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

Bush to present new Iraq policy
03 January 2007 08:56

US President George W Bush has promised to present a new Iraq policy in the days ahead amid warnings that even members of his own Republican party oppose escalating the unpopular war.

The president has previously said he is considering 'all options' including a temporary increase of US troops in Iraq.

Winning the war in Iraq and making tax cuts passed by the Republican-controlled Congress in 2001 permanent are his top priorities, Mr Bush wrote in a column in today's Wall Street Journal newspaper.

Mr Bush's Republican Party lost control of Congress on 7 November, a defeat attributed to the unpopular war in Iraq.

Writing on the eve of the Democratic takeover of both the Senate and the House of Representatives, Mr Bush warned however of partisanship which he said could lead to a stalemate.

'In the days ahead, I will be addressing our nation about a new strategy to help the Iraqi people gain control of the security situation and hasten the day when the Iraqi government gains full control over its affairs,' he wrote.

'Ultimately, Iraqis must resolve the most pressing issues facing them. We can't do it for them.

But we can help Iraq defeat the extremists inside and outside of Iraq and we can help provide the necessary breathing space for this young government to meet its responsibilities.'

RTE News - Bush to present new Iraq policy

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Baghdad : officers are prevented from going to work next week. Fear of attacks
By Aliraqnews In 3 / 01 / 2007 8:12:02

Was this week as an official holiday ongoing general population of Iraq and Baghdad, especially as Defensive Shield, which they are free from attacks and the response that foreseen the impact of the execution of Saddam Hussein. However, the obsession of fear still exists

The inhabitants of Baghdad, as they would say in some Almenhm «» barrel of a gun next week. Iman Mohammed, an employee at the Ministry of Municipalities, said when asked about prospects during the next week, the words were common among Iraqis «God forbid this week» It went without saying that all her colleagues at work expressed Tojshm from going to work, especially as the day of Eid was not Eid days for the residents of Baghdad, but the days of slumber inside homes for fear of attacks by armed groups in retaliation for the execution of Saddam Hussein.

Either Jaber, an employee in the Ministry of Health, said «strange to conflicting armed groups among themselves for political gain and personal and also mired in ethnic and sectarian while the ordinary citizen is targeted by both parties Media continuous coverage of events such as kidnappings, assassinations, but the question is kidnapped and who kills, and the answer is citizen run from this conflict and guilt only that the Sunni, Shiite or Kurdish and other names».

Mohamed Meheidine Tajuddin said that the residents of Baghdad are afraid the beginning of next week «Everyone is ready to be the victim of a reaction expected to be violent by armed groups battling. On the other hand, there is clear weakness of the security agencies to protect the citizens and this is to instil into the minds of the citizen-Baghdadi, especially after the kidnapping incidents which affected the collective staff of some ministries and humanitarian bodies such as the Red Crescent and other ».

However, the security official had in the province of Baghdad affirmed that the parties that the security «prepared a new plan», explaining that the Council of the preservation «recommended that moving the military units affiliated to the ministries of Defense and the Interior continuously and develop forces fixed in the areas labeled Balsajenh or those which expects the clashes where assume that forces what is happening within the film and the provision of security for the citizen and emphasis on the reckoning in the event of a breach in their regions, in addition to tighten control over the entrances and exits the city from all quarters and the development of intervention forces quick capable to move quickly in all regions precaution for any emergency».

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UNITED NATIONS : Iraqis more asylum seekers in the world today
By Aliraqnews In 3 / 01 / 2007 8:12:39

A spokesman for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, William Spindler, that «Iraqi refugees are among more nationalities seeking asylum countries in the world» expected, in an interview with the Middle East «» the coming year to witness a new cohort of Iraqi asylum seekers fleeing the escalating violence in the country. While the Office of the High Commissioner number of Iraqis

In Jordan, between 500 and 700 thousand Iraqis, and 500 thousand in Syria, 100 thousand in Egypt, preparation of Iraqi refugees remained in the industrialized countries of Europe and specifically relatively little since the 2003 war. However, 2006 saw an escalation in the numbers of Iraqis seeking asylum in Europe, to double in Sweden, Britain and other countries in recent months.

Spindler pointed out that the statistics Office of the High Commissioner of the United Nations indicate that 4700 Iraqis requested asylum in industrialized countries «» in the first quarter of 2006, the highest number since 2003. He added that the number of asylum seekers doubled last year, and expected to increase the number of refugees in the coming months.

He said : «no country outside of refugees in such large numbers and this short time, the Iraqis have become refugees from among more nationalities seeking asylum countries in the world».

The spokeswoman «» Swedish Migration Board told the Middle East »« yesterday that Sweden received in 7394 to seek refuge from the Iraqis in 2006 (with the exception of last December, which has yet to announce the statistics yet), and they approved 7815 applications, noting that the request was 421 last year.

According to official statistics, the 397 Iraqis applied for asylum in Sweden for the month of January (January) 2006, rising to 556 requests in March (March), before hitting 852 in August (August), and multiply in November of 1610 (November) last, in the chronicle of the rise in the numbers of asylum applications in Iraq.

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The Ministry of the Interior-M / press conference.
(Voice of Iraq) - 03-01-2007

The name of God the Merciful Brotherhood media and the respectable media M / press conference.

The Brigadier Abdul Karim Khalaf, Director of the national leadership of the Ministry of the Interior held a "press" important "on the achievements of the Interior Ministry and security developments in the recent and sharp one in the afternoon of Thursday, January 4, 2007 in the ((Center of the Ministry of the Interior)), and also there will be another activity after the press conference 0

We ask you to all our brothers and media briefing viewers attend at the time and place designated to cover the proceedings of the Conference through your institutions august 00 and there will be a bus to transport journalists from the door to the headquarters of the ministry of the Conference and vice versa 0 With sincere appreciation and respect The Ministry of the Interior

Sotaliraq.com

An American University for Iraq but Not in Baghdad
03/01/2007
Source: The New York Times

It would be an ambitious project even in a Middle Eastern country not embroiled in war: build an American-style university where classes are taught in English, teachers come from around the world and graduates compete for lucrative jobs in fields like business and computer science.

Yet some of the leading lights of Iraq’s political and intellectual classes are doing exactly that, even as the bloodshed widens.

Their planned American University of Iraq is modeled after the famous private universities in Cairo and Beirut. The project’s managers have a board of trustees; a business plan recently completed by McKinsey & Company, an international consulting firm; three candidates for university president; and $25 million, much of it in pledges from the American government and Kurdish sources. To fulfill their dream, they need much more: $200 million to $250 million over 15 years, said Azzam Alwash, the board’s executive secretary.

But if it does become a reality, the university will not be built in Baghdad, which for centuries was a beacon of learning in the Arab world.

Instead, it is slated for what is the most non-Iraqi part of Iraq. The site is on a windswept hilltop along the outskirts of Sulaimaniya, the eastern capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, 150 miles north of Baghdad and far from the car bombs and death squads that are tearing apart the Arab regions of Iraq. Because of its relative safety so far, Kurdistan can more easily attract aid and reconstruction money.

With doctors, engineers, businesspeople, academics and students among the hundreds of thousands fleeing to neighboring countries or the West, the university raises hopes of stanching the country’s enormous brain drain and pushing Iraq forward.

“You really need to develop the political elite of the future, the educated elite of the future,” said Barham Salih, the project’s Kurdish founder, a deputy prime minister who received a doctorate in statistics and computer modeling from Liverpool University in Britain, and whose daughter attends Princeton. “The focus is also to stimulate reform in the Iraqi education system.”

However, some Arab education officials in Baghdad, the capital, have argued that the university should be built there, not in a part of Iraq where secessionist ambitions are well known.

Baghdad first achieved fame for its schools and scholars during the Abbasid caliphate, which reached its height in the eighth century. Even in the 20th century, before the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s and international economic sanctions of the 1990s, students from the region flocked to Baghdad.

But because of security threats, many universities in Baghdad have been closed since October. Up to 150 employees from the Ministry of Higher Education were abducted by men in commando uniforms in mid-November. Jihadist groups have threatened to kill students on campuses.

So intellectuals like Kanan Makiya, the prominent former exile and writer who strongly advocated for the American invasion, say they plan to move their research projects to the American University. Mr. Makiya founded the Iraq Memory Foundation, an organization based in the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad that is documenting Saddam Hussein’s atrocities.

“The problem is nobody can thrive in Baghdad anymore,” said Mr. Makiya, who teaches Middle Eastern studies at Brandeis University and sits on the new university’s board of trustees. “The north is much more stable, growing, prosperous.”

“There is a sadness that we’re being driven out of Baghdad,” he added.

The university’s planners plan to make Mr. Makiya’s documentary project the core of the humanities department. Mr. Alwash, an environmental scientist, has said he will use the university as a base for his research project, which is about rejuvenating the southern marshlands.

Other prominent intellectual and political figures, many of whom supported the American invasion, are on the board. They include Fouad Ajami, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at Johns Hopkins, and John Agresto, an education adviser in the Coalition Provisional Authority who, as he ended his tenure there in 2004, told a reporter he was “a neoconservative who’s been mugged by reality.”

The planners have sketched a rough schedule. Construction would start in the spring, and the first 15 to 30 students could begin a six-month intensive English course, to be taught in rented space here in Sulaimaniya, before they start a two-year master’s program in business administration. The first class to earn bachelor’s degrees would start in fall 2008; the program would take five years, with the first devoted to the study of English, Mr. Alwash said.

Although the university has regional aspirations like its counterparts in Cairo and Beirut, the first undergraduate class would be mostly Iraqis, Mr. Alwash said, and a majority probably Kurds.

In the university’s first five years, degree programs would focus on subjects that the board judges to be crucial to Iraq’s development: business, petroleum engineering and computer science, for example. “This has to have immediate practical consequences for the economy of Iraq and the politics of Iraq,” Mr. Salih, the founder, said.

After five years, the university may add humanities degree programs.

“We want them to study the ideas of Locke, the ideas and writings of Paine and Madison,” Mr. Alwash, the executive secretary, said. “We want them to understand what democracy is — not only majority rule, but also the rights of minorities. They should be well rounded.”

Projected undergraduate enrollment is 1,000 students by 2011 and 5,000 by 2021. The numbers are small compared with enrollment at Baghdad University, the country’s flagship public university, which has 70,000 students. Sulaimaniya University here has about 12,000 students.

In total, about 475,000 Iraqis are pursuing college-level degrees across the country, in 21 public universities or colleges, 18 private ones and about 40 technical institutes, according to the American Embassy.

Tuition at American University would be $8,500 to $10,000 a year, Mr. Alwash said. That places the university beyond the reach of the average middle-class Iraqi family. But Mr. Salih said the school planned to give loans and scholarships.

Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador and an alumnus of the university in Beirut, has promised that American agencies will give the school $10.5 million, possibly the largest donation by the United States to any single education project in Iraq, if American officials approve the business plan. Mr. Khalilzad, a native Afghan, helped found the American University of Kabul after the American military ousted the Taliban from Afghanistan in 2001.

Some Kurds fear that the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the governing party of eastern Kurdistan led by Mr. Talabani and Mr. Salih, could end up diverting money from the university for its own purposes. Among many Kurds, the main Kurdish parties have a reputation for corruption and authoritarian rule.

“I hope this will not just be party propaganda, because we need a real academic center for this society,” said Asos Hardi, the editor in chief of a weekly newspaper here. “Having a Western-style university in Iraq would help strengthen education here and across the country.”

http://www.iraqdirectory.com/DisplayNews.aspx?id=2872

Iraq Government Focusing on Rebuilding Oil Industry
03/01/2007
Source: VOA

Iraq's Kurds, Sunnis, and Shi'ites are bickering over how to distribute the nation's potentially vast oil revenue. In the meantime, energy officials are trying to rebuild the battered industry while saboteurs are busy attacking pipelines and other facilities.

Insurgents often attack Iraq's pipelines and other key oil facilities, leaving them in flames.

The damage is frustrating efforts to rebuild Iraq's crucial oil industry, which is the most important sector of the nation's economy.

Iraq currently produces around two and a half million barrels of oil a day, far below its potential. Iraq's Oil Minister, Hussain al-Shahristani, wants to change that. "Our current plan is to increase production of crude oil over the coming five years to between four and four-and-a-half million barrels per day."

Al-Shahristani says he hopes to quickly make deals with major foreign oil companies, and use their advanced technology to help Iraq reach its huge potential.

But former Iraqi Oil Minister Issam Al-Chalabi says the dangerous security situation has kept all but some small foreign companies out of the country.

"There is no way that any company, any proper company, an international oil company or national oil company or anybody with some sense in his mind would be willing to go into Iraq invest money and develop those services."

Al-Chalabi says major oil companies, like ExxonMobil or Shell, are also discouraged by uncertainties over Iraq's proposed laws governing their industry. The political situation is complicated by the uneven distribution of Iraq's oil.

The bulk of the petroleum is in the southern part of the country, mostly populated by Shi'ites. Some Shi'ite leaders are pressing for autonomy for their region. Another portion of the oil is in northern Iraq where many Kurds live. The area already enjoys considerable autonomy from the central government. The center of the country is thought to contain much less oil and is home to the Sunni Arabs who ruled the nation under Saddam Hussein.

Each of the Iraqi factions is bargaining hard for laws that favor their access to this crucial resource. Iraq's new constitution says the nation's oil belongs to all Iraqis, but the rival factions interpret the document in different ways. Kurds have already signed agreements with small foreign oil companies searching for new oil.

But Iraq's Oil Minister al-Shahristani says such contracts should be signed or approved by the central government. That prompted the Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Region of northern Iraq, Nechirvan Barzani, to threaten to break away from the country. And prompted visiting U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to try to smooth things over with Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani.

"As for the revenues of oil, stipulated in the constitution, we are for a fair distribution of the oil revenues all over Iraq," said the president.

The Kurdish leader did not repeat his colleague's strong rhetoric in public.

Meantime, the Kurdistan regional legislature has been working on a new "Petroleum Law" while the central government has been working on a new "Hydrocarbon Law."

It is not clear if these different pieces of legislation will resolve the dispute between the central government and the Kurdistan regional government, or ease friction over oil between Sunni and Shi'ites in the south.

But an influential study of Iraq by leading U.S. experts [the Iraq Study Group] called an oil law guaranteeing equitable revenue distribution of revenues crucial to national reconciliation. And experts say clarifying the legal status of foreign oil companies will make it easier for Iraq to attract the foreign expertise and technology needed to rebuild the oil industry.

Iraq has opened some new facilities, such as a refinery in Najaf, with ceremony and heavy security. "God willing, this refinery could process 30,000 barrels a day," said an oil engineer at the refinery.

If political disputes are solved and security improved, many experts say Iraq could eventually produce about six million barrels of crude oil per day.

Former oil minister Al-Chalabi says current high oil prices mean a healthy oil industry could bring in $100-billion a year in revenue, enough to easily rebuild the oil sector -- and fund reconstruction of much of the rest of the troubled nation.

http://www.iraqdirectory.com/DisplayNews.aspx?id=2873

Khaleej Times Online >> News >> FOCUS ON IRAQ

Maliki wants to punish leaker of Saddam film
(AFP)

3 January 2007



BAGHDAD - Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki wants to punish a senior official who filmed Saddam Hussein’s execution then leaked the footage showing him taunted by Shiite guards, officials said Wednesday.


“He’s very serious about this inquiry, and he wants to punish whoever is responsible,” said a Shiite lawmaker with close links to the premier.

A second deputy who attended Saturday’s execution himself, Sami Al Askari, said that Maliki had ordered a three-strong panel of officials to find which of the guests at the hanging filmed it using a mobile phone.

Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier General Abdel Karim Khalaf also confirmed the setting up of the committee and said “it is working secretly and we can’t give details.”

“Whoever is responsible for leaking the film will be punished.”

On Tuesday, Munqith Al Faroon, the prosecutor who oversaw the execution, said in an interview broadcast on Al Jazeera: “There were only two people who had mobile phones inside the room. I don’t want to say their names.”

“They were senior government officials,” he said.

Aside from Askari, who has denied filming, there were a handful of other officials present at the ousted dictator’s hanging, including National Security Adviser Mowaffaq Al Rubaie, who was not available for comment.

The unofficial video has triggered a raging controversy in Iraq with angry outbursts from Sunni Arab loyalists of Saddam and also heavy criticisms from international leaders.

Khaleej Times Online >> News >> FOCUS ON IRAQ

Top Iraqi Sunni tribal chief dies after rooftop fall
(AFP)

3 January 2007



BAGHDAD - A 75-year-old chief from Iraq’s powerful Tamin tribe was thrown to his death from the top of a Baghdad building after gunmen kidnapped him from a funeral, a relative said Wednesday.


Sheikh Hamed Mohammed Suhail, a Sunni leader in a mixed Sunni and Shiite tribe, was seized from the funeral in Agarguff area near Abu Ghraib on the western outskirts of Baghdad two days ago.

“He was dragged from the funeral and taken to Shuala area in Baghdad and then thrown from the top of a building,” his nephew, tribal leader Sheikh Ali Suhail Al Tamimi, told AFP, blaming Shiite militants.

Shuala is a Shiite neighbourhood in western Baghdad.

Although Mohammed Suhail is a Sunni, nearly two thirds of his tribe is Shiite and he was known as a moderate who was working to reconcile Baghdad’s warring communities, his nephew said.

“We accuse the Mahdi Army of killing him in this ugly way,” Suhail said, pointing the finger at radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Al Sadr’s militia, which has been accused of killing Sunni Arabs in Iraq’s sectarian conflict.

Suhail said his uncle died in a Shuala hospital.

“We demand that Mahdi army operating in the Agarguff area be investigated. These militias want nothing but sectarian war,” Suhail charged.

Tamim is a leading tribe in the Arab world with clans in countries like Syria and Jordan as well as Iraq.

Khaleej Times Online >> News >> FOCUS ON IRAQ

Bush promises new Iraq policy soon
(AFP)

3 January 2007



WASHINGTON - US President George W. Bush promised on Wednesday to present a new Iraq policy in the days ahead amid warnings that even members of his own Republican party oppose escalating the unpopular war.


The president has previously said he is considering “all options,” including a temporary increase of US troops in Iraq.

Winning the war in Iraq and making tax cuts passed by the Republican-controlled Congress in 2001 permanent—two issues in which the president has butted heads with Democrats—were the top priorities, Bush wrote in a column in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal newspaper.

Bush’s Republican Party lost control of Congress on November 7, a defeat attributed to the unpopular war in Iraq war.

Writing on the eve of the Democratic takeover both the Senate and the House of Representatives, Bush warned however of partisanship, which he said could lead to a “stalemate.”

“In the days ahead, I will be addressing our nation about a new strategy to help the Iraqi people gain control of the security situation and hasten the day when the Iraqi government gains full control over its affairs,” he wrote.

“Ultimately, Iraqis must resolve the most pressing issues facing them. We can’t do it for them. But we can help Iraq defeat the extremists inside and outside of Iraq—and we can help provide the necessary breathing space for this young government to meet its responsibilities.”

If democracy fails “and the extremists prevail in Iraq, then America’s enemies will be stronger, more lethal, and emboldened by our defeat.

“Leaders in both parties understand the stakes in this struggle. We now have the opportunity to build a bipartisan consensus to fight and win the war,” he wrote.

However to reach common goals “we can’t play politics as usual,” Bush wrote.

“If the Congress chooses to pass bills that are simply political statements, they will have chosen stalemate,” Bush wrote. “If a different approach is taken, the next two years can be fruitful ones for our nation.”

Bush will meet congressional leaders of both major US parties Wednesday for informal talks on a range of issues including Iraq, an administration official said Tuesday.

“I’d expect a range of topics about the year ahead to be discussed among the group, including Iraq,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Bush has been holding consultations ahead of a speech, expected as early as next week, in which he is expected to unveil a new strategy for Iraq, possibly including an increase of troop numbers there.

Most opposition Democrats, some prominent Republicans, and the top US military commander in Baghdad, General George Casey, have warned against a prolonged expansion in the US military presence.

Republican Senator Chuck Hagel is strongly opposed to more troops, describing it to a newspaper columnist as a policy of “Alice in Wonderland.”

And one of the most respected Republican foreign policy experts, Senator Richard Lugar, has urged the White House to first consult with lawmakers