|
Problems seen for Iraq budget despite
compromise
7.2.2008
|
|
|
|
February 7, 2008
BAGHDAD, Iraq, -- A compromise on the main
sticking point holding up Iraq's 2008 budget appears
possible but it and several other key reconciliation
laws face potentially long delays, lawmakers and
ministers said on Wednesday.
Iraqi lawmakers are set to vote on Thursday on the
budget as well as laws governing the distribution of
power between Baghdad and Iraq's 18 provinces and
another that would free thousands of mainly Sunni
Arab detainees from Iraqi jails.
Lawmakers have so far refused to ratify the $48
billion budget because of arguments over allocations
between the provinces, particularly the largely
autonomous northern region of Kurdistan.
The current draft of the law has allocated 17
percent of budget funds to Kurdistan region, based
on population estimates.
Shi'ite and Sunni Arab lawmakers say Kurdistan
should receive about 13 percent because that is a
more accurate reflection of the Kurdish population
in the absence of any recent census.
Planning Minister Ali Baban,www.ekurd.net
a Kurdish independent,
said he would deliver on Thursday a report from his
department with a compromise figure that showed
Kurds made up about 14.5 percent of Iraq's estimated
population of 27.5 million.
He said the figure was based on statistics available
to his department, including the most recent
national census in 1987.
Despite that estimate, Baban said he expected the
budget to pass with an allocation for Kurdistan of
17 percent.
"I expect the budget for the region will be 17
percent because normally we give more than the
percentage of the population to secure provinces to
encourage these provinces to implements projects,"
Baban told Reuters.
Iraqi officials have said that failure to pass the
budget would hold up vital spending at a time when
Washington is urging the government to jumpstart the
economy.
U.S. officials have praised the 2008 budget as well
as this month's passage of a law allowing former
members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party to rejoin
the government. Washington introduced "de-Baathification"
under U.S. administrators in Iraq after the 2003
invasion but acknowledged it went too far.
A U.S. embassy official said that matters of
"political will" were holding up the budget. He said
the fact that lawmakers would not be able to take
their winter recess before the budget was passed
might hasten the process.
"The parliamentarians are desperate to go on
holidays ... that's adding to the dynamic and
increasing their willingness to compromise," the
embassy official told Reuters.
Lawmakers on both sides appeared unwilling to give
ground.
"We consider the demands to lower our share of the
budget below 17 percent are a political conspiracy
against the Kurds and our rights,"www.ekurd.net
Kurdish lawmaker Mahama
Khalil told Reuters.
Usama al-Nujaifi of the secular Shi'ite Iraqi
National List said 14.5 percent was the most likely
point for compromise.
"If the Kurds insist on 17 percent then many blocs
will reject the budget in its current form," he
said.
"It will be very difficult to pass the budget on
Thursday."
Freeing prisoners has been one of the preconditions
for the Accordance Front, the main Sunni Arab bloc,
to return to cabinet after it quit last August over
a number of differences with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's
Shi'ite-led government.
The amnesty law to be voted on would exclude those
sentenced to death or convicted of killings,
terrorism, kidnapping, drugs offences or corruption
and would cover more than 23,000 prisoners held by
Iraq but not detainees in U.S. custody.
Reuters
Top |
Kurd Net
does not take credit for and is not responsible for the content of news
information on this page
|
® 