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

U.S. Secy. of State Condoleezza Rice meets Turkish leaders for talks on Kurd crisis

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was meeting Friday with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other high-ranking officials as part of an intense campaign to prevent Turkey from sending its troops across the border into northern Iraq to fight Kurdish guerrillas.

Washington worries that a cross-border incursion would bring instability to what has been the calmest part of Iraq, and could set a precedent for other countries, like Iran, who also have conflicts with Kurdish rebels.But Ankara has been resolute in saying that, unless it hears concrete measures the United States will take against the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, or it will launch an attack.As Rice met with Erdogan at his downtown office, snipers kept watch from nearby buildings and more than 2,000 police officers patrolled the streets.

Protesters held a small demonstration nearby, but no disturbances were reported.At a larger demonstration in Istanbul, about 200 marchers organized by the small Communist Party of Turkey chanted «Down with American imperialism» and «Get out Rice» as they carried an effigy of Rice and a sign saying «Unite against the United States.

Before her arrival in the Turkish capital, Rice told reporters on the plane that the United States, Turkey and Iraq would jointly counter the Kurdish rebels, whose attacks against Turkish positions over the last month have killed 47 people, including 35 soldiers, according to government and media reports.

«We have a common enemy and we are going to act as if we have a common enemy, which means that we are going to work with our Turkish allies and the Iraqis» to have an effective way of dealing with the PKK, Rice said.

Many Turks are furious with the United States for its perceived failure to pressure Iraq into cracking down on the PKK, which operates from bases in the semiautonomous northern Kurdish region of Iraq. Street protesters have urged the government to send forces across the border even if it means a deepening of the rift with the U.S., their Cold War-era ally.

Rice's trip places her in the breach between important NATO ally Turkey, the weak U.S.-backed government in BaghdadIraq's oil-rich north.

Her agenda includes meetings with Erdogan _ who travels to Washington to meet with U.S. President George W. Bush on Monday _ and Foreign Minister Ali Babacan.

Babacan on Thursday tried to allay some U.S. fears, saying that if his troops cross the border they would try to avoid confronting the self-governing Kurdish leadership in northern Iraq.

«Any cross-border attack would be aimed at hitting terrorist bases, and would not be an invasion,» said Babacan, who has toured the Middle East to seek support from Arab leaders for Turkey's stance.

The «invasion» reference recalled the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, a source of tension between Washington and Ankara because Turkey refused to allow U.S. troops to use its territory as a platform for attacking Saddam Hussein. Turkey has also been troubled by the increasingly emboldened Iraqi Kurds following Saddam's ouster, fearing their success will incite separatism among its minority Kurd population.

The PKK, which seeks more rights and autonomy for Turkish Kurds, is labeled a terrorist group by Europe and the United States.

The Iraqi Kurds have warned Turkey against staging a cross-border offensive, saying they will defend their territory against any incursion and suggesting that Turkey's ulterior goal is to disrupt their virtual mini-state. Turkey is wary of getting bogged down in a conflict that could be militarily inconclusive and politically damaging for a country seeking to burnish its international image by joining the European Union.

Turkish leaders suspect, however, that the administration there is assisting the PKK, or at the very least tolerating its presence at a network of mountain camps.

«We have doubts about the sincerity of the administration in northern Iraq in the struggle against the terrorist organization,» Babacan said Thursday. «We want to see solid steps.

Speaking on the plane, Rice said initial three-way cooperation could include better ways of sharing information or means to restrict the rebels' movement. She did not rule out sanctions or other penalties on the PKK, but she did not address whether the Iraqis should pursue their own military raids.

«We'll try to talk through the various elements of a strategy, but we really need to look for an effective strategy, not just one that is going to strike out somehow and still not deal with the problem,» she said.

After meetings in Ankara, Rice will travel to Istanbul for a conference on Iraq that is likely to be dominated by talk about the crisis on the Iraqi-Turkish border. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is expected to attend. Another delegate, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, arrived Thursday night in Ankara.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was also coming to Ankara Friday to meet Turkey's President Abdullah Gul. Ban will later travel to Istanbul to attend the international conference on Iraq on Saturday.

PUKmedia :: English - U.S. Secy. of State Condoleezza Rice meets Turkish leaders for talks on Kurd crisis

Iraq’s 18 provinces get $30 million each

Iraq’s 18 provinces will get $30 million each to help reduce rampant unemployment in the country, according to the Minister of Labor and Social Affairs.

Mohammed al-Sheikh said the provinces were under obligation to use the money “solely for employment purposes.”

The money, Sheikh said, should only be disbursed for the start up of small businesses.

The project is hoped to eventually reduce the number of jobless in Iraq. At least 40 percent of Iraq’s working population is believed to be idle.

The ministry wants the money to be extended as part of soft loans and in a way that makes it easy for the beneficiaries to pay back.

Preferential treatment, according to the minister, will be given to unemployed university graduates and people who have lost businesses due to ongoing military operations in the country.

Iraq’s 18 provinces get $30 million each | Iraq Updates

ISX indicator records an increase

On Tuesday, Iraq Stock Exchange (ISX) indicator scored an increase of 0.614% in comparison with the previous session. However, the indicator stopped at 36.990 at the end of the session.

ISX indicator records an increase | Iraq Updates

Iraqi Ministry of Planning and Development Cooperation: Inflation rate decreased

The Iraqi Ministry of Planning and Development Cooperation announced that September’s inflation indicator decreased 2.1%. This result is based on data about the prices of the units of goods and services that constitute the consumers’ basket from different markets in Baghdad and in the Provinces.

Iraq Business Directory | Iraq Business News | Online Directory

T.A.T. Oil comes back to Iraq

Russian Company "T.A.T. Oil" which used to work in Iraq in the period before the war, is having the opportunity to return to this country in the framework of cooperation with the American company Hyperion.

The American company has proposed to the Russian company to unify efforts to invest in heavy oil fields. The company Hyperion is a private company often operating in North America. There is information that it had begun work in Iraq.

"T.A.T. Oil" has tried to work in Iraq under an agreement reached to work in a number of oil fields in Iraq in the nineties of the last century; however, international sanctions have prevented this. " T.A.T. Oil" is implementing a number of projects outside Russia, in Libya and Syria, and it is studying the possibility of working in Sudan, Venezuela and expands its work in Russia. The company gives top priority to the extraction of heavy oil.

According to expert Demetri Lutiagin of "Phyllis Capital", the Iraqi State under the new law will use local companies to produce oil, which means that " T.A.T. Oil" must enter in cooperation with an Iraqi company along with the American company Hyperion.

The expert Constantine Riley of the company "Finam" said that work in Iraq is still fraught with danger.

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Iraqi Kurds taking care of business
Annual trade show attracts firms from 20 countries as construction booms while war rages in south

The fires of civil war continue to rage south of this rambling, low-rise regional capital, and now military tensions are mounting to the north as well, along the rebel-infested border between Iraq and Turkey.
But here in sunny, ancient Erbil, they're having a trade show – and Hogr Salih Qadir, for one, is feeling pretty good about it.

Spokesperson for a local cellphone company, Qadir was presiding yesterday at what was likely the busiest of 300 or so booths at the third annual Erbil International Fair, a five-day extravaganza of luxury automobiles, widescreen TVs, air-conditioning systems, heavy industrial equipment, computer supplies, tractors, and non-stop schmoozing.

"We're making a special offer for the fair," said Qadir.

His company, local firm Obitel, is offering a new technology, developed in China, that lets customers sign on to the Internet or make video calls from their cell phones, and it is marking the occasion by selling heavily discounted cellphone memory chips – an excellent deal to judge by the throngs of eager purchasers all jostling for position around the booth yesterday afternoon.

"People need a new technology," said Qadir.

No doubt, they do.

Still, what most Iraqis seem to need, far more than a new technology, is a new ideology – one that doesn't involve car bombs and kidnappings and suicide attacks on civilian targets, near-daily occurrences in Baghdad and other southern cities, where U.S.-led military forces have been unable to calm storms of ethnic hatred that erupted here following the ouster four years ago of dictator Saddam Hussein.

Here in Erbil, however, people seem to have found the answer.

With its new, glass-walled airport terminal, its plethora of construction cranes, and its general air of peace, bustle, and purpose, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan remains a blessed anomaly in a country at war with itself and often at deadly odds with a range of foreign armies.

Contrasts separating northern Iraq from the rest of the country were typified this week by the trade fair that began here Monday and winds up tomorrow.

Companies from about 20 different countries – including Austria, Brazil, the United States, Lebanon, and Estonia, but not Canada – are participating in the show, all vying for a slice of the billions of dollars in business activity either underway here or just around the corner.

In Erbil, unlike other parts of war-ravaged Iraq, buildings seem to go up rather than come crashing down.

So do electrical power lines, telecommunications facilities, water and sanitation plants, and agricultural projects – all parts of the ambitious development schemes plotted for the coming years by the Kurdistan Regional Government led by President Massoud Barzani.

The city even has an extensive family amusement park – the Diana Games City, a Kurdish equivalent of Paramount Canada's Wonderland, built by a local contractor, the Darin Company.

"We have many projects under construction," boasted Maissam Sabah, a spokesperson for the firm, which had its own booth at the trade fair.

"If it's possible, we would like to do projects in other countries because we are a very big company."

Severely persecuted under Saddam, the Iraqi Kurds have slowly united and, especially in the years since his overthrow, they have won a high degree of political autonomy and now in some ways operate almost like an independent state.

The Kurdish flag is far more visible here than the banner of the Iraqi republic.

Lately, however, the region's political outlook has been clouded by worsening tensions between the Turkish government and militant Turkish Kurds fighting for an independent homeland who stage cross-border raids from their redoubts in the remote mountains of northern Iraq.

Clashes are more frequent since the Oct. 21 ambush carried out by Kurdish rebels that killed 12 Turkish soldiers, and kidnapped others.

Fears of a possible Turkish ground invasion into Iraqi territory to uproot rebels in the Kurdistan Workers' Party continue.

But such worries seemed far away yesterday in the cavernous, 10,000-square-metre exhibition hall at Sami Abdul Rahman Park on the outskirts of Erbil, where local men and women – some in traditional dress but most in Western clothing – lollygagged among the booths as loudspeakers blared North American pop standards.

If anyone was complaining, it wasn't about politics or war or occupying armies, but about the popularity of the fair among ordinary folk, not all of whom enjoy multi-million-dollar investment budgets.

"Ninety per cent of the people in here are just workers," groused Amar Saad, president of a Jordanian company that markets South African-made police equipment. "They are not decision-makers."
Maybe not. But they were peaceful.

Iraqi Kurds taking care of business | Iraq Updates

Turkey says sanctions not yet begun

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday that economic sanctions agreed against groups backing Kurdish rebels were not yet in force, denying a report that Turkey had closed its airspace to flights to northern Iraq.

Turkey has massed up to 100,000 troops along its border with Iraq, backed up by tanks, artillery and aircraft, in preparation for a possible large-scale military incursion into northern Iraq, a move Washington says could destabilise the wider region.

On Wednesday, Turkey's cabinet approved unspecified economic sanctions against groups deemed to support the separatist Kurdish PKK in a move widely seen as targeting Masoud Barzani's autonomous Kurdish administration in northern Iraq.

NTV commercial television said earlier on Thursday these included a ban on flights between Turkey and northern Iraq.

"I hear from you that the airspace has been closed. There is no such decision," Erdogan told reporters.

Asked if the agreed sanctions were being implemented, he said: "Not at the moment."

As well as a possible flight ban, Turkish newspapers have mentioned restrictions on traffic through the busy Habur border gate with Iraq, curbs on exports of electricity and cement to northern Iraq and a clampdown on the operations of firms belonging to Barzani in Turkey among the sanctions considered.

On Tuesday, airline officials told Reuters Turkey's civil aviation authority had denied Istanbul-based charter airline Tarhan Tower permission to fly two of its three weekly flights to Arbil, Barzani's capital, this week.

Turkey says sanctions not yet begun | Iraq Updates

Turkey sanctions target rebels

Turkey said yesterday planned economic sanctions would only target outlawed Kurdish militants and groups providing them with support in northern Iraq.

Officials declined to say what the new measures would include but made clear they would spare Turks and Iraqis not connected to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has been launching attacks on Turkey from across the border.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the measures, agreed at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, were not yet in force and he denied a television report that Turkey had closed its airspace to flights to and from northern Iraq.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki will attend a conference on Iraq in Istanbul beginning today amid a crisis in ties between Baghdad and Ankara over Kurdish rebels holed up in northern Iraq.

"Mr Al Maliki will be in Istanbul Friday for the conference," an Iraqi diplomat said.

The foreign ministers of Iraq and its neighbours, plus the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and the G8, will be at the meeting tonight and tomorrow.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who will also attend the Istanbul meeting, was to arrive in Ankara last night for talks with his Turkish counterpart Ali Babacan, an Iranian diplomat said.

Turkey has sent 100,000 troops to the Iraqi border, backed by tanks, artillery and aircraft, ready for a possible military incursion into northern Iraq against PKK militants there.

Diplomats say Turkey may hold fire on both sanctions and major military action for now to see whether talks in Ankara today with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and further discussions between Erdogan and US President George W. Bush next Monday in Washington yield any results.

"When we talk of economic sanctions, we don't mean to cause difficulty to people living in Turkey and Iraq," Foreign Minister Ali Babacan told a news conference, striking a relatively mild tone after the tough rhetoric of recent days.

"We are targeting the economic sources of the terrorist organisation and those elements providing support to the terrorist organisation," he added.
Nato-member Turkey knows economic sanctions could end up hurting its own economy as much as that of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, which is run by Masoud Barzani.

Turkey accuses Barzani and his administration of providing shelter and support to an estimated 3,000 PKK rebels. Barzani denies the charges but says he will not turn over any Kurd to Turkish authorities.

Rice holds talks with Erdogan and other top officials in the Turkish capital before heading to Istanbul for a meeting of foreign ministers from Iraq's neighbours and major powers that is sure to be dominated by tensions between Ankara and Baghdad.

Rice has promised unspecified "concrete action" and is prodding Iraq's government, particularly the Kurdish regional authorities in northern Iraq, to rein in the PKK by closing its bases and arresting leaders.
The spying game

US admits providing intelligence to Ankara

The US acknowledged on Wednesday it has undertaken military moves against Kurdish rebels in Iraq after asserting for weeks that their strikes in Turkey were a diplomatic matter.

Defence Department officials are now starting to say publicly that the US is flying manned spy planes over the border area, providing Turkey with more intelligence information, and that there are standing orders for American forces to capture rebels they find.

Only last Friday, the US commander in northern Iraq, Maj Gen Benjamin Mixon, said he planned to do 'absolutely nothing' to counter Kurdish rebels operating from the region.

But the top American commander in Iraq, in comments that appeared aimed at allaying Turkish frustration over the matter, said Sunday the US military was playing a role in trying to defuse tensions.

Gen David Petraeus declined to elaborate. Since then, however, Pentagon officials have detailed a number of examples to undermine the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, holed up in bases in northern Iraq.

"We are assisting the Turks in their efforts to combat the PKK by supplying them with intelligence, lots of intelligence," Defence Department press secretary Geoff Morrell said.

Turkey sanctions target rebels | Iraq Updates

'Mubarrid' is participating in the exhibition of reconstructing Iraq

"Mubarrid" Company for transport announced its participation in the Exhibition of Reconstructing Iraq to be held from 4 to 7 next November on the ground of the international exhibitions in Musharraf under the auspices of His Highness the Crown Prince Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah.

The Company said that its participation in this exhibition will be through its expertise in the area of transportation which is one of the foundations of building infrastructure and economic progress; the company presents a system of integrated logistic services, including road transport services of all kinds through a fleet of the latest equipments and sophisticated modern transport services, as well as air and sea freight through the company National Express, as well as its manufacturing of all types of trailers and semi-trailers through Babtin factory for the manufacture of automobile structures owned by "Mubarrid" Company for transport.

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A fence between Saudi Arabia and Iraq

Documents obtained by Reuters showed that the two European companies E.A.D.S. and TALICE as well as the American company Raytheon are among the companies that submitted offers to build a border fence between Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

Saudi officials said last month that Saudi Arabia, the biggest oil exporter in the world, wants to build a fence of barbed wire of 900 km in length on its borders with Iraq and the installation of thermal imaging equipments and radar devices.

According to the list of companies obtained by Reuters, and was confirmed by three different sources, the groups comprising include 14 local and global companies made presentations at 28 of October for the implementation of the project.

The list also included Al-Seif Company for engineering and construction as well as Al-Arrab Contracting Company owned by Al-Rajihi Bank. There were also two companies made offers to implement the project and they are: the American company D.R.S. Technologies for defense equipments and the South Korean company L.G Electronics.

An official at Al-Seif Company, who asked not to be identified, said "There are several alternative options in the presentations because of the complex nature of the project. It is difficult to determine the value of the project." Two other contractors said that the project would cost about four billion riyals ( 1.07 billion dollars), and that it is part of a broader defense plan for securing the country's borders with the length of 5600 km.

Prince Nayef, the Interior Minister, said last year that the border fence has become a necessity because of the escalating violence in Iraq.

Saudi Arabia plans to enhance border security by adding hundreds of radar equipments, coastal monitoring stations, communication networks and reconnaissance planes in different parts of the country.

The cost of such a plan will be about 20 billion riyals (5.33 billion dollars), according to what was said by the magazine Middle East Economic Digest (MEED) last year.

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