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

Real estate costs back to their actual value

Prices of real estate in Basra are back to normal estimated now at values of other real estates after prices were lowered significantly earlier. The drop was evaluated by 20% less than the actual value of real estates due to security deterioration in the city.

http://www.iraqdirectory.com/DisplayNews.aspx?id=4737

Hunt, State Dept. get Iraq oil deal query

Congress's watchdog committee wants details from the U.S. State Department and Ray Hunt regarding the recent controversial Hunt Oil deal with Iraqi Kurds.

In letters sent Monday to U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and the chief executive officer of Dallas-based Hunt Oil Corp., two leaders in the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform are requesting documents they say will help determine whether the committee will launch an investigation into the oil deal.

Hunt and the Kurdistan Regional Government announced the deal Sept. 9, which drew immediate criticism from Baghdad. The KRG has moved forward on its own regional oil law and signed nearly a dozen oil deals with foreign oil firms.

The KRG blames the central government for not moving forward fast enough on a national oil law. It's stuck in Parliament among factions who can't decide the extent of federal control over the oil sector and how much access foreign firms should have to it.

"By signing a contract directly with a regional government, you may have undermined U.S. national policy of working toward the passage of an oil revenue sharing plan, which the Bush Administration has called a critical step towards national political reconciliation in Iraq and the return home of U.S. troops," Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, chairman of the Subcommittee on Domestic Policy, wrote in a letter to Hunt.

They questioned if the decision to sign the deal was based on secret information gained by Ray Hunt sitting on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. The selective board is appointed by the president and evaluates the intelligence he receives.

Waxman and Kucinich have asked Hunt to hand over "any information you received in your capacity as a member آ… relating to Iraq, Kurdistan, the Iraqi national hydrocarbon law, U.S. diplomatic efforts at national Iraqi reconciliation, as well as any information regarding negotiations, contracts, or other interactions with the Kurdistan Regional Government," as well as any "communications, including e-mails," between Hunt and U.S. officials regarding these topics.

Hunt has until Nov. 2 to provide the info, as does Crocker, who is being asked for similar documents.

"We have received the letter from the committee requesting certain limited information," Jeanne Phillips, senior vice president of Hunt, said in a statement. "As we have stated before, our policy as a company is to act independently when determining where to explore for oil and gas around the world."

http://www.iraqdirectory.com/DisplayNews.aspx?id=4738

Senior officials said to have forged degrees

Many parliamentarians, deputy ministers, governors and other senior officials have submitted forged certificates in order to keep their positions and earn higher salaries and additional bonuses.

Cultural attaches in foreign countries particularly in Europe are reported to be under increasing pressure from these officials to certify university degrees de****e lack of evidence that holders have attended classes in them.

The disclosure that senior Iraqi officials have obtained their posts after submitting fake degrees is yet another blow the government and the post-U.S. invasion Iraq.

The Iraqi cultural attaché officer in London, Abdullah al-Mawsawi, has spoken openly about the issue de****e.

“Several senior Iraqi officials exert a lot of pressure on me to have their degrees, including Ph.D.s, certified by the attaché,” he told the newspaper.

Mawsawi said some of the degrees sent to him to certify bear the stamps of universities which do not exist in the U.K.

The Ministry of Higher Education, according to Mawsawi, has confirmed information that more than 900 Iraqis, many of them now employed by the government, have got their positions through fake degrees.

“They are still in service and are being paid higher salaries, perks and bonuses which usually are given to officials with higher degrees,” Mawsawi said.

There is a special market in Baghdad called Meraidi where almost all official documents are for sale. The market is known for its ‘state-of-the-art’ forgers.

Besides degrees, identity cards, civil status papers and even passports are forged.

The government has refused to crack down on Meraidi forgers.

http://www.azzaman.com/english/index.asp?fname=news\2007-10-16\kurd.htm

Sorry if already posted.

Iraqi Shiite leader visits Sunni province in reconciliatory gesture

Baghdad: In a major reconciliatory gesture, a leader from Iraq's largest Shiite party has paid a rare visit to the Sunni Anbar province, delivering a message of unity to tribal shaikhs who have staged a US-backed revolt against Al Qaida militants.

The leader of parliament's largest Sunni Arab bloc, Adnan Al Dulaimi, welcomed Ammar Al Hakim's visit to Anbar on Sunday as a "good initiative", saying Shiite-Sunni reconciliation was a goal cherished by his once-dominant Sunni Arab minority.

"This is what we hope, and we pray to Allah for," Al Dulaimi, whose three-party alliance has 44 of parliament's 275 seats, said yesterday.

"We pray to God to make our Shiite brothers ... give us our due rights and not monopolise power." Al Hakim's visit to Anbar was the latest sign that key Iraqi politicians may be working toward reconciliation independently of Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki's government, which has faced criticism for doing little to bring together Iraq's Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis.

Endorsement

Sunni Arab Vice-President Tariq Al Hashemi visited Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, Iraq's top Shiite cleric, last month at Najaf south of Baghdad. The visit amounted to an unprecedented Sunni Arab endorsement of Al Sistani's role as the nation's guardian.

Al Hashemi's Iraqi Islamic Party also has been distancing itself from militant Sunni Arab groups and has in recent months forged closer ties with Al Hakim's Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, the country's largest Shiite party, and the two major Kurdish parties.

Al Hakim, son and heir apparent of Iraq's top Shiite politician, struck a note of national unity in Anbar.

"Iraq does not belong to the Sunnis or the Shiites alone; nor does it belong to the Arabs or the Kurds and Turkomen," Al Hakim told his hosts in the provincial capital Ramadi, about 115km west of Baghdad.

"Today, we must stand up and declare that Iraq is for all Iraqis." He stood next to the leader of the Anbar movement, Ahmad Abu Risha.

Government seeks nod for incursion

The Turkish government has decided to send a motion to Parliament seeking approval for a military operation against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq, a government spokesman said yesterday.

Cemil Cicek said he hoped Parliament would vote on the motion this week - passage is considered likely - but indicated that the government would still prefer a solution to the conflict that does not involve a cross-border offensive. Local news stations said the vote would be held tomorrow. "Our hope is that there will be no need to use this motion," Cicek said.

Gulfnews: Iraqi Shiite leader visits Sunni province in reconciliatory gesture

Iraqis ready to join police in Baghdad hotspots

Mazen Majid Abd quit the Iraqi police last year after Sunni Islamist militants overran his neighbourhood in Baghdad and threatened him. But as a U.S. drive to quell violence starts to pay off, he's joining up again.

Abd is one of more than 200 people in the Sunni area of Khadra hoping to put on a police uniform and work with the national police, the Iraqi army and U.S. forces to keep Sunni al Qaeda insurgents out of the community.

An uprising by tribal leaders against al Qaeda insurgents in the western Iraqi province of Anbar was seen as a turning point that led to the once-perilous desert region becoming far safer for Iraqi and U.S. forces alike.

In the capital, it is more than four months since Washington completed a troop buildup to stem the daily violence. Now U.S. forces are on a drive to establish community police units to allow locals to consolidate improvements in security.

Getting Iraqi security forces into a position to maintain security will be crucial as Washington plans to draw down troop numbers in 2008.

In Khadra, they want 200 men from the community to form a local police unit to keep insurgents out of their neighbourhood. Some 220 locals have signed up so far in two recruitment drives, and those selected will go to a police academy for training.

Abd, 24, was in the police before: "A terrorist threatened, me so I quit."
But now he feels safe enough to go through the selection procedure again.

"For a few months I couldn't go home, but now there are a lot of security changes happening. I am a resident from this area, so it's good that I'm going back to my job. We need to clean it up more as there are still bad people here."

Under Saddam Hussein, minority Sunni Arabs held sway in Iraq. Areas in Baghdad such as Khadra and neighbouring Jamiaa were relatively affluent Sunni communities.

But in the past couple of years, Sunni Islamist militants moved in en masse to use the areas as a base for targeting U.S. and Iraqi forces. As a result, some 70 percent of the homes in some districts were deserted as residents fled the violence.

GETTING IT RIGHT

U.S. Army Captain Dan Cannon is based at a joint security station in Khadra where U.S. forces work with the Iraqi army and the national police to tackle violence.

"It's come a long way in the last six months," he said. "All the local nationals had basically got pushed out by al Qaeda or sympathisers. Now we've probably toppled about 10 cells."

Cannon said when he first came into Khadra there were two to three attacks a day, mostly roadside bombs on main roads targeting the police. Now, there are one or two incidents a week, mostly criminal in nature.

Haitham Guewar, 30, fled to Khadra from the predominantly Shi'ite area of Zaafaraniya in south Baghdad to seek sanctuary after two of his brothers were killed for being Sunnis.

He was studying for a master's degree in chemical engineering, but now he wants to join the police in Khadra.
"We're tired of the bad people, so we stood up to them to help the Iraqi government and U.S. forces."

Talib Jasim, a member of Khadra's neighbourhood council, has been drumming up volunteers for the recruitment drive and is heartened by similar ventures in districts such as Ghazaliya to the north of Khadra and Amiriya to the south.

"Why has it succeeded? Because it's the people in the community doing it," he said. "Every tribal leader is inviting the people to turn against al Qaeda, because these people are bad, they damage everything. They do not belong to this city."

The U.S. military recognises the risk that some volunteers may have been militant sympathisers or criminals.

Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Chesney, commander of 1st Battalion, 64th Armor Regiment, was assigned in June to take on militants in these hotbeds of violence in western Baghdad.

He argues that criminal elements among the volunteers can be weeded out, first by informants in the area, and then by the interior and defence ministries, who vet the lists.

Some critics say the U.S. forces are just legitimising tribal militias and armed neighbourhood watch groups and letting them take charge of checkpoints.

Indeed, the volunteers in Jamiaa have just thrown a spanner in the works -- they are simply looking for the right to man armed checkpoints and are not interested in becoming policemen.

The government has approved the volunteer list, but the recruits include many former Iraqi army officers under Saddam, and they look down on the idea of becoming policemen.

This is a setback. But Chesney is philosophical, saying U.S. commanders have the flexibility to slow down the process if it's not working as planned, or the recruits are not representative of the sectarian mix in the area.
"This is not a rush to failure," he said. The key is to get the right volunteers."

Iraqis ready to join police in Baghdad hotspots - Yahoo! News UK

Iraq call over UK military help
Iraq will need British military support in the south of the country "for some time", the country's deputy prime minister, Barham Salih, has said.

But he added that the Iraqi government acknowledged it could not rely forever on outsiders for its security.

Recently-announced troop withdrawals will reduce the UK's military presence near Basra to 2,500 next year.

Mr Salih is in London for talks at Downing Street. Officials said Gordon Brown hoped to meet him later.

Iraq's deputy prime minister also used his visit to warn Turkey against intervening in northern Iraq to pursue Kurdish guerrillas who Ankara blames for the deaths of 30 Turkish soldiers and civilians in recent weeks.

He also backed the call by Iraq's human rights minister for security guards from the US firm Blackwater to face trial over claims that they killed 17 people when they opened fire on civilians in Baghdad in September.

Mr Salih told BBC Radio 4's World at One: "We definitely will need continued British support for some time to come."

But he added: "We know that more British troops will withdraw from Basra, in large measure because there is confidence in the Iraqi forces in the Basra area to assume the lead in security management in the region.

"We still have challenges in Basra and I don't want to under-estimate the challenges ahead, but at the end of the day there has to be a point where Iraqi security services assume the lead.

"We can't count on outsiders - our friends - forever."

The deputy prime minister admitted that there was a "serious political crisis" in Iraq, which he said was leading to terrible frustration among the population.

He said the current political structure in the country was "producing crisis after crisis" and the time had come for "some very serious political reforms".

BBC NEWS | UK | Iraq call over UK military help

Iraqi Technocrats Support Iraqi Oil Minister

Iraq Oil Report was passed along this translated copy of a letter sent to Iraq Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani by 11 Iraqi technocrats. Most, if not all, have criticized the incarnation of the draft oil law. They take issue, however, now with the KRG’s oil deals. The letter is below in full.

Attention: Dr. Hussain Shahristani

Minister of Oil

We, the undersigned, Iraqi oil professionals who have previously expressed concern and reservation with regard to the proposed draft oil law, would like to express our endorsement for your stance with regard to the contracts signed by the Kurdistan Regional Government and to consider them as illegal and that any foreign company who signs such deal, as well as their sub-contractors, be subject to legal consequences including blacklisting and deprived from further business in Iraq.

We are sure that many other colleges will be willing to support this message but we thought of expediting this message in view of the campaign that is being staged currently by the KRG.

Yours,

Issam al-Chalabi

Tariq Shafiq

Farouk al-Kassim

Fadhil Chalabi

Mohammed al-Jibouri

Karrim al-Shamma

Dhia al-Bakka

Noori Al-Al-Ani

Mohammed-Ali Zainy

Kamel Mhaidi

Falih al-Jiburi

Iraq Oil Report was passed along this translated copy of a letter sent to Iraq Oil Minister Hussain al

Turkey Says Iraq Incursion Not Immediate

Turkey's premier indicated Tuesday that an offensive against Kurdish rebels based in northern Iraq would not immediately follow the expected go-ahead from Parliament, as oil prices soared amid international calls for restraint.

The Iraqi government urged Turkey not to send troops across the border to pursue separatist Kurds in mountain hideouts, calling for ``a diplomatic solution'' to tensions that have raised fears of a new front in the Iraq war.

Tareq al-Hashemi, one of Iraq's two vice presidents, flew to Ankara and met with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other Turkish officials before a Parliament vote Wednesday that is widely expected to authorize cross-border attacks during the next year.
``The passage of the motion in Parliament does not mean that an operation will be carried out at once,'' Erdogan said. ``Turkey would act with common sense and determination when necessary and when the time is ripe.''

Public anger over attacks by Kurdish guerrillas is running high, but government leaders know that two dozen military campaigns into Iraq since the 1980s failed to eradicate the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK. And a cross-border attack could strain ties with the U.S., a NATO ally that opposes any disruption of its efforts to stabilize Iraq.

Light, sweet crude for November delivery rose $1.94 a barrel to $87.07 Tuesday on the New York Mercantile Exchange after hitting a record $88.20. Traders attributed the surge partly to concerns that Turkish military action might disrupt Mideast crude oil supplies.

``Whenever there is any escalation in political tensions in the Middle East, oil markets become concerned,'' said David Moore, a commodity strategist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia in Sydney. ``There is production and there are pipelines that people worry may be affected if there are any issues in Iraq.''

The potential harm to Turkey's economy, which has recovered strongly from an economic crisis in 2001, is probably another factor in the government's deliberations on whether to send troops into Iraq.

Gazi Ercel, a former central bank governor, said an offensive could trigger falls in the Turkish stock market and currency and cause uneasiness among foreign investors about whether Turkey is a ``risky place'' to do business.

The head of the United Nation's refugee agency warned that a Turkish incursion into Iraq could exacerbate what is already the Middle's East's worst refugee crisis since the 1940s.

``I can only express our very deep concern about any development that might lead to meaningful displacements of populations in that sensitive area,'' said Antonio Guterres, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees.

Guterres said violence in Iraq has forced 4 million Iraqis to flee their homes and an offensive into the Kurdish-controlled north would upset one of Iraq's few relatively stable areas.

There has been speculation Turkey's government sought approval for an offensive as a way to pressure U.S. and Iraqi authorities to move against Turkish Kurd rebels operating from northern Iraq.

On Tuesday, Erdogan repeated his calls for a crackdown, saying the Kurdish regional administration in northern Iraq should ``build a thick wall between itself and terrorist organizations.''

Ali al-Dabbagh, spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said Iraq's government would not tolerate violence from the separatist rebels, but he urged Turkey to ``seek a diplomatic solution and not a military one in dealing with the terrorist threats that target it.'' Al-Maliki's office said a high-level political and security team would go to Turkey for talks later this week.

A Turkish soldier was killed Tuesday when he stepped on a land mine believed to have been planted by Kurdish rebels near the southeastern Turkish city of Bingol, local authorities said.

PKK rebels have been fighting for autonomy in Turkey's Kurdish-dominated southeast since 1984 in a conflict that has killed thousands of people.

Turkey has complained about what it considers a lack of U.S. support against the PKK, which has been labeled a terrorist group by Washington.

Turkish frustration with America has intensified because of another dispute: a congressional move toward declaring as a genocide the killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Turks during World War I. Turkey denies there was a systematic campaign to eliminate Armenians, saying the deaths came during the civil unrest that accompanied the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

President Bush is strongly urging Congress not to pass the resolution amid worries Turkey might retaliate by cutting off key supply routes used by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Egemen Bagis, a foreign policy adviser to Erdogan, said Tuesday that Turkey should not punish the Bush administration if the resolution passes. He said it should react against those in Congress backing the measure as well as impose sanctions against Armenia for supporting it.

Turkey Says Iraq Incursion Not Immediate | World Latest | Guardian Unlimited

Hashimi arrives at Turkey and calls on KRG to end the PKK Presence

Dr. Tariq al-Hashimi, Iraqi Vice President, today arrived at Ankara on a private visit to discuss with the Turkish government about the tense situation on the border between the two countries in an effort to appease the crisis.

The visit comes after intensive contacts by Mr. Hashimi from Amman with several concerned parties in Iraq and Turkey, which hailed the initiative by al-Hashimi.

Hashimi has said in an exclusive statement addressed to the Baghdad satellite channel that the security situation on the northern border of Iraq causes worry and that what happened a few days ago regarding the casualties in the ranks of the Turkish army is a qualitative dangerous shift in the management of PKK dossier.

Hashimi also said that at the same time he did not support shelling of Kurdish villages by the Turkish artillery, especially during the days of Eid al-Fitr.

He pointed out that the Iraqi constitution is clear on this subject as it does not allow Iraqi territory to be a source of anxiety and terror for Iraq’s neighbors, adding that the acts of violence carried out by elements of the PKK hurt Iraq’s neighbor, Turkey, but at the same time, this does not give justification for Turkey to play military operations inside Iraqi territory.

The Iraqi government and the KRG should urgently put an end to the activities of the PKK, he continued.

He said he would use his relationship with the Turkish government to ease the political tension and that he will work to resolve the crisis, pushing all parties to apply restraint, adding that everyone should give an opportunity to political and diplomatic role to resolve the current crisis.

PUKmedia :: English - Hashimi arrives at Turkey and calls on KRG to end the PKK Presence

President Talabani to meet with Sarkozy

After his successful visit to the United States, President of Iraq, his Excellency Jalal Talabani arrived in Paris on Monday.

The Iraqi ambassador to Sweden, Ahmad Bamerni, who accompanied President Talabani to France, said: “President of Iraq is officially invited to France to exchange views with his French counterpart, Nicolas Sarkozy, about political developments in Iraq and the entire region.

“President Talabani will also meet with French authorities to discuss several topics, including activating the role of France investment in Iraq and its support for Iraq’s reconstruction,” Bamerni added.

PUKmedia :: English - President Talabani to meet with Sarkozy