Thread: Iraq/Dinar News Up until April 5th 5PM CTZ.

Police train in law, human rights
Thursday, 29 March 2007
By Maj. Eric Verzola
4th Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division



A graduate of the Iraqi Police Sustainment Training program receives his diploma and shakes hands with Brig. Gen. Faris at Forward Operating Base Kalsu, March 24, 2007. U.S. Army courtesy photo.FORWARD OPERATING BASE KALSU — The Iraqi Police Sustainment Training program on Forward Operating Base Kalsu graduated its second class March 24 as part of Babil and Karbala provinces' journey towards provincial Iraqi control.

The Karbala police sent 35 officers and the Babil police sent 15. After 10 days of training in the art and science of police work, the graduates felt excited and honored to serve the people of Iraqi.

"This was a good group of policemen who were willing to learn and were very excited about getting out there and doing their job," said Lonnie Webb, a native of Homerville, Ga., and member of the Homerville Police Department who assisted with the training.

"Like all law enforcement officers, training is the keystone to professionalism and training these Iraqi police officers during this program was effective," said Webb.

The effectiveness of the Iraqi police is important in a province's journey to provincial Iraqi control, and the officers want their country to be secure.

"These men understand that doing their duties may call for the ultimate sacrifice of giving their lives for the safety and security of the province, and more importantly, the people of their respective provinces," said Col. Michael Garrett, commander, 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division and native of Cleveland, Ohio.

"The unique part of the training in this program is that when possible, two different provinces train together; they see that although they are from different provinces, they are brothers-in-arms with their fellow Iraqi security forces of this country."

"Another unique and important part of their training here was the addition of practical law, rule of law, and human rights as part of the training," said Garrett. "This is very important; it is the link between an arrest and conviction of criminals in these two provinces and everywhere that the rule of law prevails."

"These graduates are true sons of Iraq and their respective provinces and the people of Iraq should be proud of their accomplishments during this program," added Garrett.

In attendance at the graduation was the deputy police chief of Babil province, Brig. Gen. Faris, who provided remarks to the graduates.

"I thank Col. Garrett for this course which will help prepare our police to do their jobs more effectively," said Faris. "I am proud of them, their sacrifice and their willingness to serve their province and nation."

Originally Posted by Adster

Exactly bro, what is more interesting and you love your numbers do you ever remember seeing more than $2 million worth of dinar being sold at the auction? I don't, ever.

Could the above $25 million worth of dinars be the lower denoms, last auction of the week etc........

No, that $25 million definitely raised my eyebrows this morning. Shabibi is always full of surprises.

Iraq security talks under threat


Thursday, Mar 29, 2007

Diplomatic wrangling about a venue and renewed tensions over Iran threaten to delay a conference on Iraq billed as a high-profile meeting to promote regionalco-operation on security.

Iraqi officials say Baghdad is considering holding the foreign ministerial conference - a rare, high-level meeting between the US and Iran - in a European capital or a "neutral" country in the region, following failure to agree on three suggested locations: Baghdad, Istanbul and Cairo.

International strains over Iran also risk complicating plans for the meeting, which is supposed to take place next month and include foreign ministers from the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council as well as all Iraq's neighbours. Iraqi officials say the crisis following the seizure of the 15 British navy personnel and the tighter UN sanctions against Tehran for its nuclear -programme make co-operation more difficult.

Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi foreign minister, met Manouchehr Mottaki, the Iranian foreign minister, on the margins of the Arab summit in Riyadh yesterday as Baghdad sought to mediate in the seizure of the 15.

Iraq wanted the regional gathering, designed as afollow-up to last month's lower-level Baghdad meeting, to again be held in the Iraqi city.

But several neighbours are reluctant to send high-level delegations to a war zone and Baghdad itself is unsure if it has the capacity to host the high-profile gathering.

The Iraqis, however, are opposed to holding the conference in Istanbul or Cairo, which have offered to host it, arguing that Turkey and Egypt are "sensitive" locations with a direct interest in Iraq. Iraqi Kurds are particularly sensitive about Turkey, while Shia are wary of Egypt.

Iraqi officials say the meeting is now likely to be held at the end of April in Europe or one of the Arab states that is not participating in the conference.

Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, described last month's conference as a way of shielding Iraq from being used as a proxy for other conflicts in the region.

Bringing the US and Iran together was a diplomatic breakthrough for the Iraqis. But the troubled planning for the ministerial meeting highlights the difficulty of separating co-operation over Iraq from other regional -tensions.

It also underlines the dilemma facing the government in seeking its neighbours' help without subjecting itself to political pressure. An Iraqi official said: "The government is worried about internationalising the Iraq issue and being subjected to new dictates, and we want a place without a political agenda."

Iraqi officials are also concerned that the tensions between Iran and world powers will reflect on plans for the conference. Iran, they say, was reluctant to attend last month's Baghdad meeting before the US military releases five Iranians seized in January in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil.

By ROULA KHALAF


© Copyright The Financial Times Ltd 2007

Jordan: Gov't denies news reports on visa requirements for Iraqis


26 March 2007





AMMAN -- The government on Sunday denied news reports claiming that Iraqis will soon need to obtain visas from Baghdad before entering Jordan.


"Iraqis will not need visas to enter into the Kingdom and there are no pre-conditions imposed on them before they reach the Jordanian border," Interior Ministry Spokesperson Zyad Al Zu'bi told The Jordan Times yesterday.


"We have not imposed any limits in any way for the number of Iraqis who are allowed to enter Jordan as it has been written in some newspapers," he added.


The spokesperson said the only official decision made thus far is "as of June 1 this year only Iraqis holding 'G' series passports will be allowed to enter the country. The old 'S' series passports will not be accepted for reasons of security."


Iraq began issuing the "G" series passport, which is machine-readable and more secure than older versions, on April 11, 2006.


The "S" series passport, first issued after former President Saddam Hussein was deposed and then during the rule of subsequent Iraqi governments, does not meet international security standards for issuance or design.


Earlier this month, Government Spokesperson Nasser Judeh said the Kingdom was considering plans to manage the entry of Iraqis into its territory and deal with hundreds of thousands already in the country, but did not mention visa regulations.


"There are several options that we are considering and there are certain procedures to be taken to organise Iraqis' entry into the Kingdom," Judeh said.


Sources told The Jordan Times that the Interior Ministry is looking at several options, including new visa regulations, but will not comment on the issue until a solid decision is made.


"The decision can still go either way... the Iraqi subject is obviously a priority in the government, we are not sleeping but we know this is a sensitive subject," one source said.


According to the UN refugee agency, there are around 750,000 to one million Iraqis in Jordan. Conservatively, this means that one in six persons in Jordan is an Iraqi.


"It would be like 40 million foreigners entering the US in one year... no one would blame the government if immediate decisions were made to curb the flow or if they appealed for emergency funds. In fact, most likely citizens would blame them if they did not," a UN source said.


Meanwhile, a comprehensive survey on Iraqis in Jordan began last Thursday and is being conducted by the independent Norwegian research foundation Fafo.


"The government's aim is to determine the number of Iraqis as well as their status in order to help manage their stay," Judeh told the Jordan News Agency, Petra.


The survey will also serve Iraqi interests, as identifying their numbers will help the government meet their needs and ease related procedures, he added.


The government spokesperson requested full cooperation from all concerned parties to ensure the success of the survey, which is scheduled to take several weeks, according to Petra.

By Linda Hindi

© Jordan Times 2007

Originally Posted by Adster

K.C.B. could take action on dinar at any time DUBAI - Kuwait’s central bank could take unspecified measures against speculation on the dinar currency at any time, perhaps as early as Sunday, Nabeel al-Mannae, the Deputy Central Bank Governor, told Reuters on Wednesday.
“If needed we could take action immediately,” he said in a telephone interview from Kuwait. “Any action could come next Sunday or Monday.”
He also ruled out capital controls on the dinar. The central bank said in a statement to Reuters earlier that it may take unspecified measures to deter speculation after noting increased buying.

Hey Adster,

I am confused, could you explain this one? Are they talking about Iraq's Central Bank or Kuwait's?????? What action are they talking about? Or is this all a GCC reference?

Foreign firms want to develop Missan oil fields, official



By Bassem al-Shaikh



Azzaman, March 28, 2007



The authorities in the southern province of Missan say they have received several requests from foreign firms to develop the province’s gigantic oil fields.



The officials refused to name the firms but said the relative stability which the province currently enjoys was luring both foreign and Iraq entrepreneurs to invest.



The province, which borders Iran, is among Iraq’s most impoverished with a rickety infrastructure.



It was a battle scene in the eight years of Iraq-Iran war.



“The provincial council has received offers from international and Arab firms to invest in the oil sector,” said Taha al-Dhaif, head of the Development Commission in the province.



He said investors were also interested in developing the province’s tourist infrastructure and have made several offers to construct hotels and other tourist installations.



Some of the finest Iraqi marshes are situated in the province and the officials said the wetlands were flourishing once again and the authorities were considering ways to turn into tourist attractions.



Dhaif said the council has an offer from a foreign firm to develop the massive West Gurna oil field, one of the largest unexplored oil fields in the country.



He said the council was keen to attract investors to help reduce the high unemployment rate and fight poverty.



The province relies mainly on agricultural produce as its huge oil fields, with billions of barrels of proven oil reserves, remain undeveloped.



Dhaif said the province was in need of power stations and it has already received an offer to construct one.



There have been requests to construct housing apartments, and rehabilitate idle industries such as the prefab factory.



Iraq has the third largest proven oil reserves in the world behind Saudi Arabia and Iran.



It is total proven reserves are estimated at 112 billion barrels, with as many as 220 billion barrels of resourced deemed probable.



Of the country’s 74 discovered and evaluated oil fields, only 15 have been developed.

Sebastian River Holding's, Inc., purchases 100 million Iraqi dinars; Company says chance of dinar equaling dollar 'feasible'
29 March 2007 (PortAl Iraq)
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Sebastian River Holding's, Inc., today announced that the company has joined the United States and has invested in the Iraqi economy by purchasing 100,000,000 Iraqi dinars.

The company feels that the investment will increase dramatically in the near future. As of today, 1,000,000 Iraqi dinars is equal to $784.93, according to the Central Bank of Iraq (CBI). Since it is nearly impossible to purchase directly from CBI, 1,000,000 Iraqi dinars is being sold as high as $1,340 in the United States, according to the company.

Prior to war with Iraq, the Iraqi dinar was valued as high as $3.20 per dinar; this means 1,000,000 dinars was worth as high as $3,200,000, the company explained in its announcement.

"We are on our way to become large investors in foreign currency," Sebastian River Holding's, Inc., President and CEO Daniel Duffy said. "Since Iraq has the largest natural gas reserve in the world and is the second largest proven oil reserves in the world with over 100,000,000,000 barrels of oil, the company feels that the dinar reaching one dinar per U.S. dollar is feasible. If the rate goes one dinar for one U.S. dollar, this would give Sebastian River Holding's, Inc., a profit of well over $99,000,000 from this one investment."

Sebastian River Holding's, Inc., purchases 100 million Iraqi dinars; Company says chance of dinar equaling dollar 'feasible' | Iraq Updates

A month old but a sign of life over there in Baghdad. And their GOI do nothing.....

http://www.reuters.com/article/lates.../idUSCOL040471

BAGHDAD, Feb 22 (Reuters) - Sitting amid mounds of rotting garbage in a rubbish dump in Baghdad, 13-year-old Huda Hamdan is the human face of a new U.N. report that says a third of war- torn Iraq's 26 million people live in poverty.

The teenager, wearing a black veil, is taking a break from scavenging for aluminium cans and glass bottles that she sells for a few Iraqi dinars. She tries not to gag from the stench of the decomposing household refuse surrounding her.

She and her six brothers and sisters compete with scores of other diggers, many children and women, made homeless by sectarian violence that has forced them to flee their homes and seek refuge in the sprawling Shi'ite slum of Sadr City.

Scores of displaced Shi'ite families have made the rubbish dump their home -- living in unsanitary conditions in tents, crude shacks made from oil cans or squatting in an empty building -- and trying to eke out the barest of livings.

A report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and an Iraqi government agency released on Sunday found that 5 percent of Iraqis live in extreme poverty, with Baghdad the least deprived area, and the southern provinces the worst.

The report said a third of Iraqis overall were living in poverty. It gave no comparison with previous years.

But the UNDP said the study "showed a deterioration in the living standards of Iraqis" since Iraq was a thriving middle- income country in the 1970s and 80s. Four years of war, following a decade of U.N. sanctions in the 1990s, has paralysed the economy and fuelled soaring unemployment.

"It shows the failure of the state authorities to provide adequate services to the population," UNDP said in a statement that also blamed Western-backed efforts to transform the economy into a free market for "exacerbating deprivation levels".

Hamdan said she and her siblings fled Falluja, a Sunni insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad, after a U.S. sniper shot dead her mother, leaving them orphaned. Now they live with her grandparents and uncles in Sadr City.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees estimates there are 1.6 million Iraqis displaced inside the country, including 425,000 who fled their homes after the bombing of the Samarra shrine in February 2006 unleashed a wave of sectarian violence.

"We are poor people. We have nothing," Hamdan says softly.

Holding up her right hand, she takes off a blue and white woollen glove that helps protect her injured hand against the filth and carefully unwraps a surprisingly clean bandage.

Her little finger was severed by the tailgate of a rubbish truck as scavengers crushed around it, desperate to search it before it dumped its load on to the rubbish heap.

Illness and infections among the diggers are common. Looking around the dump it's not hard to see why. Men, women and children, their clothes caked in thick grime, wade through fetid pools of water or climb mountains of garbage, poking through the rubbish with long, curved metal rods to hook the cans.

Fifteen-year-old Saif has struck lucky. "I found these," he said, holding up four flat breads. "We'll clean them and then eat them for breakfast. We have no money to buy food."

DANGER LURKS

Nearby, Ali al-Yateem, who looks older than his 10 years, heaves a large white canvas sack of cooldrink cans on to the scale of a local scrap merchant, who pays him 2,000 dinars ($1.50) after checking he has not weighted the bag with bricks.

Jawad Habib, 21, was forced from his home in Abu Ghraib, a Sunni stronghold on the western outskirts of Baghdad. He took a job as day labourer in construction, but when a suicide bomber blew up among a group of labourers he came to the dump.

Even there he has found danger lurking in the rotting debris. "I found a grenade and called the police." He was lucky. Other diggers say a young girl was killed in an explosion.

The plight of Ali, Huda, Saif and Jawad is the result of a "deeply complex political and security crisis with no quick apparent solution", the UNDP said in its report.

"I've been in conflict zones for 22 years. Iraq is unlike anything else on earth," UNDP country director Paolo Lembo told Reuters in an interview from Amman.

He said the Iran-Iraq war, the 1991 Gulf War, international sanctions and the chaos that followed the 2003 U.S.-led invasion had delivered a series of hammer blows to Iraq's economy that had created "a kind of deprivation that is unique".

"Will the situation improve in the immediate future? No, I don't think so, but that does not mean I am not optimistic. This country has an enormous wealth of resources."

Originally Posted by Adster

Exactly bro, what is more interesting and you love your numbers do you ever remember seeing more than $2 million worth of dinar being sold at the auction? I don't, ever.

Could the above $25 million worth of dinars be the lower denoms, last auction of the week etc........

i was thinking the same thing when I saw it. This is the largest back in number I can recall.

Originally Posted by Hkp

Sebastian River Holding's, Inc., purchases 100 million Iraqi dinars; Company says chance of dinar equaling dollar 'feasible'
29 March 2007 (PortAl Iraq)
Print article Send to friend

Sebastian River Holding's, Inc., today announced that the company has joined the United States and has invested in the Iraqi economy by purchasing 100,000,000 Iraqi dinars.

The company feels that the investment will increase dramatically in the near future. As of today, 1,000,000 Iraqi dinars is equal to $784.93, according to the Central Bank of Iraq (CBI). Since it is nearly impossible to purchase directly from CBI, 1,000,000 Iraqi dinars is being sold as high as $1,340 in the United States, according to the company.

Prior to war with Iraq, the Iraqi dinar was valued as high as $3.20 per dinar; this means 1,000,000 dinars was worth as high as $3,200,000, the company explained in its announcement.

"We are on our way to become large investors in foreign currency," Sebastian River Holding's, Inc., President and CEO Daniel Duffy said. "Since Iraq has the largest natural gas reserve in the world and is the second largest proven oil reserves in the world with over 100,000,000,000 barrels of oil, the company feels that the dinar reaching one dinar per U.S. dollar is feasible. If the rate goes one dinar for one U.S. dollar, this would give Sebastian River Holding's, Inc., a profit of well over $99,000,000 from this one investment."

Sebastian River Holding's, Inc., purchases 100 million Iraqi dinars; Company says chance of dinar equaling dollar 'feasible' | Iraq Updates

Old news. You must have missed the conference call? Check out the rumor thread.