The Kurds learn what happens when you cross the U.S.

Here's the cause and effect, presented in reverse order, of what happens to a people when they get in between us and our oil. If you don't line up and start whistling dixie you'll be threatened with violence and worse (remember, Bush offered to bomb the Kurds on Turkey's behalf). If the PKK's strikes against Turkey can't be justified, which I contend they cannot, then how is it Turkey's aggression -- a country that, with Clinton's support, ethnically cleansed the Kurds throughout the '90s -- can claim the moral high road? It certainly helps that the PKK is a pack of godless socialists, our traditional enemy. It sure feels good to be slaughtering those pinko commies again.

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Rice brands PKK 'common enemy'

Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, has said Washington views Kurdish fighters who have launched attacks on Turkey from Iraq as a "common enemy".

Rice, on a visit to Turkey, said at a press conference on Friday that Washington and Ankara needed to show "commitment and persistence" against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Ali Babacan, Turkey's foreign minister, said in the same press conference that Rice's visit to Turkey marked the start of closer co-operation between the Nato allies against the PKK.

Rice said that Washington and Ankara were working together on intelligence sharing to combat the separatist group.

Rice will later attend wider talks in Istanbul to discuss Ankara's strategy against the PKK, who have launched attacks against Turkey from bases in northern Iraq.

Iraqi officials are also attending the Istanbul conference, which was originally meant to focus on Iraq's long-term stability.

The meeting comes amid concerns that Turkey may launch cross-border raids against fighters from the PKK.

Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, is also attending the talks.

'Common enemy'

Turkey has accused the regional Kurdish government in northern Iraq of harbouring PKK fighters.

The separatist group is said to use bases in the mountainous region for cross-border attacks as part of its 23-year campaign for self-rule in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast.

Rice told reporters earlier en route to Turkey: "We have certainly been concerned that anything that would destabilise the north of Iraq is not going to be in Turkey's interests, it is not going to be in our interests and it is not going to be in the Iraqis' interests. That's been the reason for urging restraint.

"But we understand the need to do something effective against this PKK threat ... The PKK is an enemy of the United States just like it is an enemy of the Turks."

'Low expectations'

Rice held talks with Tayyip Recep Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister, shortly after arriving in the country and will later meet Abdullah Gul, the president.

Erdogan is due to meet George Bush, the US president, in Washington next week to discuss how to tackle the PKK.

Al Jazeera's Hoda Abdel Hamid, reporting from Istanbul, said the Turkish public's expectations over Rice's visit were low.

"Nothing really concrete [was set out], and I think from the Turkish public opinion point of view it will be quite disappointing," she reported after the press conference.

"Saying that the US was going to double efforts to share intelligence is not going to be satisfactory [to the Turkish public]," she said.

"I think the key sentence in the press conference came from Babacan when he said he expected the US to take 'concrete steps'. At the moment we are not hearing about any concrete steps."

Troops amassed

Both Baghdad and Washington strongly oppose any unilateral Turkish action in northern Iraq on the grounds that it would destabilise the only relatively calm region of the war-torn country.

Turkey has reportedly massed up to 100,000 troops on the border with Iraq and has threatened a military incursion to strike at PKK bases unless Baghdad and Washington promise to crack down on the fighters.

The White House has offered Ankara "actionable intelligence" on the PKK.

"We have no time to lose. All instruments – diplomatic, political, socio-cultural and military - are on the table," Babacan said.

He also said that Turkey may restrict flights to northern Iraq.

Turkish troops have been engaged in major operations targeting the PKK since October 21 when a group of fighters, who Ankara says came from northern Iraq, ambushed a military unit, killing 12 soldiers and capturing eight.

The army says it has since killed 80 fighters on Turkish territory.

A top PKK commander on Thursday called on Ankara to present a peace plan that could end the group's rebellion, which has claimed more than 37,000 lives.

Turkey refuses to have any contact with or make any concessions to the PKK.

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Iraqi Kurds sign four oil deals
By Mark Gregory
BBC News

The Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq has announced four new oil exploration deals with international energy companies.

The news is likely to upset the central government in Baghdad and the US.

Both have been pressing the Kurds to hold off negotiations until national oil and gas laws for opening up Iraq's energy wealth are in place.

Development of Iraq's oil reserves has been held up by disagreements between Sunni, Shia and Kurdish communities.

These laws will set the framework for investment by foreign energy firms and for dividing oil revenues between the communities.

But increasingly the semi-autonomous Kurdish area has signalled that it will go it alone without waiting for a national consensus.

'Illegal'

In the latest move, the Kurdish authorities have announced four exploration contracts and two refinery deals, worth around $800m (£400m), giving rights to look for oil under Kurdish territory.

French and Canadian companies are involved along with other foreign investors that have not yet been named.

There has been no official reaction from either Baghdad or Washington but neither will be pleased.

A few weeks ago the Kurdish government signed agreed its first ever exploration deal with a foreign oil firm, Hunt Oil from Texas.

The Iraqi national oil minister in Baghdad described this deal as illegal.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration sees a national accord on energy policy as central to healing Iraq's wounds and creating the conditions for prosperity.

The Kurdish authorities insist their energy deals comply with the expected terms for national laws.

How will Iraq share the oil?

By Gail Russell Chaddock, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Source: Yahoo! News

Washington - The reason
Iraq needs to pass a new oil law,
President Bush has said, is to "share oil revenues among all of Iraq's citizens" – Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds – and to help unify the country.

It's a goal broadly supported in the US Congress and by the Iraq Study Group, whose 2006 report said such an oil law was needed, too, to "create a fiscal and legal framework for investment" in the industry.

But now the oil law's status as a US "benchmark" for progress in Iraq is emerging as a flash point in both Baghdad and Washington.

So far, the frustration on Capitol Hill is mainly over the Iraqi government's perceived foot-dragging in finishing the oil law, which US advisers had a hand in crafting. But resistance is also surfacing to the substance of the oil bill, especially whether its main effect will be to ensure international companies a lucrative role in Iraq's rich oil fields. With House and Senate conferees about to put their heads together on a new war-funding bill that includes benchmarks for progress in Iraq, the proposed oil legislation is beginning to come under closer scrutiny.

"While we can't confirm it, there are enough reports out there that appear to indicate that undue, unfair preference and the influence of our oil companies are part of the Iraqi hydrocarbon law, and if that is true, that is not correct," says Rep. Joe Sestak (news, bio, voting record) (D) of Pennsylvania, a former admiral and defense adviser to the Clinton administration. "The aim of benchmarks is to help the process along, but we need benchmarks that are appropriate for the Iraqis and the Americans – not just our economy but our ideals."

US firms as the major beneficiary?
Fueling new resistance to the oil benchmark are reports that the draft law in fact says little about sharing oil revenues among Iraqi groups and a lot about setting up a framework for investment that may be disadvantageous to Iraqis over the long term. On the flip side: Iraq's oil industry badly needs new investment, and oil companies are reluctant to go into Iraq without a legal framework that ensures that the contracts they sign will be respected by future Iraqi governments.

Last week, Rep.
Dennis Kucinich (D) of Ohio, who is a presidential candidate, led off opposition to the draft law in a letter to Democratic colleagues. On Thursday, a coalition of oil industry watchdog groups and peace activists called on Speaker Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record) and Senator Reid to drop the Iraqi oil law as a benchmark for progress in Iraq.

"If Democrats are perceived to be advocating withdrawal [of US troops] only after access to Iraqi oil has been assured, this will do little to reassure critics," says Steve Kretzmann, executive director of Oil Change International, a watchdog group that drafted the letter.

In an open letter to Democrats in the US Congress last week, Hasan Jum'a Awwad, head of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions, echoed that view. He urged that lawmakers "not link withdrawal [of US troops] with the oil law, especially since the USA claimed that it came to Iraq as a liberator and not in order to control Iraq's resources."

For most US lawmakers, the delay in passing the oil law shows that Iraq's new leaders aren't making tough political choices about their country's future, such as how to fairly distribute Iraq's oil wealth among all Iraqi groups.

"The Iraqi government remains in a dangerous stalemate: No oil law," Senate majority leader Harry Reid (news, bio, voting record) said during a debate on war policy on Wednesday.

Why Iraqis don't want to rush
But in Baghdad, some Iraqi lawmakers say the oil issue is too vast and complex to rush. It should be the last issue – not one of the first – to be resolved, they say.

Moreover, Iraqi critics of the current draft law say it does not address the issues that US lawmakers think it does.

"The actual draft law has nothing to do with sharing the oil revenue," says former Iraqi oil minister Issam Al Chalabi, in a phone interview from Amman, Jordan. The law aims to set a framework for investment by outside oil companies, including favorable production-sharing agreements that are typically used to reward companies for taking on risk, he says.

"We know the oil is there. Geological studies have been made for decades on these oil fields, so why would we let them [international firms] have a share of the oil?" he adds. "Iraqis will say this is solid proof that Americans have staged the war ... because of this law."

On Feb. 26, Iraq's Cabinet approved the draft oil law, which was to be sent to parliament by March 15 – along with four annexes that provide the fine print, draft oil contracts, and a draft oil revenue-sharing law. The Bush administration wanted Iraq's parliament to approve the entire oil package by the end of May. But as of this week, not even the draft oil law has been submitted to parliament.

"The US talks about the sovereignty of Iraq, but why are they getting involved in this oil law?" asks Mohammed al-Dynee, member of parliament representing the Iraqi Front for National Dialogue, a Sunni group. He is in Washington to try to persuade Congress to drop calls for the oil law. "Even if this law can pass, which I doubt, it will remain ink on paper and will not be implemented on the ground."

An unofficial English translation of the draft law was first released on the website of the Kurdish Regional Government and has since been carried on oil industry watchdog sites such as www.priceofoil.org.

At least one 'red flag'
In New York, oil industry analyst Fadel Gheit of Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. has reviewed both the official Arabic version of the draft law and the unofficial English translation and says they are ambiguous and seem to be written in haste.

"The law did not strike me as something that was explicitly designed to favor American companies, although I'm not ruling that out," he says.

But the stipulation that a new Federal Oil and Gas Council must include foreign participation did "raise a red flag," he says. Under the draft law, the council would carry out Iraqi oil policies and set criteria for foreign companies working in the industry.

"Why shouldn't Iraq use Iraqi nationals to decide how the contracts will be awarded? They have oil engineers. Use the best brains in the country and, hopefully. they will do what is in the best interest of the country," he says. "Otherwise, there's an impression that American companies are telling Iraqis what to do."

Foreign investment needed in Iraq
With the world's second-largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia, Iraq is the top prize in the international oil business. Iraq needs new foreign investment to help modernize its oil industry, which has been closed to new technology for the past 25 years, says Mr. Gheit.

But even with a new draft oil law, international oil companies won't be eager to send engineers into a nation in turmoil. "It's very difficult for oil companies to recruit people willing to work in the Iraqi oil fields. It's mayhem," he says.

"If the idea of the law is to expedite getting international oil [firms] to ... set up shop and invest money, they're mistaken," Gheit adds. "I doubt very much that any oil company will be willing to send geologists, engineers to be shot at, kidnapped, or beheaded."

In the 1990s,
Saddam Hussein shifted Iraq's oil industry from production-sharing agreements, which gave foreign investors a substantial share in revenues, to service agreements, which limit such investors' profits.

"It's very important, as we said in the [Iraq Study Group] report, that the US not be seen as trying to seek control of that oil," says Lee Hamilton, a cochairman of the Iraq Study Group. "But that will be very difficult to achieve because of the mind-set in much of the region today that we went in because of the oil.... Most of the critics will not be persuaded by any rhetoric of the US but by a law that is drafted and implemented fairly."