Some Good News Out Of Iraq Today…
…as the oil revenue sharing plan has finally been sent to Parliament:
Iraq’s oil minister says a long-awaited draft oil and gas law has been sent to parliament for approval.
The bill, seen as crucial in regulating how oil wealth is divided among Iraq’s ethnic and religious groups, received cabinet backing in February.
A dispute between central government and autonomous Kurdistan over control of the oil has delayed its submission.
The minister, Hussein Shahristani, said political groups had agreed to try to pass the law by the end of May.
Passing this plan is, in fact, one of the much-talked-about-but-little-understood benchmarks for progress in Iraq, and the lack of such a plan is widely believed to contribute to the sectarian tension.
Translation: We need this plan to pass -quickly. It’s long, long overdue…
UPDATE 11:13 p.m.: Ay, caramba!
Kurdish and Sunni Arab officials expressed deep reservations on Wednesday about the draft version of a national oil law and related legislation, misgivings that could derail one of the benchmark measures of progress in Iraq laid down by President Bush.
The draft law, which establishes a framework for the distribution of oil revenues, was approved by the Iraqi cabinet in late February after months of negotiations. The White House was hoping for quick passage to lay the groundwork for a political settlement among the country’s ethnic and sectarian factions. But the new Kurdish concerns have created doubts about the bill even before Parliament is to pick it up for debate.
Is there ever a piece of unfettered good news out of Iraq any more?…
No.
However, the British general I mentioned in yesterday’s post 11 (in “just about sums things up”) has a surprisingly optimistic viewpoint. If you accept his argument about the Iraqis being roughly equivalent to American revolutionaries –which admittedly is a stretch — he has an interesting thought. After the British were kicked out, we didn’t do too badly ourselves.
We did have a civil war, though . . .
Friends, it is all negotiation. Positioning for leverage, to enhance existing leverage points, and to diminish the real and perceived leverage of others. A very natural part of the political process.
The objections arise from the observation that in the provisions is the possibility of the oil fields and their operations being entirely turned over to foreign companies (read: US) and out of Iraqi hands altogether.