Iraq Oil Report

Plus:
*Status of the oil law update
*Oil Minister Shahristani on CNN Marketplace Middle East
*Corruption enemy #1
*Journalists in Basra allege South Oil Company and other security forces abuse
*Baghdad takes page from Giuliani’s NYC book in dealing with poor, homeless
*The Baghdad-Basra express restarts

A senior Iraqi delegation in Iran isn’t directly focused on recent allegations of misconduct in the Iraqi oil sector — including an Iranian takeover of some fields — but rather settling cross-border rows leftover from war two decades ago.

Although oil disputes were expected to be a portion of the agenda, Iraqi Deputy Foreign Minister Labeed Abbawi told United Press International the main issue is a disputed border — agreed to in 1975 and violated in the Iran-Iraq war, during which a half-million people on both sides were killed.

Another legacy of the war are unexploded mines on land and — along with sunken ships — in the troubled Shatt al-Arab waterway, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers meet in southern Iraq and flow toward the Persian Gulf. The Shatt al-Arab became the line of demarcation between Iraq and Iran.

“I think this is an issue that has mired the relationship for many years before, and we want to settle this … once and for all … for better relations between Iran and Iraq,” Abbawi said.

Iranian and Iraqi media reports from the meeting say a technical agreement was reached over the 1975 Algiers Accord and the sides will work to implement new accepted borders.

“Of course, there are some areas which are disputed areas which have some oil wells but the main thing is not the wells but the border line,” Abbawi said. “A delegation from the Ministry of Oil would be discussing the oil wells with the Iranians at a later stage.” …

Read Ben Lando’s entire story for United Press International. Click HERE.

Though all Iraqi parties have agreed that Oil and Gas law is vital to securing foreign investment to boost Iraq’s oil output and rebuild its shattered economy, Alsumaria TV reports, the law remains stalled by bitter wrangle between Baghdad and the Kurdistan region over who is entitled to control the fields and how revenues will be shared.

For more on the law’s status, see the Feb. 16 edition of Iraq Oil Report.

Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani sits down with CNN Marketplace Middle East to discuss the future of Iraq’s oil, security in the oil sector, and “going green.”

Economists think corruption is enemy No. 1 as Iraq’s 2008 budget, $48 billion, is divvied up, Agence France-Press reports. “The problem is not the size of the budget but whether it will be spent properly and free of financial and administrative corruption,” said Baghdad economic expert Walid Khalid. “What have citizens seen of last year’s budget, which was also large? Approving the budget is not the problem; the problem is how much Iraqis will benefit from it,” Khalid told AFP.

While a sizeable chunk will be dedicated for the needed capital repairs and building, past experience shows only a fraction of it will actually be spent, as Ben Lando reported for UPI and Iraq Oil Report published last month.

For more on the 2008 budget, check out Friday’s Iraq Oil Report.

Iraqi journalists in Basra say they’re being physically harassed and intimidated by the local police, security in the South Oil Company and Iraqi Army, IraqSlogger reports. Iraq Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani tells the Voices of Iraq news agency the accusations are not true, “claims made by reporters moved by some political powers against the Iraqi government.”

The Accountability and Justice law passed by Iraq last month is considered a step forward to reversing the horrible decision by the Coalition Provisional Authority to widespread sacking of anyone affiliated with the Baath Party, but Human Rights Watch in a letter to President Jalal Talabani asks it to be reviewed. HRW says it keeps evidence away from the accused when employment and pensions are stripped, and allows for continued political influence in the process.

Iraqis living on the street – be they poor, homeless or mentally ill – will be rounded up Giuliani-style, the Los Angeles Times reports in its Babylon & Beyond blog.

For a few, salaries have soared. For the rest, unemployment has, Ahmed Ali and Dahr Jamail report for Inter Press Service. Many Iraqi workers enjoyed huge salary increases following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. But unemployment rose more sharply under policies introduced by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA).

A Baghdad teaching psychiatric hospital, one of the few such operations not shuttered because of war or lack of vital services, must reclaim its reputation following terrorist attacks, Steve Lannen and Hussein Khadim report for McClatchy Newspapers.

Inside the low-slung, brown stucco building that is the al Rashad psychiatric teaching hospital in a Baghdad neighborhood of the same name, employees wonder what will happen next.

Already they’ve seen an administrator resign after his son was kidnapped. In December, the hospital’s director was gunned down. Then, 10 days ago, U.S. troops arrested the acting director on the suspicion that he supplied female mental patients to insurgents to become suicide bombers.

A siege mentality has set in among the eight doctors and nearly 20 staff members at the hospital, which treats about 1,200 mental patients and is one of only two institutions of its kind in Iraq. They no longer allow their patients to leave the hospital grounds for fear of how they’ll be treated outside. They won’t give their names to a reporter for fear that they’ll be targeted next.

“I’ve got friends who come to my clinic, and they say, ‘Why are you doing this?’” one doctor lamented. “My friends and even doctors tell me this, so what about ordinary people?”

The Iraq Press Roundup, by UPI’s Hiba Dawood.

The Pentagon is paying $2.4 million for another edition of comic books, in Arabic, to boost the goodwill toward and respect of Iraqi Special Operations Forces and Iraqi Security Forces, IraqSlogger reports.

“Congressional Oversight and Related Issues Concerning the Prospective Security Agreement Between the United States and Iraq,” a private report for Congress written by the Congressional Research Service, published in full by the Federation of American Scientists.

Like a stitch across a deep wound, the train between Iraq’s two biggest cities reminds people of a more peaceful time before sectarian carnage nearly tore their country apart, Mohammed Abbas and Haider Salahuddin write for Reuters. The service between Baghdad and Basra resumed with little fanfare in December after a hiatus of 18 months.

Few dared use it at first, but word has spread of a safe and cheap journey, and railway officials are scrambling for funds for more carriages.

“There’s been a great acceptance of the service … People do not feel anxious. They’re coming with their families,” said Abdul-Ameen Mahmoud, the railway company’s head of passenger transport.
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