Thread: Iraqi/Dinar News before 3-12-2007 7:45PM CentralTimeZone

Looks like we're waiting on Kuwait, Saudi and Russia to forgive debt for a clean sweep. Read a while back Kuwait and Saudi were 'in discussions' so hopefully they'll be next.

Reading the above the impression is the IMF are happy. They have a big meeting mid April to discuss Iraq.....

"Iraq will be submitted to the International Monetary Fund in the month of April next report shows when Iraq's fulfillment of its obligations on the economic reforms that request. "

Originally Posted by Adster

Looks like we're waiting on Kuwait, Saudi and Russia to forgive debt for a clean sweep. Read a while back Kuwait and Saudi were 'in discussions' so hopefully they'll be next.

Reading the above the impression is the IMF are happy. They have a big meeting mid April to discuss Iraq.....

"Iraq will be submitted to the International Monetary Fund in the month of April next report shows when Iraq's fulfillment of its obligations on the economic reforms that request. "

I'm sure the Russians will oblige like the Chinese if they hope to have those old oil contracts kicked back into life.

Originally Posted by Onenomad

I'm sure the Russians will oblige like the Chinese if they hope to have those old oil contracts kicked back into life.

Agreed, am surprised they've not already done it. I recently read that Russia with Japan are ready to send teams in asap once the HCL is implemented. Quite probable the other 2 will be forgiven over the next couple of weeks too......

Just wanted to say thanks for all the outstatnding information in the last couple weeks, keep up the good work family...
a BIG WOOOT TO EVERYONE

Iraq's VP urges Arab efforts to help end Iraqi crisis
Last Updated(Beijing Time):2007-03-06 14:27

Visiting Iraqi Vice President Tarek al-Hashemi Monday called for Arab and regional efforts to help end the crisis of Iraqis, Syrian official SANA news agency reported.
"The situation in Iraq becomes part of the Arab national security, so the Arab and regional efforts must be rallied to put an urgent and suitable end to crisis of the Iraqis at this stage that guarantees stability of the situation in Iraq in particular and in the region in general," Hashemi was quoted as saying.

The Iraqi vice president made the remarks upon arriving here earlier in the day on an official visit to Syria at the invitation of his Syrian counterpart Farouk al-Shara.

Hashemi said his visit came within the framework of visits to Arab capitals to discuss issues of common interests, especially the Iraq issue, while underlining the importance of bilateral relations between the two countries.

"Syria, as a sister and neighboring country, has joint interests with Iraq regarding the political, economic, social, and security files," he added.

"We are looking for remarkable results of this visit in all domains and we will review with senior Syrian officials many topics on the necessity to push bilateral relations to advanced stages ...so as to help and save the Iraqis from the tough situation they are facing," he said.

Hashemi would hold talks with senior Syrian officials on the latest developments in the region, particularly the situation in Iraq and bilateral relations, the report said.

The visit came just days before a highly-anticipated conference in Baghdad which would host Iraq's neighboring countries, including Syria and Iran, and other world powers on March 10 in a bid to rally support to stabilize the war-wracked country.

Damascus and Baghdad restored diplomatic ties last November after a quarter-century's rupture. Senior Iraqi officials have paid several visits to Damascus ever since.

In January, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani paid a landmark visit here in which he signed a joint statement with his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad on improving bilateral relations in all fields.

The two countries severed diplomatic relations in the 1980swhen Syria sided with Tehran during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war.

Damascus has been accused of doing too little to stop militants and weapons from infiltrating into Iraq and inflaming chaos there. But Syria has insisted that it has done its best to control the long and porous common borders.





Source:Xinhuanet
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Glimmer of hope for Baghdad
By Amir Taheri, Special to Gulf News



On March 10, Baghdad will host the largest gathering of foreign diplomats it has seen since the 1970s. With more than 200 diplomats representing 70 nations, including all major powers, the gathering is a target of choice for opponents of new Iraq.

Two insurgent groups have warned they would not allow the conference to convene.

Called by the Iraqi government, the conference offers the international community, especially the Arab states, an opportunity to end their unofficial boycott of new Iraq. It also provides an early test for the new plan to secure Baghdad with the help of more than 20,000 additional American troops.

Holding the conference a month after the plan was launched is a gesture of defiance towards terror groups who have promised to challenge any move to normalise the capital.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki called the conference after receiving assurances from two men who may hold the key to the future of Iraq.

One is Lt General David Petraeus, the new commander of the US-led multinational force, who took charge last month. The other is Major General Abboud Qanbar, the Iraqi commander in Baghdad.

Despite being under the limelight of Congressional and media scrutiny for weeks, Petraeus is still regarded as a hard man to read.

He evokes a mixture of admiration and envy within the American military elite.

One recently retired American general, speaking off-the-record last week, described Petraeus as "a precocious general" who had "new ideas" and wanted "to do things differently". Well, maybe that is not a bad thing, seeing that old ways of doing things seem to have trouble with new forms of asymmetric war.

If Petraeus is still a relative unknown, his Iraqi partner Qanbar is even more of an enigma.

The two men have what might be the most difficult task assigned to military commanders in recent history.

They have to work with two dysfunctional governments that, in turn, have to fight hostile legislatures and media. They know that well-organised opponents of new Iraq are determined to portray any setback as proof that the war is lost.

The same retired US general, who spoke of Petraeus with grudging admiration, says he is "impressed and surprised" by Qanbar's performance.

"The guy seems to be the right man in the right place at the right time," said the retired general. "All the feedback on him is positive."

That opinion is shared by some in the Iraqi military elite, including many generals purged under the new regime's de-Baathification programme.

In interviews with the Baghdad daily Al Mada (Perspective), several former Iraqi generals said they were "confident" that Qanbar was "the man needed to clear Baghdad" of terrorists and death-squads.

But is Qanbar the "saviour" (munqidh) that some Baghdadis, desperate for normality, seem to imagine?

Qanbar has some positive features. He is one of the few Shiite soldiers to rise to positions of command in the Iraqi army under the Baath party. Born in Amarah, he comes from the same tribe as Al Maliki and thus is trusted by him. Many purged army officers see Qanbar's return to service as a sign that they, too, might be invited to re-enlist.

Serious error

The Iraqi army has always been the key non-sectarian institution preserving the concept of statehood in a land of different ethnic and religious communities.

Its dissolution was a serious error and its reconstitution, in the service of an elected government, could reassure the aggrieved Arab Sunnis and secularists that new Iraq will not be a Shiite sectarian state.

The success of the Baghdad plan, based on US President George W. Bush's "surge" strategy, depends on too many imponderables beyond the control of Petraeus and Qanbar.

So far only a fifth of the troops promised have arrived, and even fewer have been deployed. The new US Congress may cut funding for the "surge" or impose such constraints on the use of American troops as to render them meaningless in practical terms.

So far, however, things seem to have gone better than expected.

To start with, Iraqi units assigned to Qanbar have all shown up and seem to be performing well. This is in contrast with previous attempts to secure Baghdad when only 10 per cent of Iraqi units promised showed up.

By the time the new build up is complete, Qanbar will have 10 Iraqi brigades in and around Baghdad. Contrary to claims by opponents of new Iraq that the plan would depend on Kurdish units, only 15 per cent of the troops used are Kurds.

There has also been a sharp drop in sectarian killings. More importantly, perhaps, the insurgents appear to have all but stopped infantry style attacks on Iraqi and US positions.

According to Iraqi and US sources, the deployment of new units in Baghdad has persuaded many fence-sitters to stop hedging their bets. Intelligence tip-offs in the five most terrorist-infested districts of the capital have risen four-fold since February.

According to US and Iraqi sources more than 2,000 insurgents and terrorists have been killed and a further 8,000 captured.

Sign

Another sign that the new plan may be working is the virtual disappearance of Moqtada Al Sadr's Mehdi Army, described by some opponents of new Iraq as "the strongest military force in the country".

Al Sadr remains in Iran while more than 100 of his key associates are under arrest. Accompanied by US troops, Qanbar's units control Sadr City, the fugitive's stronghold.

Perhaps the most important sign of confidence in the new plan is Qanbar's invitation to families who have fled to return. Since 2005 an estimated 60,000 Baghdadi families, both Sunnis, Shiites and Christians, have been driven out of their homes in what amounts to ethnic cleansing through intimidation.

Qanbar has declared all seizure of property in Baghdad to be illegal and promised to remove squatters. In the past two weeks some 700 families, mostly Sunnis, have regained their homes in Baghdad.

In recent days Baghdadis have seen Qanbar walking along Haifa Street, the heart of the capital's badlands. They have also seen Al Maliki venture out of the "Green Zone" to press flesh in a campaign-style walkabout, the first by an Iraqi prime minister since 2004.

Does this mean that Petraeus and Qanbar have already succeeded?

It is too early to tell.

What is certain, however, is that they have shown that, given the will and the means, success is possible.

Iranian author Amir Taheri is based in Europe.

Iraq seeks to reopen Syria pipeline



Azzaman, March 6, 2007



The Ministry of Oil is keen to diversify export outlets and is considering the possibility of reopening the pipeline via Syria.



Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahrastani said both countries were “keen to reactivate the pipeline for the transfer of crude oil via Syrian territories.”



But he said no agreement has been reached yet because the pipeline itself is in need of rehabilitation.



The pipeline has been idle since the U.S. invasion and was only reopened for the export of limited amounts of crude in the two years before the overthrow of the former leader Saddam Hussein.



“The repair of the pipeline is a complicated process because no oil has been flowing through it for a long time,” the minister said.



“The pipeline’s rehabilitation,” the minister said, “will need many requirements which will have to be met by both sides.”



But Shahrastani said before talk of a resumption of exports via Syria or repair of the pipeline the security situation has to be dealt with first.



He said the pipeline was already target of acts of sabotage inside Iraqi territory.



“It is important for the Syrian side to prevent the infiltration of saboteurs from its territories who target Iraqis and Iraq’s vital installations namely pipelines and oil projects,” Shahrastani said.

RUSSIAN OIL COMPANY READY TO DRILL IN IRAQ
LUKoil President Vagit Alekperov said his company is ready to begin an exploration and development project in Iraq's Western Qurna-2 field within 26 months should the Iraqi government approve LUKoil's proposals, ITAR-TASS reported on March 6. "I hope that the Iraqi government will take rationality of our proposals at their true value," Alekperov said. The oil field, considered Iraq's largest with reserves of around 6 billion tons, is located northwest of Al-Basrah. Meanwhile, Chinese oil officials will meet with Iraqi government representatives in Baghdad on March 6 to discuss Hussein-era contracts, Reuters reported on March 5. Before the 2003 Iraq war, China reached a $700 million deal with Saddam Hussein's government to develop the Al-Ahdab oil field, also located in southern Iraq. KR

Iraqi Kurdistan: Three Suggestions


Wednesday, March 07, 2007

MaximsNews.com - By Ashley Bommer

Kurdistan is a mystery to most of the world. Say that you are going to Kurdistan. Most people may ask if you will be seeing Borat, the over-the-top, fictional character from Kazakhstan.

But say that you are going to Northern Iraq, what the nation’s neighbors, Turkey and Iran, call Kurdistan. People will ask "why?" followed by a grim "be safe."

True, the Kurds of Iraq have been cursed by history. With a population of over four million, under Saddam Hussein's brutal regime, thousands were poisoned by gas, millions were driven from their homes, and more than 3,000 of their villages were razed.

Now, in the midst of war, history should pay careful attention to what may happen next. The danger Kurdistan faces is overwhelming.

Their peripheral region falls between two hostile capitals, Ankara and Tehran. Below, what is now known as the world’s deadliest capital -- Baghdad.

In the middle of a political earthquake, what can Kurdistan possibly do to keep from being buried alive?

Above all, Kurdistan must protect its security. Driving through checkpoints and military posts, the reminder of what once had happened -- and what could happen again -- lingers thick.

But instead of mobilizing for their own protection, they are being told by the U.S. Commanding General in Baghdad to send their local forces, the peshmergas, known as one of the best fighting forces in the world, to Baghdad to fight a sectarian war.

The Kurdistan Regional Government is willing to protect American forces, but a smarter solution would be to use the peshmergas as a Rapid Reaction Force in Northern Iraq.

In November 2005, when US troops were in trouble in Mosul, President Barzani sent 5,000 peshmergas within one hour to help.

Rapid Reaction in Northern Iraq and along their frontier border towns -- including Kirkuk, Mosul and Diyala -- is where they are most effective, not as permanent deployments in Baghdad.

Second, establish and maintain a political dialogue which will create benchmarks with Ankara. Right now if you ask the Iraqi Kurds who is their biggest problem -- the Turks or the Arabs -- the almost unanimous response is the Turks.

The reason: years of suspicion, distrust, and conflicts over hot button issues such as oilfields, the status of Kirkuk, the PKK (the armed political movement of the Kurds that the US Government classifies as a terrorist organization) and Kurdistan's unknown future independence.

Before these conflicts destroy Kurdistan and Turkey's hope for a cooperative trade agreement and future, a dialogue leading to agreements on trade, Kirkuk and the PKK, between the two governments is necessary.

Lastly, but no less critical, the promotion of foreign direct investment and trade with the rest of the world. The Kurdistan Regional Government should invite Heads of Government and US Members of Congress to their capital, Irbil, to visit.

They should encourage and actively recruit business and hotel leaders to come as well. To generate economic growth, they should consider making Kurdistan a free economic zone. The zone concept based on low tariffs, tax holidays, and other investment incentives could be an important component of their strategy.

According to the Kurdistan Regional Government, already over 300 Turkish companies have come to Kurdistan, generating over a billion in foreign direct investment. More initiatives to bring in further foreign direct investment are needed.

The world can and will be quietly charmed by Kurdistan. An autonomous region that prides itself on learning -- so much so that there is a quill on their flag to symbolize education -- Kurdistan's leaders are visionary and reflective.

And their people, the Iraqi Kurds, are hard working and proud. The food is fresh, especially the sinfully sweet honeycomb, and the hospitality is unrivaled. If only more people would go and share a meal with them.

With daily flights to Irbil from Istanbul, and four flights a week from Amman; Kurdistan is not impossible to get to. And under the "if you build it, they will come," motto, the Iraqi Kurds are actively preparing to welcome foreign visitors.

Driving from the airport to the city, you feel like you have discovered Northern Iraq's version of Pudong (the futuristic city outside of Shanghai). New construction, apartments, and freshly planted trees line the drive like dominos.

The road ahead won't be easy. Kurdistan's long term strategy lies upon the Kurdistan Regional Government and the Iraqi Kurds's willingness to focus on the future, rather than the past.

Not many people can overcome years of oppression, terror, and war -- and head to the negotiating table -- but Iraqi Kurds are peshmergas as well as attentive students.


What seems like a quagmire to most, can most certainly bear an opportunity to them.


Maxims News Website

Small party breaks away from Iraq Shi’ite bloc

3/7/2007 Reuters
BAGHDAD, March 7 (Reuters) - A Shi'ite Islamist party said on Wednesday it was withdrawing from the powerful Iraqi Shi'ite coalition that has dominated Iraq's politics since elections in 2005.

The Fadhila party, which holds 15 of parliament's 275 seats, said it was open to join other blocs as long as they had no sectarian basis. The move could weaken the ruling United Iraqi Alliance, which holds a near majority in parliament.

"The Fadhila bloc announces its withdrawal from the United Iraqi Alliance and will sit in parliament as an independent bloc awaiting moves from other political blocs to launch a patriotic agenda," senior party official Nadim al-Jabiri told a news conference.

"We consider the first step of saving Iraq is to dismantle these blocs and to prevent blocs forming on a sectarian basis," Jabiri said.

The Alliance was formed just before the elections in 2005 with the blessing of top Shi'ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al- Sistani with the main goal of protecting the interests of the Shi'ite majority, oppressed under Saddam Hussein.

Sunni Arabs and ethnic Kurds also formed blocs on sectarian and ethnic backgrounds to run in the elections in 2005.

Fadhila has long been at odds with the six other major parties inside the Shi'ite bloc and stayed away from Nuri al- Maliki's government when it did not receive the Oil Ministry.

The move could see Fadhila, which is influential in oil-rich Basra, courted to join a new coalition made up of former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's secular bloc alongside the main Sunni bloc in parliament that aims to offer a counterweight to the dominant Alliance bloc.