and stomping his feet.”
The Georgians are not the first former Soviet or Eastern Bloc soldiers to arrive in Iraq with those notions. Of the 25 nations contributing troops to Iraq, 18 are in one or the other of those categories, including Poland, Ukraine and small nations like Estonia, according to a tally by the Brookings Institution in Washington. A majority are either new members of NATO or aspirants to membership.
Within Georgia, opposition parties have criticized Mr. Saakashvili’s use of the deployment to receive American counterinsurgency training for the army, saying it is a sign that he intends to use military force to regain control of two Russian-supported separatist regions in Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Extending NATO membership to Georgia would entangle the alliance in those two conflicts on Russia’s unstable southern border and along the export routes for Caspian basin oil, in a region Russia considers within its sphere of influence. Just this year, Georgia has twice accused Russia of releasing rockets from aircraft that had flown into Georgian airspace.
Meanwhile, support for American operations in Iraq is dwindling. Foreign troops peaked at 25,600 in January 2004 and were down to 12,300 in September, according to the Brookings tally. Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain said Monday that he would reduce the British presence by half, to 2,500 troops, by spring. The United States currently has about 165,000 troops in Iraq.
Wasit, a large province south of Baghdad where Georgia is now the main troop contributor, is 98 percent Shiite but is divided in its loyalties between two groups fighting for dominance: the Badr Organization, a party with origins among Iraqi defectors to Iran during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, and the group led by the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr. American commanders say Iran is backing both.
The Georgians here — a rough-hewn group of Caucasus mountain men, many of them veterans of one or another post-Soviet conflict — carry Kalashnikov rifles with scuffed wooden stocks. The brigade has adopted a strategy based on contacts with the local population and tribal sheiks, an approach also being used now by American commanders.
The Georgian soldiers, who arrived in late August although the formal deployment began on Monday, have taken to giving medical treatment to Iraqis with non-life-threatening ailments showing up at their checkpoints. The patients are typically children with burns from kerosene lamps, common in a country whose electric service is only intermittent.
Capt. Mamuka Tskrialashvili, who trained at an elite Russian paratrooper school, credited the free clinics with creating a buffer of good will among residents. But he conceded that such efforts go only so far. In the spring, on an earlier mission here, Georgians guarding a checkpoint on a bridge befriended a man who drove past often and always waved. One day, the man drove to the middle of the bridge and blew himself up, collapsing the span.
“He waved when he went past,” Captain Tskrialashvili said.

Al Sadr Bloc return to government differing

Tuesday, October 09, 2007 08:10 GMT

In conclusion to the interview of Coalition Bloc MP Abbas Al Bayati with Al Hayat Newspaper, a solution to Al Sadr Bloc withdrawal from the Unified Coalition is looming. Al Bayati confirmed that an agreement will be signed after Al Fitr between the “Coalition” and representatives of Al SadR Bloc. He explained that the agreement will pave way for Al Sadr Bloc return to the Shiite Alliance and that “Al Sadrist” is determined not to join a new alliance while opposing suspending confidence of Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki’s government. Al Bayati talked about a major progress in dialogue between both parties in order to grant Al Sadr Bloc its rights.
On the other hand, head of Al Sadr Bloc Nassar Al Rubaie denied any agreement with the Coalition, confirming that his bloc announced after negotiations between Coalition representatives and Al Sadr Bloc seniors that it insists on being an independent party inside the Parliament without returning to the Coalition. Al Rubiae added that talks ended while there’s no more possibility for new dialogues since the bloc refuses to enter in new alliances with any parliamentarian bloc.
In this context, he refused to link between Saturday’s agreement and the return of Al Sadr Bloc to the coalition, adding that agreement signed by Cleric Moqtada Al Sadr and Sayyed Abdul Aziz Al Hakim has been concluded for security reasons, aimed to curb Iraqi bloodsheds and soothing tension in provinces. Al Rubaie detailed that it has been agreed as well on forming central and media committees to exchange information in order to avert future security problems, clarifying that the agreement has nothing to do with the political status of Al Sadr Bloc though recognizing the fact that political course is being reviewed inside the Coalition which keeps all possibilities open.

Alsumaria Iraqi Satellite TV Network | Iraq News | Al Sadr Bloc return to government differing