Iraq Oil Report

Plus:
*Iraqis react to Congress’ bluster that Iraq hasn’t paid enough for the war and occupation
*Jordon stops Iraq crude shipments because of violence
*Turkey, KRG rapprochement
*Iraqi Shia leaders in Iran for militia talks
*Iraq After The Surge for Sunnis
*Much more…

A Senate panel has agreed unanimously to block the Defense Department from funding Iraq reconstruction projects worth more than $2 million and to begin to force Baghdad to cover the costs of training and equipping its security forces, Anne Flaherty reports for The Associated Press. The provision, included in a 2009 defense policy bill approved this week by the Senate Armed Services Committee, comes as Democrats draft a similar provision within separate legislation that would cover this year’s war spending.

Iraqis are fuming at suggestions being floated by lawmakers that Baghdad should start paying a share of the war’s costs by providing cheap fuel to the U.S. military, Liz Sly reports in a MUST READ for the Chicago Tribune.

“America has hardly even begun to repay its debt to Iraq,” said Abdul Basit, the head of Iraq’s Supreme Board of Audit, an independent body that oversees Iraqi government spending. “This is an immoral request because we didn’t ask them to come to Iraq, and before they came in 2003 we didn’t have all these needs.” … The criticisms in Congress that Iraq isn’t paying its share are “a bit overplayed,” said Stuart Bowen, the inspector general, in a telephone interview.

“It’s an evolving process, but the Iraqi government has now taken over the majority of the funding,” he said. “In 2007 the U.S. share dropped below 50 percent, and it will drop even more dramatically in 2008.”

Iraqis would be forced to pay for U.S. efforts in their country directly or via loans from the United States if any of at least five similar pieces of legislation introduced on Capitol Hill in April is approved, Ben Lando reports for United Press International. “What this resolution does is put the burden on the Iraqi people to say, ‘no more free lunches from the American public,’” said Rep. Ron Klein, D-Fla.”It’s not some benefactor from the outside who just keeps writing more and more checks every month.”

“There is simply no reason for the U.S. to continue paying for the cost of the salaries for the Sons of Iraq, for the training and equipping of the Iraqi security forces, and the fuel we use in Iraq given this boon in oil revenue,” Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said after a new report by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction highlighted Iraq’s rising oil exports amid rising oil prices but lacking capacity to spend the funds on needed capital projects. Collins, along with Sens. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., and Evan Bayh, D-Ind., have co-authored one of the at least five similar pieces of legislation. “As the Iraqi government is reaping an unanticipated windfall,” she added, “the Iraqis should be picking up the tab for their own reconstruction and stabilization costs.”

This and previous SIGIR reports noted more Iraqi money has been spent on reconstruction than American tax dollars, and of the reconstruction expenditures by the United States — of both American and Iraqi funds — billions of dollars have been misspent or gone missing altogether, Ben Lando reports for UPI.

Jordan stopped importing Iraqi crude oil and fuel, due to “bad security conditions on the international highway between the two countries,” the Kuwait News Agency reports.

A delegation of senior Shiite leaders arrived in Iran Thursday to speak with top military officials there about the backing of so-called special groups, UPI reports.
A Kurdistan Regional Government delegation led by Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani today in Baghdad met with a delegation from the Republic of Turkey headed by Mr Ahmet Davutoğlu, the senior advisor to the Turkish Prime Minister; Mr Murat Özçelik, the Special Coordinator for Iraqi Affairs at the Turkish Foreign Ministry; and Mr Derya Kanbay, Turkey’s Ambassador in Baghdad, a KRG statement said. This is a major development which may affect the debate over Article 140 and oil-rich Kirkuk, as well as the stalled hydrocarbon law and the KRG’s dozens of oil deals.

But it also is an incisive event in the relations between Turks and Kurds that could help define the future of the region (see: Invisible Nation: How the Kurds’ Quest for Statehood Is Shaping Iraq and the Middle East by the BBC’s Quil Lawrence.

On April 23 the Turkish Council of State ordered former Interior Minister Mehmet Agar to stand trial for allegedly “forming a criminal organization” in the dirty war against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) during the 1990s, a period most Turks refer to as the “Susurluk” era (Turkish Daily News, April 23; Sabah, April 23; Today’s Zaman, April 22). It will be the first time a former government minister has faced charges related to one of the darkest chapters in recent Turkish history, the repercussions of which still haunt Turkey today, Gareth Jenkins writes in The Jamestown Foundation’s Terrorism Monitor.

The U.N. envoy for children in armed conflict zones called on the Iraqi government to target more reconstruction funds to schools and basic child services, UPI reports.

Confronting the Sadrists: The Issue of State and Militia in Iraq, Fadhil Ali reports for Terrorism Monitor.

Falluja’s struggle after invasion, by Dahr Jamail in Aljazeera. Jamail reported from Iraq, including Falluja, and is author of Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq

Whistle-blowers regaled a Senate Democratic panel with stories of rampant waste, fraud, looting, intimidation and other abuses — including the operation of a prostitution ring — by private contractors in Iraq, Terry Kivlan reports for Congress Daily.

Iraq after the Surge I: The New Sunni Landscape, the first of a new two-part report by the International Crisis Group.

##