Thread: Iraq/Dinar News. 09/05 to 01/14/07

USAID announces RFP to develop Iraq's agriculture sector


The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Mission in Iraq is seeking proposals for its Inma Agricultural Program.

The Inma project will provide agricultural and business development services to beneficiaries in strategic locations in Iraq to promote economic diversification and job generation, with an emphasis on the growth of the agriculture and agribusiness sectors in the provincial, regional and sub-regional economies.
The Request for Proposal (RFP) can be viewed here.

Source: Portal Iraq




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Posted on Thursday, December 14

Traders entering agreements with their Iranian and Kuwaiti counterparts


Chairman of the Chamber of Commerce in the Iraqi city of Kirkuk, said that Iraqi traders concluded commercial and economic agreements with a number of Iranian merchants on the sidelines of an exhibition for the reconstruction of Iraq held in Iran at the beginning of last week.

The chairman of the Chamber of Kirkuk, Khalil Ismail Agha, said that high-ranking commercial Iraqi delegation "participated in the conference which was held on the sidelines of the exhibition in the Iranian cities of Tabriz and Kermanshah".
He added that the delegation discussed with the Iranian side "ways of joint cooperation between the Chamber of Commerce and a number of Iraqi traders with their Iranian counterparts, as well as the possibility of developing trade and economic relations between the two countries and ways of participation of Iran in supporting the Iraqi infrastructure through reconstructing a number of economic sectors in the country". Agha pointed out that the Iranian side is interested in" entering the Iraqi market which is considered the main market for importing a large number of goods and commodities and foodstuffs, since Iraq is one of the most important markets that receive such Iranian products". He explained that a number of Iraqi traders "concluded during the exhibition, a number of agreements that will contribute to the arrival of good quantities of different products, which will help to develop the economy and trade exchange between the two neighbors".

On the other hand, a member of the Kuwaiti investors delegation said that the delegation is currently visiting Kurdistan region to discuss investment opportunities and the establishment of a number of important projects in it.

The member of the delegation, Tariq Al-Musawi, of the Kuwaiti public warehouses company, said that the delegation consists of "a number of Kuwaiti companies came to Kurdistan, to explore and discuss investment opportunities in the region".

Al-Musawi said: "We sensed that there are good investment opportunities, and we will sign a preliminary agreement or an understanding memorandum with the competent authorities for the establishment of different storage warehouses, refrigerated, chilled and dry, and a truck parking area". He added: "The intention is to establish an integrated network of storage areas, to give a solution for traders who bring goods to the region". Al-Musawi did not specify the timing of the agreement, or the areas in which they will establish the projects he spoke about.

The delegation of Kuwaiti investors visited Dohuk governorate, and held talks with its governor, Tamr Ramadan, on investment opportunities in the region. The delegation also visited (Zakho) on the Iraqi-Turkish border to get acquainted with the region that have been identified for the establishment of a free trade zone in it.

On his part, Osama Al-Bader, director of the national real estate company in Kuwait and a member of the visiting delegation said: "we now have two projects. One of which includes the development of an area of 104 thousand square meters of land for the construction of a compound in the city of Irbil, consists of a hotel (4 star), a commercial center, a large cinema and apartment buildings", noting that the final cost for this project "amounts to about 100 million dollars".

Source: Iraq Directory




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Posted on Thursday, December 14

For SGS Brother: http://www.rolclub.com/iraqi-dinar-d...s-brother.html

Free trade zone to be established near BIAP next year


The head of the Iraqi and American Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Ra'ad Omar, said that contracts worth $97 million were signed by foreign companies to rebuild the Kurdistan region.

More than 370 Iraqi, Arab and foreign companies participated in the Sulimaniya fair, which witnessed great success according to Omar. He added that there is a plan to establish a fair and free trade zone near Baghdad International Airport (BIAP) next year.
Source: Portal Iraq




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Posted on Thursday, December 14

Three oil fields to be developed in Maysan


The engineering and technical staffs in the body of Maysan oil fields started a project of developing and investing three oil fields in Maysan to support the productivity of crude oil and its products.

A source in Maysan oil fields said, "The oil fields spread within the boundaries of the province with the total productivity of 500,000 barrels of crude oil a day."
The source added that the work includes installing plants for isolating gas and maintaining the pipes stretched from the oil wells to the pumping stations to the oil complex of Bazirgan. These oil fields will make qualitative progress in the productivity of the crude oil in Amara.

The cabinet has approved establishing Maysan Oil Company as independent from the South Oil Company because Maysan province has a vast reserve and rich oil fields of high quality specifications.

Source: Portal Iraq




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Posted on Thursday

S. Korean Authorities’ Decision to Extend Deployment of Troops in Iraq under Fire

The south Korean authorities and the Uri Party of south Korea reached what they called “party and government agreement” on extending the term of the south Korean troops’ presence in Iraq till late 2007.

This is the crime which can be committed only by the traitors who are utterly indifferent to the dignity and interests of the Korean nation and feel no shame and despicable submission to the US as this means taking the lead in backing the US imperialists in their moves for aggression.

The US has plugged south Korea deep into the Iraqi war under the pretext of what it called “alliance” with it. This is aimed at reducing south Korea to a partner of US aggression troops and using young and middle-aged south Koreans as their canon fodder.

The south Korean authorities seek to remain in power in return for serving and pleasing their American master. How miserable the south Korean regime is as it can hardly exist without the backing of the US.

Flunkeyism, treachery and dependence on outside forces will bring nothing but shameful destruction. History clearly proves what a miserable end those who worked hard to serve the US to gratify their personal greed for power met while being utterly indifferent to the interests of the country and the nation.

The south Korean authorities should take the stand of national independence, a stand of attaching importance to the nation and working for cooperation between compatriots, away from the idea of submitting to the US, retract the above-said decision and move at once to pull back the troops from Iraq.

Looking for Iraq's oil windfall
The country, which has one of the largest reserves in the world, could pump 6 million barrels a day or more. But that sure isn't happening now.
By Steve Hargreaves, CNNMoney.com staff writer
December 14 2006: 6:27 PM EST


NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Iraqi oil revenue was supposed to cover nearly all the costs of reconstruction.

The county's reserves are on the order of 115 billion barrels and, depending on who does the counting, tied with Iran for the world's second largest behind Saudi Arabia's 264 billion, according to the Energy Information Administration.


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In early 2003, proponents of the war in the Bush administration said the entire effort might cost as little as $50 to $60 billion. Iraq was though to be capable of producing 3.5 million barrels of oil a day in short order, with that jumping to 6 million barrels a day or more in a few years' time. At current oil prices, that could have meant over $130 billion a year in oil money.

Now the U.S. will pour over $100 billion this year into the country, torn apart by a bloody three-year war, while oil production remains below pre-war levels. The latest EIA estimate said Iraq was pumping 1.9 million barrels per day.

Obviously, the continuing violence is largely to blame for keeping the country's spigots flowing at a relative trickle.

But uncertainty over who controls what fields is also keeping investors, badly needed to repair the country's aging infrastructure, away.

And massive corruption means a sizeable amount of oil - some estimates have been as high as 500,000 barrels a day - goes straight to the black market.

"The fields are still there," said Manouchehr Takin, an energy analyst at the Center for Global Energy Studies in London, who also added that vast parts of the country are still unexplored. "It's the politics that have degraded."

Ongoing violence
First and foremost, pipelines and refineries have to stop exploding.

The best way to do that, experts say, is to give disaffected Sunnis, responsible for many of the infrastructure attacks, a stake in the oil wealth.

At issue is who has the right to sign oil contracts with foreign companies and how the royalties should be divided.

Currently, royalties on existing oil fields go to the central government while royalties on future oil fields go to the regions. But the issues of contract rights and royalty payments are being debated in the Iraqi parliament.

Supporters of more regional control include the Kurds and some Shiites. Oil-rich northern Iraq is largely Kurdish while oil-rich southern Iraq is largely Shiite.

The Sunnis, who tend to have greater presence in oil-free central areas, want royalties to go to the central government and then be doled out based on population.

"Think of how people behave if someone in the family dies without leaving a will, and you'll see how important it is to get this right," said Amy Myers Jaffe, a fellow in energy studies at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy who worked on the recent Iraq Study Group Report.

The report, also known as the Baker-Hamilton report after its co-chairs James Baker and Lee Hamilton, said all oil revenue should go to the central government.

"No formula that gives control over revenues from future fields to the regions or gives control of oil fields to the regions is compatible with national reconciliation," the report said.

Oil companies, which must make multi-billion dollar investments with decades-long time horizons, would also prefer to sign a contract with the central Iraq government rather that with the leader of some semi-autonomous region, said Steven Simon, a Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

"The (current) environment for investors is utterly uninviting," said Simon.

But Simon gave the current Iraqi parliament only a 20 percent chance of passing something that quelled the violence, provided a stable legal framework and was acceptable to the Shiites and Kurds.

"A one-in-five chance in the current Iraqi environment is pretty optimistic," he said.

An Iraqi government committee working on the issue deadlocked Wednesday.

As for the Iraqis ramping up production on their own, Simon said it wasn't likely.

"If you're an (Iraqi) oil guy and you've got technical skills, you try to get out of there and get a job someplace else," he said.

Deadly corruption
Corruption is the other problem the country must get resolve before Iraq can get serious about rebuilding its oil industry.

Jaffe said that when the Baker-Hamilton report was being prepared, one Iraqi official told her so much fuel disappears from a big refinery near Baghdad that the country would be better off to just close it down.

Jaffe said those skimmed petrol products are then shipped all over the region by a clandestine trucking network that's been in place since the oil-for-food program limited oil sales under Saddam Hussein. Or the products go to fill shortages in Iraq caused by fuel subsidies that don't allow the market to meet demand.

Profits from these black market fuel sales are a main funding source for insurgent and other violent groups inside the country.

The New York Times recently reported that Iraq's insurgents are now economically self-sufficient and even have the means to sponsor terrorist groups outside the country.

To combat corruption, the Baker-Hamilton report recommended installing meters to measure how much oil flows through a pipeline and then paying security guards based on output, not a flat rate.

The report also recommended reducing the fuel subsidies to better allow the market to meet domestic demand, as well as provide training in areas such as procurement and accounting, to make the industry more transparent.

________________

Just wanted to throw in my 2 cents on .....

He expected to Yasiri, a bank dealers with the auction in a statement to the News Agency (Voices of Iraq) Independent, to witness the auction, the return of normal circulation during the forthcoming meetings due to equal the official exchange rate with the rate of exchange in the local market.

Truthfully...my first thought on reading the highlighted part was of the article about returning to the yazzmen rate. Even after reading everyones posts with their thoughts on the above article, my thoughts KEEP going back to that article of returning to the YAZZMEN RATE! (Now I think I will go enlarge my signature ) jk

Also I was curious about that Yasiri word and broke it down on google translator and broken down it means: automated password

Cheers!
DayDream

By THOMAS WAGNER, Associated Press Writer 23 minutes ago

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) took his controversial proposal for curbing
Iraq's sectarian violence to Baghdad on Thursday, calling for an additional 15,000 to 30,000 U.S. troops and joining a congressional delegation in telling Iraq's prime minister he must break his close ties with a radical Shiite cleric.
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The lawmakers' trip came as the bloodshed showed no signs of abating. At least 74 more people were killed or found dead, including 65 bullet-riddled bodies bearing signs of torture. And gunmen in military uniforms kidnapped as many as 70 shopkeepers and bystanders from a commercial area in central Baghdad in what was apparently an attack against Sunnis; at least 25 were later released, police said.

McCain's position puts him at odds with American public opinion and with the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, which recommended withdrawing substantial number of U.S. troops over the coming year. The Army in recent days has been looking at how many additional troops could be sent to Iraq if
President Bush decides a surge in forces would be helpful.

Army officials say only about 10,000 to 15,000 troops could be sent and an end to the war would have to be in sight because the deployment would drain the pool of available soldiers for combat. Further, many experts warn, there is no guarantee a surge in troops would work to settle the violence.

"We would not surge without a purpose," the Army's top general, Peter J. Schoomaker, told reporters Thursday in Washington. "And that purpose should be measurable."

McCain said he realizes that few Americans favor deploying more U.S. troops to Iraq, and that if such a move proved unsuccessful in the unpopular war it could hurt his presidential ambitions.

But the Arizona Republican said Americans must realize that if U.S. troops leave Iraq in chaos, groups such as al-Qaida "will follow us home and that we will have a large conflict and greater challenges than those that we now face here in Iraq."

"The American people are confused, they're frustrated, they're disappointed by the Iraq war, but they also want us to succeed if there's any way to do that," McCain told reporters in Baghdad.

He said conditions in some areas of Iraq have improved since his last visit in March, but "I believe there is still a compelling reason to have an increase in troops here in Baghdad and in Anbar province in order to bring the sectarian violence under control" and to "allow the political process to proceed."

Two other senators in the delegation, Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said they agreed.

"We need more, not less, U.S. troops here," Lieberman said.

Another senator in the group, moderate Republican Susan Collins of Maine, disagreed.

"Iraq is in crisis. The rising sectarian violence threatens the very existence of Iraq as a nation," she said. The current U.S. strategy in Iraq has failed, but "I'm not yet convinced that additional troops will pave the way to a peaceful Iraq in a lasting sense," Collins said.

"My fear is that if we have more troops sent to Iraq that we will just see more injuries and deaths, that we might have a short term impact, but without a long-term political settlement," she said.

Collins' remarks appeared to reflect the findings of the Iraq Study Group, which concluded that sustained increases in U.S. troops would not solve the fundamental problem and that violence would renew once those forces left the area.

While the senators were meeting with U.S. and Iraqi officials in Baghdad, Iraq's Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashemi, was in Washington, where he called on the Bush administration to set a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops. Al-Hashemi said the timetable should be "flexible" and depend on development of an Iraqi security force.

"You've done your job," al-Hashemi, who met with Bush this week, said at the United States Institute of Peace, a U.S.-financed think tank. Currently, however, "there is across-the-board chaos in my country," he said.

Graham said he was shocked by the situation in Baghdad.

"The first time I came here with Sen. McCain we went rug shopping. Yesterday, we moved around in a tank. It's one of the most dangerous places on the planet," he said.

The congressional delegation, which also included Republicans Sen. John Thune of South Dakota and Rep. Mark Kirk (news, bio, voting record) from Illinois, left Baghdad on Thursday to tour the southern port city of Basra and Ramadi, the insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad.

Lieberman said the senators met with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, and urged him to break his ties with Muqtada al-Sadr and disarm the anti-U.S. cleric's Mahdi Army militia, which has been blamed along with Sunni Arab insurgents for the sectarian violence and ruthless attacks on U.S. forces.

Al-Sadr controls 30 of the 275 parliament seats and is a key figure in al-Maliki's coalition.

Lieberman said the delegation left its meetings with al-Maliki, President Jalal Talabani and other Iraqi officials believing "there is a force of moderates within the context of Iraqi politics coming together to strengthen the center here against the extremists."

He said the delegation was "quite explicit" about "how important it is that the Iraqis themselves begin to take aggressive action to disarm the militias, to stop the sectarian violence and to involve all the people in country to governance," including promised provincial elections.

But the senator also said moderates in parliament may look for another leader if al-Maliki fails to do that.

"What the U.S. needs and wants, and has to demand, is that in return for all that we're putting on the line here is that they take on the extremists," Lieberman said. "That's what this battle is all about."

A HUMBLE HERO: Back from Iraq, Hingham man says he just did his job like everyone else


Army Capt. Gregory Hayes of the 4th Infantry Division is back home in Hingham after a yearlong tour in Iraq. He and his family are settling into a new home. (GREG DERR/The Patriot Ledger)
By KRISTEN WALSH
The Patriot Ledger

Army Capt. Gregory Hayes was excited last week as he drove from Logan Airport to his new Hingham home, returning from a yearlong mission in Iraq.

Suddenly the family car was surrounded by police cruisers, officers on motorcycles, and a fire engine - an impromptu parade organized by friends in local veterans organizations. Hayes was surprised, but he happily followed in a procession through the town where he has lived all his life.

Hayes, 33, will spend the holidays with his wife, Laura, his son, Liam, 7, and his daughter, Caili, 5, for the first time since 2003.

‘‘It’s interesting trying to get back into the family routine, but in some ways, it’s like I never left,’’ Hayes said.

Hayes, who graduated from Hingham High School and Fairfield University, worked as a chemist and a mechanical engineer before attending officer candidate school and being commissioned an Army officer after the Sept. 11 attacks.

‘‘I knew it would be difficult, but I knew it was something I needed to do for myself, my family and my nation,’’ Hayes said.

He spent a year in Korea, stationed north of Seoul, where the Western culture is less pronounced.

He then spent eight months at Fort Hood in Texas training as a member of the Army’s 4th Infantry Division, working in field artillery.

First deployed to Kuwait, Hayes and other officers drove in a convoy that took all of the division’s equipment and supplies along a dangerous route. They narrowly missed several roadside bombs during the trip.

After they arrived at Camp Fallujah, life became more routine, but they worked 14- to 15-hour days and had to be constantly on guard.

Public opinion about the war has changed dramatically in this country recently, but Hayes said he and the other troops felt supported by most Americans.

While the troops had Internet access and satellite television, they tried not to watch the news coverage or pay attention to the politics of the war.

‘‘We just got our orders. The news will say what they say, but the Iraqi people are so appreciative and they recognize that this is their chance to control their own destiny,’’ Hayes said. ‘‘They just want to get back to their daily life.’’

Now, Hayes is enjoying moving into his new home and trying to relax, which he wasn’t able to do for any period of time in Iraq.

‘‘We brought everyone from our group home with us this week, and I’m very proud of that,’’ he said.

He is not sure whether he will continue his military service. He and his wife will decide when he returns to Fort Hood next month.

Meanwhile, receiving a hero’s welcome as he made his way home from the airport was just the first part of the celebration in Hingham. A party will be held in his honor at the Hingham Community Center at 70 South St. in downtown Hingham starting at 2 p.m. Saturday.

‘‘People are coming up to me and wanting to shake my hand, but I just did my job over there, just like everyone else did,’’ Hayes said. ‘‘I’m humbled by the experience more than anything.’’

Kristen Walsh may be reached at [email protected] .

Copyright 2006 The Patriot Ledger
Transmitted Thursday, December 14, 2006