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Kurdish, Shi'ite officials clash over Iraq
oil law legislation
13.9.2007
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Iraq
compromise on draft oil law apparently collapses
September
13, 2007
BAGHDAD, --A carefully constructed compromise
on a draft law governing Iraq's rich oil fields,
agreed to in February after months of arduous talks
among Iraqi political groups, appears to have
collapsed. The apparent breakdown occurs just as
Congress and the White House are struggling to find
evidence that there is progress toward
reconciliation and a functioning government here.
Senior Iraqi negotiators met in Baghdad yesterday in
an attempt to salvage the original compromise, two
participants said.
But the meeting came against the backdrop of
increasingly strident disagreements over the draft
law that have broken out in recent days between
Hussain al-Shahristani, the Iraqi minister of oil,
and officials of the provincial government in the
Kurdish north, where some of the nation's largest
fields are located.
Shahristani, a senior member of the Arab Shi'ite
coalition that controls the federal government,
negotiated the compromise with leaders of the
Kurdish and Arab Sunni parties. But since then the
Kurds have pressed forward with a regional version
of the law that Shahristani insists, much to the
irritation of the Kurds, is illegal.
Many of the Sunnis who supported the original deal
have also pulled out in recent months.
The oil law is one of several crucial pieces of
legislation and wider political agreement that the
Bush administration has been pressing for to show
progress toward creating a functioning government
and healing the country's sectarian divide.
One of the participants in yesterday's meeting,
Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih, who has worked
for much of the past year to push for the original
compromise, said some progress had been made at the
meeting, but that he could not guarantee success.
"This has been like a roller coaster. There were
occasions where we seemed to be there, where we
seemed to have closure, only to fail at that," said
Salih, who is Kurdish.
The legislation has already been presented to the
Iraqi parliament, which has been unable to take
virtually any action on it for months.
Contributing to the dispute over the draft law is
the decision by the Kurds to begin signing
development and service contracts with international
oil companies before the federal law is passed. The
most recent instance, announced last week on a
Kurdish government website and first reported by The
Wall Street Journal, was an oil exploration contract
with the Hunt Oil Co. of Dallas.
The Sunni Arabs who removed their support for the
deal did so, in part, because of a contract the
Kurdish government signed earlier with a company
based in the United Arab Emirates, Dana Gas, to
develop gas reserves.
The Kurds maintain that their regional law is in
fact consistent with the Iraqi Constitution, which
grants substantial powers to the provinces to govern
their own affairs.
But Shahristani believes that a sort of Kurdish
declaration of independence can be read into the
move.
Kurdish officials dispute that contention, saying
that they are doing their best to work within the
constitution while waiting for the Iraqi parliament
to consider the legislation.
nytimes com
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