Iraq Oil Report

Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain Al-Shahristani said Tuesday the country will likely drop oil service contracts with foreign companies if they don’t have their proposals finalized by a June deadline and will move forward with the work on its own, Dow Jones Newswires reports. “June is already a bit late… We may drop them if they aren’t signed soon ( after June),” Shahristani told journalists here after an industry conference. He didn’t specify whether he was referring to all contracts or those targeting specific fields that individual companies are vying for.

Kuwait has agreed to review the question of reducing Iraq’s compensation payments imposed after the 1991 Gulf War, Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said on Tuesday, Ulf Laessing and Rania El Gamal report for Reuters. But Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed Al-Salem Al-Sabah said any change in the compensation regime must be decided by the U.N. Security Council in New York.

Even as American and Iraqi troops are fighting to establish control of the Sadr City section of this capital, the Iraqi government’s program to restore basic services like electricity, sewage and trash collection is lagging, jeopardizing the effort to win over the area’s wary residents, Michael R. Gordon reports for The New York Times.

Iraqi culture under fire, CNN’s Ralitsa Vassileva speaks to journalist and author Hadani Ditmars about the war in Iraq and Iraqi culture, especially women’s rights in Iraq and the Baghdad Symphony.

Lawmakers told State and Defense department leaders that their lack of farsighted interagency coordination is blurring jurisdictions in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. But Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Joints Chiefs Staff Chairman Adm. Michael G. Mullen defended their approach of letting Defense take the lead on foreign military training programs that have traditionally been funded by State, Rafael Enrique Valero reports for Government Executive.

The surgeon generals of the Army, Navy and Air Force told senators the optimal tour in Afghanistan and Iraq to reduce combat stress should be six to nine months with 18 months at home, far shorter than the cut in tours from 15 to 12 months ordered by President Bush last week, Bob Brewin reports for Government Executive.

The U.S. Army maintains its policy of mandatory tour extensions despite pledges from the Defense Department last year to stop the practice, records show, UPI reports.

The Foreign Ministers of Iraq (a Kurd), Turkey and the U.S. Secretary of State met for half an hour in the sidelines of a conference of Iraq’s neighbors held in Kuwait, PUKMedia reports.

In December 2006, in an effort to build a national consensus on a “new way forward in Iraq,” the Iraq Study Group painted itself as a portrait of bipartisan chumminess, with all political hackery checked at the door, Daniel Libit reports for The Politico. Sixteen months later, seven of the 10 ISG members are backing presidential candidates with radically different views about how to proceed in Iraq.

In the Iraqi government’s fight to subdue the Shiite militia of Moktada al-Sadr in the southern city of Basra, perhaps nothing reveals the complexities of the Iraq conflict more starkly than this: Iran and the United States find themselves on the same side, James Glanz and Alissa J. Rubin report for the International Herald Tribune.

The Iraq Press Roundup by UPI’s Hiba Dawood.

The Association of Muslims Scholars’ Al Basaer Newspaper said Gen. Kevin Bergner, special assistant to the president and senior director for Iraq, admitted in a briefing March 26 in Baghdad that Iran had a major influence in Basra and northeast cities of Iraq, and called upon Iran to intervene in order to end the violence among the Shiite Mahdi Army militia, Iraqi forces and other Shiite militias related to the Shiite Dawa and Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council parties.

The paper said five years after the occupation of Iraq and the loss of thousands of soldiers and millions of dollars, the United States is asking for the help of a neighboring country that is, according to the White House, an enemy or at least a threat to U.S. interests.

Errant Iraqi police and criminal elements within their ranks are in the cross-hairs of U.S. forces in a move to protect improved security and sectarian reconciliation in Muqdadiya and its surrounding villages, Richard Tomkins reports for UPI. At the same time, closer scrutiny is being paid to the Sons of Iraq neighborhood watch volunteer groups to increase discipline and ensure Iraqi government rules are followed to the letter.

##