TheStar.com
-Small service contracts announced last week are a step toward major development deals
July 05, 2008
Linda McQuaig
When Big Oil excutives and U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney met for secret energy talks in the spring of 2001, one subject that weighed on all their minds was the potential loss of Iraq's bountiful oil reserves.
After more than a decade of hostile U.S.-Iraqi relations, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had negotiated deals with oil companies from a range of countries, including Russia, China and India, to develop Iraq's largely undeveloped reserves.
That meant U.S. oil companies were to be denied a stake in developing one of the last oil bonanzas left on Earth. It also meant that the U.S. risked being denied access to this vast new source of petroleum – the commodity it considers essential to its continued status as an economic and military superpower.
So it wasn't surprising that Cheney's energy task force – set up with urgency within weeks of the Bush administration taking office – took great interest in a document called "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts." The document (eventually made public after a lengthy court battle with the Bush administration) included a detailed breakdown of Iraq's 97 oil fields, listing in each case the foreign company that was negotiating a development contract with Saddam, and the status of those negotiations.
But, according to the narrative presented by the White House and rarely challenged by the media, none of this mattered to Washington's strategic planners: the fact that Iraq's vast oil reserves were about to slip into the hands of America's rivals and Big Oil's competitors allegedly played no role in the administration's decision to overthrow Saddam two years later.
Of course, outside the narrow confines of the political and media establishment, most ordinary people have had little difficulty seeing through the official reasons offered up by the Bush administration to explain its insistence on invading and occupying a country that, apart from oil, consists mostly of sand.
Now there's some fresh fodder for that debate, with the announcement last week by the Iraqi government that it is signing no-bid contracts with five of the biggest multinational oil companies – the same corporate crowd that met with Cheney back in 2001 and fretted over Saddam's oil deals with "foreign suitors."
Those "foreign suitors" – including state-owned companies from oil-hungry China and India – have now been pushed aside. In their place, ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Chevron and Total have been selected for the first stage of developing six of Iraq's largest oil fields.
So, for instance, Iraq's magnificent Rumaila oil field, which had been slated to go to the Russian oil company Lukoil back in 2001, will now go to British oil giant BP.
Although these new contracts are relatively small service contracts, they are considered a crucial foot in the door for getting what the companies are really after – major development deals known as Production Sharing Agreements (PSAs), where the companies invest in a project, control it and receive the lion's share of the profits.
PSAs resemble the kinds of arrangements that used to prevail in the Middle East when a handful of U.S. and British oil companies controlled the world's oil through their cartel known as the Seven Sisters.
That situation changed dramatically in the early 1970s when a wave of oil nationalism swept through the Middle East. National governments in the region took control of their own oil industries and (along with Venezuela) became dominant players on the world oil scene through their cartel OPEC.
Overturning these nationalistic policies has long been the dream of Big Oil, and the U.S. occupation of Iraq seems to have made that possibility more likely.
In the last two years, Washington has been pressuring Iraq intensely to pass a "petroleum law," which was drawn up with the help of American advisers operating under contract to U.S. consulting giant BearingPoint Inc.
The North American media describe this as an "oil-revenue-sharing" law (for dividing revenues between Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds), but the law would also create a legal framework for re-establishing foreign investment in Iraq's oil sector.
There's been fierce resistance to the law inside Iraq, and the Iraqi Parliament has repeatedly refused to pass it. Even direct pressure from Cheney, whose May 2007 visit to Baghdad focused almost entirely on the urgent need to pass the oil law, failed to mobilize sufficient parliamentary support.
The service contracts are seen as a way around that legislative opposition.
Ironically, four of the companies returning to Iraq – ExxonMobil, BP, Shell and Total – were the original partners in a consortium called the Iraq Petroleum Company that for decades held the exclusive rights to develop oil in Iraq. They were kicked out in 1972 when Saddam nationalized the country's oil industry.
That move proved extremely popular in Iraq. Indeed, oil nationalism and resistance to foreign control of oil has become part of the Zeitgeist of the Middle East.
The return of Big Oil to Iraq has some profound implications. If it leads, as expected, to the signing of full development contracts, hundreds of billions of dollars will be diverted outside the country into the already overflowing coffers of the multinational oil industry.
U.S. Congressman Dennis Kucinich, a candidate for the 2008 Democratic nomination, has said that would amount to "one of the biggest heists in the history of the world."
Certainly anyone who thinks the invasion of Iraq accomplished nothing probably isn't sitting inside the boardrooms of some of the most powerful companies on Earth.
Linda McQuaig is author of It's the Crude, Dude: War, Big Oil and the Fight for the Planet.
http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/454776
Monday, 7 July 2008
Sunday, 6 July 2008
KERKÜK, KATKISIZ IRAK ŞEHRİDİR
Irak Türkmen cephesi, her zaman olduğu gibi, Kerkük'ü başka bölgelere tabi olması yolunda nüfus yapısını değiştirmeyi amaçlayan siyası güçler muhaliflerinin yanındadır.
Kerkük problemini çözümü için, Birleşmiş Milletler temsilcisi, Di Mestora tarafından sunulan dört öneri altında Kerkük'ün asıl halkı için büyük tehlikeler içermektedir.
Bu esasa dayanarak Kerkük'ün Arap, Kürt ve Türkmenlere yüzde 32'şer (%32) ve Kilduaşurlara yüzde 4 (%4) oranla sandalye dağıtmak önerisini destekleyen, 09.04.2008 tarihinden itibarinden değiştirmeleri kınan ve Kerkük'ün Irak şehridir diye seslenen asil milletsever görüşleri desteklemekteyiz.
Kerkük'ün Yer ve halk birliği içinde olan Irak'ın şehri kalması için çaba gösteren milletsever güçlerle, Irak Türkmen Cephesi omuz omuza çalışmasına devam edecektir.
Irak Türkmen cephesi
Enformasyon Dairesi
Saturday, 5 July 2008
BIG OIL'S IRAQ DEALS ARE THE GREATEST STICK-UP IN HISTORY
The country's invaders should be paying billions in reparations not using the war as a reason to pillage its richest resource
·
Naomi Klein
The Guardian,
Friday July 4, 2008
Once oil passed $140 a barrel, even the most rabidly rightwing media hosts had to prove their populist credibility by devoting a portion of every show to bashing Big Oil. Some have gone so far as to invite me on for a friendly chat about an insidious new phenomenon: "disaster capitalism." It usually goes well - until it doesn't.
For instance, "independent conservative" radio host Jerry Doyle and I were having a perfectly amiable conversation about sleazy insurance companies and inept politicians when this happened: "I think I have a quick way to bring the prices down," Doyle announced. "We've invested $650bn to liberate a nation of 25 million people, shouldn't we just demand that they give us oil? There should be tankers after tankers backed up like a traffic jam getting into the Lincoln Tunnel, the stinkin' Lincoln, at rush-hour with thank-you notes from the Iraqi government ... Why don't we just take the oil? We've invested it liberating a country. I can have the problem solved of gas prices coming down in 10 days, not 10 years."
There were a couple of problems with Doyle's plan, of course. The first was that he was describing the biggest stick-up in world history. The second that he was too late. "We" are already heisting Iraq's oil, or at least are on the brink of doing so.
It started with no-bid service contracts announced for Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell, BP and Total (they have yet to be signed but are still on course). Paying multinationals for their technical expertise is not unusual in itself. What is odd is that such contracts almost invariably go to oil service companies - not to the oil majors, whose work is exploring, producing and owning carbon wealth. The contracts only make sense in the context of reports that the oil majors have insisted on the right of first refusal on subsequent contracts handed out to manage and produce Iraq's oilfields. In other words, other companies will be free to bid on those future contracts, but these companies will win.
One week after the no-bid service deals were announced, the world caught its first glimpse of the real prize. After years of backroom arm-twisting, Iraq is officially flinging open six of its major oilfields, accounting for half of its known reserves, to foreign investors. According to Iraq's oil minister, the long-term contracts will be signed within a year. While ostensibly under the control of the Iraq National Oil Company, foreign corporations will keep 75% of the value of the contracts, leaving just 25% for their Iraqi partners.
That kind of ratio is unheard of in oil-rich Arab and Persian states, where achieving majority national control over oil was the defining victory of anti-colonial struggles.
According to Greg Muttitt, a London-based oil expert, the assumption up until now was that foreign multinationals would be brought in to develop new fields in Iraq - not to take over those which are already in production and therefore require minimal technical support. "The policy was always to allocate these fields to the Iraq National Oil Company," he told me. "This is a total reversal of that policy, giving the Iraq National Oil Company a mere 25% instead of the planned 100%."
So what makes such lousy deals possible in Iraq, which has already suffered so much? Paradoxically, it is Iraq's suffering - its never-ending crisis - that is the rationale for an arrangement that threatens to drain Iraq's treasury of its main revenue source. The logic goes like this: Iraq's oil industry needs foreign expertise because years of punishing sanctions starved it of new technology, while the invasion and continuing violence degraded it further. And Iraq needs to start producing more oil urgently. Why? Also because of the war. The country is shattered and the billions handed out in no-bid contracts to western firms have failed to rebuild it.
And that's where the new contracts come in: they will raise more money, but Iraq has become such a treacherous place that the oil majors must be induced to take the risk of investing. Thus the invasion of Iraq neatly creates the argument for its subsequent pillage.
Several of the architects of the Iraq war no longer even bother to deny that oil was a major motivator for the invasion. On US National Public Radio's To the Point, Fadhil Chalabi, one of the primary Iraqi advisers to the Bush administration in the lead-up to the invasion, recently described the war as "a strategic move on the part of the United States of America and the UK to have a military presence in the Gulf in order to secure [oil] supplies in the future". Chalabi, who served as Iraq's oil undersecretary of state and met with the oil majors before the invasion, described this as "a primary objective".
Invading countries to seize their natural resources is illegal under the Geneva conventions. That means the huge task of rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure - including its oil infrastructure - is the financial responsibility of Iraq's invaders. They should be forced to pay reparations, just as Saddam Hussein's regime paid $9bn to Kuwait in reparations for its 1990 invasion. Instead, Iraq is being forced to sell 75% of its national patrimony to pay the bills for its own illegal invasion and occupation.
naomiklein.org
·
Naomi Klein
The Guardian,
Friday July 4, 2008
Once oil passed $140 a barrel, even the most rabidly rightwing media hosts had to prove their populist credibility by devoting a portion of every show to bashing Big Oil. Some have gone so far as to invite me on for a friendly chat about an insidious new phenomenon: "disaster capitalism." It usually goes well - until it doesn't.
For instance, "independent conservative" radio host Jerry Doyle and I were having a perfectly amiable conversation about sleazy insurance companies and inept politicians when this happened: "I think I have a quick way to bring the prices down," Doyle announced. "We've invested $650bn to liberate a nation of 25 million people, shouldn't we just demand that they give us oil? There should be tankers after tankers backed up like a traffic jam getting into the Lincoln Tunnel, the stinkin' Lincoln, at rush-hour with thank-you notes from the Iraqi government ... Why don't we just take the oil? We've invested it liberating a country. I can have the problem solved of gas prices coming down in 10 days, not 10 years."
There were a couple of problems with Doyle's plan, of course. The first was that he was describing the biggest stick-up in world history. The second that he was too late. "We" are already heisting Iraq's oil, or at least are on the brink of doing so.
It started with no-bid service contracts announced for Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell, BP and Total (they have yet to be signed but are still on course). Paying multinationals for their technical expertise is not unusual in itself. What is odd is that such contracts almost invariably go to oil service companies - not to the oil majors, whose work is exploring, producing and owning carbon wealth. The contracts only make sense in the context of reports that the oil majors have insisted on the right of first refusal on subsequent contracts handed out to manage and produce Iraq's oilfields. In other words, other companies will be free to bid on those future contracts, but these companies will win.
One week after the no-bid service deals were announced, the world caught its first glimpse of the real prize. After years of backroom arm-twisting, Iraq is officially flinging open six of its major oilfields, accounting for half of its known reserves, to foreign investors. According to Iraq's oil minister, the long-term contracts will be signed within a year. While ostensibly under the control of the Iraq National Oil Company, foreign corporations will keep 75% of the value of the contracts, leaving just 25% for their Iraqi partners.
That kind of ratio is unheard of in oil-rich Arab and Persian states, where achieving majority national control over oil was the defining victory of anti-colonial struggles.
According to Greg Muttitt, a London-based oil expert, the assumption up until now was that foreign multinationals would be brought in to develop new fields in Iraq - not to take over those which are already in production and therefore require minimal technical support. "The policy was always to allocate these fields to the Iraq National Oil Company," he told me. "This is a total reversal of that policy, giving the Iraq National Oil Company a mere 25% instead of the planned 100%."
So what makes such lousy deals possible in Iraq, which has already suffered so much? Paradoxically, it is Iraq's suffering - its never-ending crisis - that is the rationale for an arrangement that threatens to drain Iraq's treasury of its main revenue source. The logic goes like this: Iraq's oil industry needs foreign expertise because years of punishing sanctions starved it of new technology, while the invasion and continuing violence degraded it further. And Iraq needs to start producing more oil urgently. Why? Also because of the war. The country is shattered and the billions handed out in no-bid contracts to western firms have failed to rebuild it.
And that's where the new contracts come in: they will raise more money, but Iraq has become such a treacherous place that the oil majors must be induced to take the risk of investing. Thus the invasion of Iraq neatly creates the argument for its subsequent pillage.
Several of the architects of the Iraq war no longer even bother to deny that oil was a major motivator for the invasion. On US National Public Radio's To the Point, Fadhil Chalabi, one of the primary Iraqi advisers to the Bush administration in the lead-up to the invasion, recently described the war as "a strategic move on the part of the United States of America and the UK to have a military presence in the Gulf in order to secure [oil] supplies in the future". Chalabi, who served as Iraq's oil undersecretary of state and met with the oil majors before the invasion, described this as "a primary objective".
Invading countries to seize their natural resources is illegal under the Geneva conventions. That means the huge task of rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure - including its oil infrastructure - is the financial responsibility of Iraq's invaders. They should be forced to pay reparations, just as Saddam Hussein's regime paid $9bn to Kuwait in reparations for its 1990 invasion. Instead, Iraq is being forced to sell 75% of its national patrimony to pay the bills for its own illegal invasion and occupation.
naomiklein.org
Iraqi Kurds Out-Lobby Iraqi Arabs in Washington
By Andrew Tilghman - July 4, 2008
This week, we learned that the White House knew about last year's deal between Texas-based Hunt Oil and the Kurdish Regional Government.
Apparently the threat it posed to the fragile negotiations in Baghdad didn't concern the president as much as he suggested in public.
The Kurds have made a lot of friends in Washington during the past few years -- especially among Republicans.
It's a relationship that's bolstered by aggressive lobbying by the Kurds. The Kurdish Regional Government has 11 active contracts with U.S. lawyers and lobbyists, according to the State Department's database maintained under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The Kurds have been shelling out far more money on K Street than any other group or government in Iraq.
A key ally for the Kurds is the firm Barbour Griffith Rogers, the lobbying shop founded by Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, formerly head of the Republican National Committee. BGR receives $700,000 a year from the Kurdish Regional Government. Their agreement says the firm will "arrange meetings" with U.S. media and government officials.
The firm has a separate agreement with the Kurdistan Democratic Party for a $262,500 annual fee, according to the FARA database.
The Kurdish Regional Government also has a deal with the Republican-linked firm Russo, March and Rogers for running a "media campaign" and a "public relations campaign."
The Washington Post last year also noted the Kurds efforts to reach out to evangelical Christians.
In the past year, the Kurds have spent more than $3 million to retain lobbyists and set up a diplomatic office in Washington. They are cultivating grass-roots advocates among supporters of President Bush's war policy and evangelicals who believe that many key figures in the Bible lived in Kurdistan. And they are seeking to build an emotional bond with ordinary Americans, like those forged by Israel and Taiwan, by running commercials on national cable news channels to assert that even as Iraq teeters toward a full-blown civil war, one corner of the country, at least, has fulfilled the Bush administration's ambition of a peaceful, democratic, pro-Western beachhead in the Middle East.
The Kurds are probably watching this year's campaign very closely.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/07/iraqi_kurds_outlobby_iraqi_ara.php
This week, we learned that the White House knew about last year's deal between Texas-based Hunt Oil and the Kurdish Regional Government.
Apparently the threat it posed to the fragile negotiations in Baghdad didn't concern the president as much as he suggested in public.
The Kurds have made a lot of friends in Washington during the past few years -- especially among Republicans.
It's a relationship that's bolstered by aggressive lobbying by the Kurds. The Kurdish Regional Government has 11 active contracts with U.S. lawyers and lobbyists, according to the State Department's database maintained under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The Kurds have been shelling out far more money on K Street than any other group or government in Iraq.
A key ally for the Kurds is the firm Barbour Griffith Rogers, the lobbying shop founded by Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, formerly head of the Republican National Committee. BGR receives $700,000 a year from the Kurdish Regional Government. Their agreement says the firm will "arrange meetings" with U.S. media and government officials.
The firm has a separate agreement with the Kurdistan Democratic Party for a $262,500 annual fee, according to the FARA database.
The Kurdish Regional Government also has a deal with the Republican-linked firm Russo, March and Rogers for running a "media campaign" and a "public relations campaign."
The Washington Post last year also noted the Kurds efforts to reach out to evangelical Christians.
In the past year, the Kurds have spent more than $3 million to retain lobbyists and set up a diplomatic office in Washington. They are cultivating grass-roots advocates among supporters of President Bush's war policy and evangelicals who believe that many key figures in the Bible lived in Kurdistan. And they are seeking to build an emotional bond with ordinary Americans, like those forged by Israel and Taiwan, by running commercials on national cable news channels to assert that even as Iraq teeters toward a full-blown civil war, one corner of the country, at least, has fulfilled the Bush administration's ambition of a peaceful, democratic, pro-Western beachhead in the Middle East.
The Kurds are probably watching this year's campaign very closely.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/07/iraqi_kurds_outlobby_iraqi_ara.php
Friday, 4 July 2008
KERKÜK’ÜN DEMOGRAFİSİ (NÜFUS YAPISI) DEĞİŞTİRİLİYOR
Perşe 03/07/2008
Bir Türkmen şehri olan Kerkük’ün, 2003 yılından itibaren işgalci ABD ve İngiltere’nin göz yummasıyla bölgedeki Kürtler tarafından demografik yapısı hızlı bir şekilde değiştirilmeye çalışılmaktadır. Türkmenleri, Irak’ın siyasi sahnesinden silmek isteyen Kürtler, Türkmenlerin yaşadıkları bölgeleri Kürtleştirmek ve ele geçirmek, Musul ve Kerkük petrollerine sahip olmak gayreti içerisindeler. Aynı zamanda dış güçlerin desteği ve yardımıyla Kürtler bütün Irak’a sahip olmak amacıyla Türkmenlere, Saddam zulmünü aratmayacak muameleleri dünyanın gözü önünde yapmaktadırlar. Yıllardır dış güçlerle içli-dışlı olan Kürt grupları, iki yüzlü dünyanın gözünde mazlum toplum rolünü ustaca oynuyorlar. Dünün mazlumları(!), bugün zalim kesiliyorlar. Yani anlayacağınız diktatör Saddam Hüseyin’in ruhuna rahmet okutuyorlar
to read the article (published in TURKMENTIMES on 3rd July 2008) please click on the link below:
Wednesday, 2 July 2008
Dictionnaire des sigles accessible en turc: Ackr
Communiqué de presse :
Un dictionnaire des sigles accessible en turc : Ackr
(Publié le 2/7/2008)
Ackr, premier dictionnaire multilingue des acronymes et sigles du monde, lance la version turque de son service : http://tr.hades-presse.com/ackr/.
Ackr se définit en une phrase : "Ackr, çok dilli sözlük, dünyanın kısaltmalar ve kısalmalar çevirir". Ackr, dictionnaire multilingue des acronymes, recense et traduit les sigles, abréviations et acronymes du monde.
Ackr est un dictionnaire en ligne qui recensera à terme tous les acronymes de tous les pays du monde, toutes langues confondues, tous systèmes d'écriture confondus.
Ce service, particulièrement apprécié des traducteurs et de tous ceux qui ont à lire des textes en langues étrangères truffées d'abréviations, était déjà accessible en espéranto, en français, en anglais, en allemand et en arabe. Il l'est dorénavant en turc.
Ce sont ainsi 16 000 000 millions d'internautes turcs qui pourront accéder à Ackr pour y découvrir la signification de dizaines de milliers d'acronymes. De fait, la Turquie compte actuellement 16 millions d'internautes, soit 21% de ces 75 millions d'habitants, contre 3,5% en 2005. La Turquie se classe par là même au 16ème rang mondial par son nombre d'internautes.
Le turc ou des langues proches du turc (telles que l'azéri ou le turkmène) sont également employées par les internautes de la diaspora turque (par exemple en Allemagne), par des peuples d'origine turque ou islamisés de l'ancien Empire ottoman (en Bulgarie, en Grèce, en Macédoine, au Kosovo, en Bosnie-Herzégovine, en Roumanie ou dans le nord de l'Irak), ainsi qu'en Azerbaïdjan, (azéri), au Turkménistan (turkmène) et dans les pays voisins (Afghanistan, Iran...).
Plus généralement, le groupe des langues turques comprend une trentaine de langues (kirghiz, tatar, ouzbek, ouighour, kazakhstan...), parlées dans une vaste région s'étendant de l'ex-Yougoslavie à la Sibérie et à la Chine occidentale. Par conséquent, près de 140 millions de personnes ont une langue turque pour langue maternelle.
Le turc emploie de nombreux sigles, tels que UAEA (Uluslararası Atom Enerji Ajansı, pour désigner l'Agence Internationale de l'Énergie Atomique), SSCB (Sovyet Sosyalist Cumhuriyetler Birliği, pour parler de l'ex-URSS), ou KDV (Katma Değer Vergisi, pour évoquer la TVA). À propos d'HadèsAckr est un service du magazine Hadès, magazine multilingue utilisant l'espéranto comme langue-pont pour accéder et donner accès à des informations et articles issus d'autres pays : Bolivie, Hongrie, Roumanie, Argentine, Suisse, Canada, Kenya, Cambodge, Turquie...
Hadès entend être un lieu d'expression de la diversité des cultures, des façons de faire et des points de vue à travers le monde.
Version turque d'Ackr : http://tr.hades-presse.com/ackr/
Contacts presse :Guillaume RousselAssociation AdEspéranto16, rue de Bercy75012 ParisTél : + 33 6 89 10 00 06contact@hades-presse.comhttp://hades-presse.com
Un dictionnaire des sigles accessible en turc : Ackr
(Publié le 2/7/2008)
Ackr, premier dictionnaire multilingue des acronymes et sigles du monde, lance la version turque de son service : http://tr.hades-presse.com/ackr/.
Ackr se définit en une phrase : "Ackr, çok dilli sözlük, dünyanın kısaltmalar ve kısalmalar çevirir". Ackr, dictionnaire multilingue des acronymes, recense et traduit les sigles, abréviations et acronymes du monde.
Ackr est un dictionnaire en ligne qui recensera à terme tous les acronymes de tous les pays du monde, toutes langues confondues, tous systèmes d'écriture confondus.
Ce service, particulièrement apprécié des traducteurs et de tous ceux qui ont à lire des textes en langues étrangères truffées d'abréviations, était déjà accessible en espéranto, en français, en anglais, en allemand et en arabe. Il l'est dorénavant en turc.
Ce sont ainsi 16 000 000 millions d'internautes turcs qui pourront accéder à Ackr pour y découvrir la signification de dizaines de milliers d'acronymes. De fait, la Turquie compte actuellement 16 millions d'internautes, soit 21% de ces 75 millions d'habitants, contre 3,5% en 2005. La Turquie se classe par là même au 16ème rang mondial par son nombre d'internautes.
Le turc ou des langues proches du turc (telles que l'azéri ou le turkmène) sont également employées par les internautes de la diaspora turque (par exemple en Allemagne), par des peuples d'origine turque ou islamisés de l'ancien Empire ottoman (en Bulgarie, en Grèce, en Macédoine, au Kosovo, en Bosnie-Herzégovine, en Roumanie ou dans le nord de l'Irak), ainsi qu'en Azerbaïdjan, (azéri), au Turkménistan (turkmène) et dans les pays voisins (Afghanistan, Iran...).
Plus généralement, le groupe des langues turques comprend une trentaine de langues (kirghiz, tatar, ouzbek, ouighour, kazakhstan...), parlées dans une vaste région s'étendant de l'ex-Yougoslavie à la Sibérie et à la Chine occidentale. Par conséquent, près de 140 millions de personnes ont une langue turque pour langue maternelle.
Le turc emploie de nombreux sigles, tels que UAEA (Uluslararası Atom Enerji Ajansı, pour désigner l'Agence Internationale de l'Énergie Atomique), SSCB (Sovyet Sosyalist Cumhuriyetler Birliği, pour parler de l'ex-URSS), ou KDV (Katma Değer Vergisi, pour évoquer la TVA). À propos d'HadèsAckr est un service du magazine Hadès, magazine multilingue utilisant l'espéranto comme langue-pont pour accéder et donner accès à des informations et articles issus d'autres pays : Bolivie, Hongrie, Roumanie, Argentine, Suisse, Canada, Kenya, Cambodge, Turquie...
Hadès entend être un lieu d'expression de la diversité des cultures, des façons de faire et des points de vue à travers le monde.
Version turque d'Ackr : http://tr.hades-presse.com/ackr/
Contacts presse :Guillaume RousselAssociation AdEspéranto16, rue de Bercy75012 ParisTél : + 33 6 89 10 00 06contact@hades-presse.comhttp://hades-presse.com
YANIT / 140. MADDENİN UZATILMASI, ANAYASA DÜZELTME KOMİSYONU'NUN YETKİSİNDE DEĞİL
02 Temmuz 2008, Çarşamba
140. madde'nin yasal ve kanuni olarak bittiği takdirde, Kürt sorumluları, ölen cesedi tekrar diriltmek için -çelişkili bile olursa- durmadan açıklama yapmaktalar, bu konuda Dr. Fuat MASUM, 140. madde kalıcıdır zamanı geçerse bile eskitilemez dedi
140. madde'nin yasal ve kanuni olarak bittiği takdirde, Kürt sorumluları, ölen cesedi tekrar diriltmek için -çelişkili bile olursa- durmadan açıklama yapmaktalar, bu konuda Dr. Fuat MASUM, 140. madde kalıcıdır zamanı geçerse bile eskitilemez dedi
140. madde'nin yasal ve kanuni olarak bittiği takdirde, Kürt sorumluları, ölen cesedi tekrar diriltmek için -çelişkili bile olursa- durmadan açıklama yapmaktalar, bu konuda Dr. Fuat MASUM, 140. madde kalıcıdır zamanı geçerse bile eskitilemez dedi, sonra da herhangi bir Anayasa Maddesinin uzatılması Irak Millet meclisi'nin değil Anayasa Düzeltme Komisyonu'nun yetkisidir diye ekledi.
Bir Maddeni uzatılmasını Herkesten (Millet Meclisi) olumsuz tutmak fakat (Bir kesime) Anayasa Düzeltme Komisyonu'na öz tutması çelişkili bir mantık, yetkisi uzatmak değil ama düzeltmek önerisin de bulunmak bu komisyonun başkan yardımcısı, Fuat MASUMUN bu gibi yanlışlara düşmemesi gerekmektedir.Uluslar arası Güvenlik Meclisi'nin 10.08.2007 tarihli 1770. kararına dayanarak Birleşmiş Milletler'in ne 140. maddeye ne de Irak iç işlerine karışmalı fakat öneri ve yardımda bulunmalı kararını, Fuat Masum bilerek unutmaktadır.Evrak karıştırmayı amaçlayanların da bilgilerine, 140. maddenin (6) ay uzatması Irak Millet meclisi tarafından değil ama Kerkük ve diğer Irak Bölgelerine Karışmak hakkına sahip olmayan (Kuzey yönetim Parlamento) tarafından gerçekleşti, ki bu uzatma yetkisine sahip değildir.
Kerkük pırıl pırıl parlayan Türkmen rengi ile Irak'ın bir şehridir. Başka bölgelere tabi tutma çabaları, Tarih ve Coğrafya gerçekleri üstüne atlamakla netice getirmez ve Irak'ın toprak ve halk bütünlüğü içinde kalacaktır.
Irak Türkmen Cephesi
Enformasyon Dairesi
140. madde'nin yasal ve kanuni olarak bittiği takdirde, Kürt sorumluları, ölen cesedi tekrar diriltmek için -çelişkili bile olursa- durmadan açıklama yapmaktalar, bu konuda Dr. Fuat MASUM, 140. madde kalıcıdır zamanı geçerse bile eskitilemez dedi
140. madde'nin yasal ve kanuni olarak bittiği takdirde, Kürt sorumluları, ölen cesedi tekrar diriltmek için -çelişkili bile olursa- durmadan açıklama yapmaktalar, bu konuda Dr. Fuat MASUM, 140. madde kalıcıdır zamanı geçerse bile eskitilemez dedi
140. madde'nin yasal ve kanuni olarak bittiği takdirde, Kürt sorumluları, ölen cesedi tekrar diriltmek için -çelişkili bile olursa- durmadan açıklama yapmaktalar, bu konuda Dr. Fuat MASUM, 140. madde kalıcıdır zamanı geçerse bile eskitilemez dedi, sonra da herhangi bir Anayasa Maddesinin uzatılması Irak Millet meclisi'nin değil Anayasa Düzeltme Komisyonu'nun yetkisidir diye ekledi.
Bir Maddeni uzatılmasını Herkesten (Millet Meclisi) olumsuz tutmak fakat (Bir kesime) Anayasa Düzeltme Komisyonu'na öz tutması çelişkili bir mantık, yetkisi uzatmak değil ama düzeltmek önerisin de bulunmak bu komisyonun başkan yardımcısı, Fuat MASUMUN bu gibi yanlışlara düşmemesi gerekmektedir.Uluslar arası Güvenlik Meclisi'nin 10.08.2007 tarihli 1770. kararına dayanarak Birleşmiş Milletler'in ne 140. maddeye ne de Irak iç işlerine karışmalı fakat öneri ve yardımda bulunmalı kararını, Fuat Masum bilerek unutmaktadır.Evrak karıştırmayı amaçlayanların da bilgilerine, 140. maddenin (6) ay uzatması Irak Millet meclisi tarafından değil ama Kerkük ve diğer Irak Bölgelerine Karışmak hakkına sahip olmayan (Kuzey yönetim Parlamento) tarafından gerçekleşti, ki bu uzatma yetkisine sahip değildir.
Kerkük pırıl pırıl parlayan Türkmen rengi ile Irak'ın bir şehridir. Başka bölgelere tabi tutma çabaları, Tarih ve Coğrafya gerçekleri üstüne atlamakla netice getirmez ve Irak'ın toprak ve halk bütünlüğü içinde kalacaktır.
Irak Türkmen Cephesi
Enformasyon Dairesi
MALİKİ KARARI, İŞGAL EDİLEN BİNALAR BOŞALTILMASI
YANIT
Irak başbakanı, sayın Nuri El-MALİKİ kararı üzere, iç işler bakanlığı'nın 26 Nisan Cumartesi günü yayınladığı haberde Irak'ın tümünde işgal edilen binaların boşaltılması işlemini başlattığını bildirmişti.
Dairemizin, 29.04.2008 tarihinde 9 sayılı kararında, ilgili üst yöneticilerden, Kerkük'teki ihlallerin kaldırmalarını, kanun otoritesinin tekrar yerine getirilmesini ve prosedürlerin adil ve şeffaf şekilde uygulanmasını talep etmiştir.
Kerkük'te, şehrin nüfus yapısını değiştirmek amacıyla, İki Kürt Parti desteği ile şehir dışından getirilenler tarafından (62) Askeri Kışla, Resmi Bina ve spor kulübesi işgal edilmesine rağmen fakat Bağdat ile Güney ve orta bölge şehirlerde Parti ve Siyası Hareketlere İşgal ettikleri binaları boşaltmak için üç gün süre tanıyan Savunma Bakanlığı'nın 24/6/2008 tarihli Beyanına endişe duyduk.
Başka şehirlerin özellikle Kerkük ve Musul bu kararın dışına tutma nedeni ve amacı nedir?
Kerkük ve Musul'daki binalar Kürt partiler tarafından işgal edildiği için, bu anlaşma Kürt tarafları baskısı ile gerçekleşti yoksa.
Biz Irak Türkmen Cephesi mensupları olarak, Irak Hükümeti, sayın başbakan Nuri EL-MALİKİ ve Sayın Savunma Bakan'dan bu kararın tüm Irak'a geçerli olmasını istemekteyiz.
Irak Türkmen cephesi
Enformasyon Dairesi
Tuesday, 1 July 2008
Uighurs at Guantanamo
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
Uighurs at Guantanamo
By Joanne Mariner,
terrorism and counterterrorism director, published in FindLaw
June 30, 2008
In a ruling that is years late, but is nonetheless brave and important, a federal appellate court held last week that a prisoner at Guantanamo has been wrongly deemed an “enemy combatant.” Huzaifa Parhat, the prisoner whose fate was at issue in the case, has been in US custody at Guantanamo for over six years.Parhat is an ethnic Uighur, part of a Muslim minority from western China.
Like the 16 other Uighurs who remain in military detention at Guantanamo, Parhat claims that he was never a combatant and that he ended up in US custody by mistake. Parhat says that he was living with a group of other Uighurs in Afghanistan when the 2001 war started, that his group was led across the border to Pakistan, and that the Pakistanis sold them to the United States for a bounty. US officials realized pretty quickly that the Uighurs were no threat. Indeed, Parhat and others were reportedly determined to be eligible for release from Guantanamo more than four years ago. The reason that they remained at Guantanamo was that they could not return to their home country, and no other country—including the United States—would agree to accept them. Parhat and the other Uighurs would risk serious persecution if returned to China. Since their continued imprisonment at Guantanamo represents an unjustifiable wrong, and they have nowhere else to go, they should be paroled into the United States.
Chinese Fears of “Splittism”
Uighurs in China face imprisonment, torture, and even execution for what the Chinese government deems to be “separatism” or “splittism.” Having fled to Afghanistan under the rule of the Taliban would be sufficient, under the Chinese government’s standards, for the 17 Uighurs at Guantanamo to be viewed as a dangerous threat. The Uighur population of western China is under tight Chinese control. Because the Chinese fear that ethnic Uighurs want independence for their region of the country, the government has taken draconian steps to repress Uighur nationalist sentiment. As Islam is perceived as underpinning Uighur ethnic identity, the government also represses most outward expressions of Islam. For Uighurs to celebrate Muslim religious holidays, study religious texts, or show their religious identity through their personal appearance are acts that are strictly forbidden at state institutions, including schools.
The Chinese government vets who can be a cleric, what version of the Koran is acceptable, where religious gatherings may be held, and what may be said at such gatherings. Even the most peaceful Uighur activists, if they practice their religion in a way that the authorities deem inappropriate, face potential arrest and torture. Whether to Return the Uighurs to the Chinese US officials have made it clear that they will not send any of the Uighurs to China, but this option was once deemed within the range of possibility.
In a document that was released via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, an unnamed FBI official who worked at Guantanamo in late 2002/early 2003 mentioned the idea. “At the time of my TDY [temporary duty at Guantanamo],” he said, “US officials were considering whether to return the Uighurs to the Chinese, possibly to gain support for anticipated US action in the Middle East. The Uighur detainees at GTMO were convinced that they would be immediately executed if they were returned to China.” The next paragraph in the document was entirely censored. In a document contained in an earlier FOIA release, an unnamed FBI official described an interview with a Uighur detainee, stating that “[CENSORED] advised that he still has faith and trust in America and please do not return him to [CENSORED].”
The censor’s codes show that the first excision in the sentence was made to hide a person’s name, but that second excision was made because the information that would have been revealed—no doubt the word “China”—was considered classified. It is sad that US classification authority was used to protect the Chinese from embarrassment.
While no Uighurs were ever returned to China—and in fact the US managed to convince Albania to take five of them in 2006—the US did allow Chinese officials to visit Guantanamo at one point and interrogate the Uighur detainees. “They didn’t treat me good,” one Uighur explained, when asked about the visit in a 2004 administrative proceeding. Saying that the Chinese officials made threats, he described how they photographed him and said that he and the other Uighurs were going to be sent back to China.
Walking in Circles
The appellate court’s opinion in Parhat’s case has not yet been released because it, too, contains classified information, but a redacted version is being prepared. Importantly, in the one-page order that has so far been released, the court told the government either to release or transfer Parhat, or—in what would be a pointless and agonizing exercise at this point—to hold a new set of administrative proceedings for him. In the meantime, Parhat is living a life of useless tedium. He recently described his daily routine to his lawyer, who wrote:
Wake at 4:30 or 5:00. Pray. Go back to sleep. Walk in circles—north, south, east, west—around his 6-by-12 foot cell for an hour. Go back to sleep for another two or more hours. Wake up and read the Koran or look at a magazine (written in a language that he does not understand). Pray. Walk in circles once more. Eat lunch. Pray. Walk in circles. Pray. Walk in circles or look at a magazine (again, in a foreign language). Go back to sleep at 10:00 p.m.
Abdusemet, another Uighur at Guantanamo, has described days on end of doing nothing more than eating, praying, pacing, and sitting on his bed. “I am starting to hear voices, sometimes. There is no one to talk to all day in my cell and I hear these voices,” Abdusemet told his lawyer, worriedly. “What did we do?” he asked. “Why do they hate us so much?”
Uighurs at Guantanamo
By Joanne Mariner,
terrorism and counterterrorism director, published in FindLaw
June 30, 2008
In a ruling that is years late, but is nonetheless brave and important, a federal appellate court held last week that a prisoner at Guantanamo has been wrongly deemed an “enemy combatant.” Huzaifa Parhat, the prisoner whose fate was at issue in the case, has been in US custody at Guantanamo for over six years.Parhat is an ethnic Uighur, part of a Muslim minority from western China.
Like the 16 other Uighurs who remain in military detention at Guantanamo, Parhat claims that he was never a combatant and that he ended up in US custody by mistake. Parhat says that he was living with a group of other Uighurs in Afghanistan when the 2001 war started, that his group was led across the border to Pakistan, and that the Pakistanis sold them to the United States for a bounty. US officials realized pretty quickly that the Uighurs were no threat. Indeed, Parhat and others were reportedly determined to be eligible for release from Guantanamo more than four years ago. The reason that they remained at Guantanamo was that they could not return to their home country, and no other country—including the United States—would agree to accept them. Parhat and the other Uighurs would risk serious persecution if returned to China. Since their continued imprisonment at Guantanamo represents an unjustifiable wrong, and they have nowhere else to go, they should be paroled into the United States.
Chinese Fears of “Splittism”
Uighurs in China face imprisonment, torture, and even execution for what the Chinese government deems to be “separatism” or “splittism.” Having fled to Afghanistan under the rule of the Taliban would be sufficient, under the Chinese government’s standards, for the 17 Uighurs at Guantanamo to be viewed as a dangerous threat. The Uighur population of western China is under tight Chinese control. Because the Chinese fear that ethnic Uighurs want independence for their region of the country, the government has taken draconian steps to repress Uighur nationalist sentiment. As Islam is perceived as underpinning Uighur ethnic identity, the government also represses most outward expressions of Islam. For Uighurs to celebrate Muslim religious holidays, study religious texts, or show their religious identity through their personal appearance are acts that are strictly forbidden at state institutions, including schools.
The Chinese government vets who can be a cleric, what version of the Koran is acceptable, where religious gatherings may be held, and what may be said at such gatherings. Even the most peaceful Uighur activists, if they practice their religion in a way that the authorities deem inappropriate, face potential arrest and torture. Whether to Return the Uighurs to the Chinese US officials have made it clear that they will not send any of the Uighurs to China, but this option was once deemed within the range of possibility.
In a document that was released via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, an unnamed FBI official who worked at Guantanamo in late 2002/early 2003 mentioned the idea. “At the time of my TDY [temporary duty at Guantanamo],” he said, “US officials were considering whether to return the Uighurs to the Chinese, possibly to gain support for anticipated US action in the Middle East. The Uighur detainees at GTMO were convinced that they would be immediately executed if they were returned to China.” The next paragraph in the document was entirely censored. In a document contained in an earlier FOIA release, an unnamed FBI official described an interview with a Uighur detainee, stating that “[CENSORED] advised that he still has faith and trust in America and please do not return him to [CENSORED].”
The censor’s codes show that the first excision in the sentence was made to hide a person’s name, but that second excision was made because the information that would have been revealed—no doubt the word “China”—was considered classified. It is sad that US classification authority was used to protect the Chinese from embarrassment.
While no Uighurs were ever returned to China—and in fact the US managed to convince Albania to take five of them in 2006—the US did allow Chinese officials to visit Guantanamo at one point and interrogate the Uighur detainees. “They didn’t treat me good,” one Uighur explained, when asked about the visit in a 2004 administrative proceeding. Saying that the Chinese officials made threats, he described how they photographed him and said that he and the other Uighurs were going to be sent back to China.
Walking in Circles
The appellate court’s opinion in Parhat’s case has not yet been released because it, too, contains classified information, but a redacted version is being prepared. Importantly, in the one-page order that has so far been released, the court told the government either to release or transfer Parhat, or—in what would be a pointless and agonizing exercise at this point—to hold a new set of administrative proceedings for him. In the meantime, Parhat is living a life of useless tedium. He recently described his daily routine to his lawyer, who wrote:
Wake at 4:30 or 5:00. Pray. Go back to sleep. Walk in circles—north, south, east, west—around his 6-by-12 foot cell for an hour. Go back to sleep for another two or more hours. Wake up and read the Koran or look at a magazine (written in a language that he does not understand). Pray. Walk in circles once more. Eat lunch. Pray. Walk in circles. Pray. Walk in circles or look at a magazine (again, in a foreign language). Go back to sleep at 10:00 p.m.
Abdusemet, another Uighur at Guantanamo, has described days on end of doing nothing more than eating, praying, pacing, and sitting on his bed. “I am starting to hear voices, sometimes. There is no one to talk to all day in my cell and I hear these voices,” Abdusemet told his lawyer, worriedly. “What did we do?” he asked. “Why do they hate us so much?”
U.S. meddling in Iraq's Oil Policies
U.S. Advised Iraqi Ministry on Oil Deals
June 30, 2008
By ANDREW E. KRAMER
A group of American advisers led by a small State Department team played an integral part in drawing up contracts between the Iraqi government and five major Western oil companies to develop some of the largest fields in Iraq, American officials say.
The disclosure, coming on the eve of the contracts’ announcement, is the first confirmation of direct involvement by the Bush administration in deals to open Iraq’s oil to commercial development and is likely to stoke criticism.
In their role as advisers to the Iraqi Oil Ministry, American government lawyers and private-sector consultants provided template contracts and detailed suggestions on drafting the contracts, advisers and a senior State Department official said.
It is unclear how much influence their work had on the ministry’s decisions.
The advisers — who, along with the diplomatic official, spoke on condition of anonymity — say that their involvement was only to help an understaffed Iraqi ministry with technical and legal details of the contracts and that they in no way helped choose which companies got the deals.
Repeated calls to the Oil Ministry’s press office for comment were not returned.
At a time of spiraling oil prices, the no-bid contracts, in a country with some of the world’s largest untapped fields and potential for vast profits, are a rare prize to the industry. The contracts are expected to be awarded Monday to Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, Total and Chevron, as well as to several smaller oil companies.
The deals have been criticized by opponents of the Iraq war, who accuse the Bush administration of working behind the scenes to ensure Western access to Iraqi oil fields even as most other oil-exporting countries have been sharply limiting the roles of international oil companies in development.
For its part, the administration has repeatedly denied steering the Iraqis toward decisions. “Iraq is a sovereign country, and it can make decisions based on how it feels that it wants to move forward in its development of its oil resources,” said Dana Perino, the White House spokeswoman.
Though enriched by high prices, the companies are starved for new oil fields. The United States government, too, has eagerly encouraged investment anywhere in the world that could provide new oil to alleviate the exceptionally tight global supply, which is a cause of high prices.
Iraq is particularly attractive in that light, because in addition to its vast reserves, it has the potential to bring new sources of oil onto the market relatively cheaply.
As sabotage on oil export pipelines has declined with improved security, this potential is closer to being realized. American military officials say the pipelines now have excess capacity, waiting for output to increase at the fields.
But any perception of American meddling in Iraq’s oil policies threatens to inflame opinion against the United States, particularly in Arab nations that are skeptical of American intentions in Iraq, which has the third-largest oil reserves in the world.
“We pretend it is not a centerpiece of our motivation, yet we keep confirming that it is,” Frederick D. Barton, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said in a telephone interview. “And we undermine our own veracity by citing issues like sovereignty, when we have our hands right in the middle of it.”
United States officials are directly advising Iraq on a host of issues, from electricity to education. But they have avoided the limelight when questions turn to how Iraq should manage its oil endowment, insisting that a decision must rest with the Iraqi government.
The State Department advisers on the Western contracts say they purposely avoid trying to shape Iraqi policy.
“They have not negotiated with the international oil companies since the 1970s,” said the senior State Department official, who was speaking about Iraqi oil officials and who is directly involved in shaping United States energy policy in Iraq.
The advice on the drafting of the contracts was not binding, he said, and sometimes the ministry chose to ignore it. “The ministry did not have to take our advice,” he said, adding that the Iraqis had also turned to the Norwegian government for counsel. “It has been their sole decision.”
The advisers say they were not involved in advancing the oil companies’ interests, but rather treated the Oil Ministry as a client, the State Department official said. “I do not see this as a conflict of interest,” he said. A potential area of criticism, however, is that only Western companies got the bigger oil contracts. In particular, Russian companies that have experience in Iraq and had sought development contracts are still waiting.
Earlier in the occupation of Iraq, American advisers supported the Oil Ministry’s effort to dismiss claims by the Russian company Lukoil to a large Saddam Hussein-era deal. The ministry maintains that the Hussein government canceled the contract three months before the invasion. Lukoil says the attempt to cancel the deal was illegal because Mr. Hussein had not appealed to international arbitration first, as required in the contract terms.
The new oil contracts have also become a significant political issue in the United States.
Three Democratic senators, led by Charles E. Schumer of New York, sent a letter to the State Department last week asking that the deals be delayed until after the Iraqi Parliament passes a hydrocarbons law outlining the distribution of oil revenues and regulatory matters. They contend the contracts could deepen political tensions in Iraq and endanger American soldiers.
Criticism like that has prompted objections by the Bush administration and the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, who say the deals are purely commercial matters. Ms. Rice, speaking on Fox News this month, said: “The United States government has stayed out of the matter of awarding the Iraq oil contracts. It’s a private sector matter.”
Advisers from the State, Commerce, Energy and Interior Departments are assigned to work with the Iraqi Oil Ministry, according to the senior diplomat. In addition, the United States Agency for International Development has a contract for Management Systems International, a Washington consulting firm, to advise the oil and other ministries. The agency’s program is called Tatweer, the Arabic word for development.
“The legal department of the Ministry of Oil passed us a draft of the contract,” Samir Abid, a Canadian of Iraqi origin who is an employee of the Tatweer program, said in a telephone interview. “They passed it to us and asked for our comments because we were mentoring them.”
He added: “It was an exercise in deciding how best to do these contracts. I don’t know if they used our comments or not.”
In a statement, the agency said its advisers had reviewed the oil company contracts, known as technical support agreements: “At the request of the Ministry of Oil, the Tatweer Energy Team has done a review of the format, structure and clarity of language of blank draft contracts.”
The statement said the team did not have access to confidential information from the oil companies.
Consultants said the advice was necessary because the Oil Ministry, like other sectors of the Iraqi government, has experienced an exodus of qualified employees and lacks lawyers schooled in drawing up contracts.
A supervisor with the Tatweer program, who was not authorized to speak publicly and declined to be quoted by name, said that ministry officials, many of them near retirement, needed help.
The American government lawyers provided specific advice, the State Department official said, like: “These are the clauses you may want. You will need a clause on arbitration. You will need this clause to make this work.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/30/world/middleeast/30contract.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin
June 30, 2008
By ANDREW E. KRAMER
A group of American advisers led by a small State Department team played an integral part in drawing up contracts between the Iraqi government and five major Western oil companies to develop some of the largest fields in Iraq, American officials say.
The disclosure, coming on the eve of the contracts’ announcement, is the first confirmation of direct involvement by the Bush administration in deals to open Iraq’s oil to commercial development and is likely to stoke criticism.
In their role as advisers to the Iraqi Oil Ministry, American government lawyers and private-sector consultants provided template contracts and detailed suggestions on drafting the contracts, advisers and a senior State Department official said.
It is unclear how much influence their work had on the ministry’s decisions.
The advisers — who, along with the diplomatic official, spoke on condition of anonymity — say that their involvement was only to help an understaffed Iraqi ministry with technical and legal details of the contracts and that they in no way helped choose which companies got the deals.
Repeated calls to the Oil Ministry’s press office for comment were not returned.
At a time of spiraling oil prices, the no-bid contracts, in a country with some of the world’s largest untapped fields and potential for vast profits, are a rare prize to the industry. The contracts are expected to be awarded Monday to Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, Total and Chevron, as well as to several smaller oil companies.
The deals have been criticized by opponents of the Iraq war, who accuse the Bush administration of working behind the scenes to ensure Western access to Iraqi oil fields even as most other oil-exporting countries have been sharply limiting the roles of international oil companies in development.
For its part, the administration has repeatedly denied steering the Iraqis toward decisions. “Iraq is a sovereign country, and it can make decisions based on how it feels that it wants to move forward in its development of its oil resources,” said Dana Perino, the White House spokeswoman.
Though enriched by high prices, the companies are starved for new oil fields. The United States government, too, has eagerly encouraged investment anywhere in the world that could provide new oil to alleviate the exceptionally tight global supply, which is a cause of high prices.
Iraq is particularly attractive in that light, because in addition to its vast reserves, it has the potential to bring new sources of oil onto the market relatively cheaply.
As sabotage on oil export pipelines has declined with improved security, this potential is closer to being realized. American military officials say the pipelines now have excess capacity, waiting for output to increase at the fields.
But any perception of American meddling in Iraq’s oil policies threatens to inflame opinion against the United States, particularly in Arab nations that are skeptical of American intentions in Iraq, which has the third-largest oil reserves in the world.
“We pretend it is not a centerpiece of our motivation, yet we keep confirming that it is,” Frederick D. Barton, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said in a telephone interview. “And we undermine our own veracity by citing issues like sovereignty, when we have our hands right in the middle of it.”
United States officials are directly advising Iraq on a host of issues, from electricity to education. But they have avoided the limelight when questions turn to how Iraq should manage its oil endowment, insisting that a decision must rest with the Iraqi government.
The State Department advisers on the Western contracts say they purposely avoid trying to shape Iraqi policy.
“They have not negotiated with the international oil companies since the 1970s,” said the senior State Department official, who was speaking about Iraqi oil officials and who is directly involved in shaping United States energy policy in Iraq.
The advice on the drafting of the contracts was not binding, he said, and sometimes the ministry chose to ignore it. “The ministry did not have to take our advice,” he said, adding that the Iraqis had also turned to the Norwegian government for counsel. “It has been their sole decision.”
The advisers say they were not involved in advancing the oil companies’ interests, but rather treated the Oil Ministry as a client, the State Department official said. “I do not see this as a conflict of interest,” he said. A potential area of criticism, however, is that only Western companies got the bigger oil contracts. In particular, Russian companies that have experience in Iraq and had sought development contracts are still waiting.
Earlier in the occupation of Iraq, American advisers supported the Oil Ministry’s effort to dismiss claims by the Russian company Lukoil to a large Saddam Hussein-era deal. The ministry maintains that the Hussein government canceled the contract three months before the invasion. Lukoil says the attempt to cancel the deal was illegal because Mr. Hussein had not appealed to international arbitration first, as required in the contract terms.
The new oil contracts have also become a significant political issue in the United States.
Three Democratic senators, led by Charles E. Schumer of New York, sent a letter to the State Department last week asking that the deals be delayed until after the Iraqi Parliament passes a hydrocarbons law outlining the distribution of oil revenues and regulatory matters. They contend the contracts could deepen political tensions in Iraq and endanger American soldiers.
Criticism like that has prompted objections by the Bush administration and the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, who say the deals are purely commercial matters. Ms. Rice, speaking on Fox News this month, said: “The United States government has stayed out of the matter of awarding the Iraq oil contracts. It’s a private sector matter.”
Advisers from the State, Commerce, Energy and Interior Departments are assigned to work with the Iraqi Oil Ministry, according to the senior diplomat. In addition, the United States Agency for International Development has a contract for Management Systems International, a Washington consulting firm, to advise the oil and other ministries. The agency’s program is called Tatweer, the Arabic word for development.
“The legal department of the Ministry of Oil passed us a draft of the contract,” Samir Abid, a Canadian of Iraqi origin who is an employee of the Tatweer program, said in a telephone interview. “They passed it to us and asked for our comments because we were mentoring them.”
He added: “It was an exercise in deciding how best to do these contracts. I don’t know if they used our comments or not.”
In a statement, the agency said its advisers had reviewed the oil company contracts, known as technical support agreements: “At the request of the Ministry of Oil, the Tatweer Energy Team has done a review of the format, structure and clarity of language of blank draft contracts.”
The statement said the team did not have access to confidential information from the oil companies.
Consultants said the advice was necessary because the Oil Ministry, like other sectors of the Iraqi government, has experienced an exodus of qualified employees and lacks lawyers schooled in drawing up contracts.
A supervisor with the Tatweer program, who was not authorized to speak publicly and declined to be quoted by name, said that ministry officials, many of them near retirement, needed help.
The American government lawyers provided specific advice, the State Department official said, like: “These are the clauses you may want. You will need a clause on arbitration. You will need this clause to make this work.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/30/world/middleeast/30contract.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin
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