Middle East News
Iraqi parliament session on election law postponed (Roundup)
Aug 5, 2008, 15:03 GMT
Baghdad - Iraqi Parliamentary Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani postponed for a day an exceptional session after lawmakers failed to reach an agreement over a controversial provincial election law affecting the multi-ethnic city of Kirkuk, a parliamentary media source on Tuesday.
The postponement of the session until Wednesday came after lawmakers failed to meet a half-hour deadline set by al-Mashhadani to reach a final agreement, the media source told Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency.
On July 22, Kurds objected to the law which calls for a secret ballot to decide a power-sharing arrangement in Kirkuk, a city located some 250 kilometres north-east the Iraqi capital Baghdad.
The law provided for an equal division in the number of seats in Kirkuk's governorate council, in which the city's population of one million Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens would get one-third of the seats representing each group.
Kurds, claiming a majority of the population, currently hold more than half the seats in the Kirkuk council.
Under another controversial provision, security responsibility in the city would be moved to security units brought in from central and southern Iraq.
The provision also drew criticism from Kurds as Kurdish military units known as peshmerga currently play a central role in maintaining security in the province.
Despite a walkout by Kurdish lawmakers, the law was approved by parliament. Kurdish parliament members denounced the measure as 'unconstitutional' and promised to have the law rewritten.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, himself a Kurd, also rejected the law in a presidential statement.
The Kurds, who have independence aspirations, seek to include the northern governorate in their autonomous region while the Arabs want to keep Kirkuk separate.
Kurds claim the population of Kirkuk is 48 per cent Kurds while Arabs claim it is 44 per cent Arabs. During the rule of dictator Saddam Hussein Kurds were expelled from Kirkuk and replaced by Arabs.
Kirkuk has 7.5 per cent of the world's oil reserves, according to a report by the Dubai-based news broadcaster al-Arabiya.
Also in Kirkuk, insurgents slit the throats of three tribal policemen in an attack on a checkpoint near the village of Hindiya to the west of Kirkuk.
General Sarhad Qader told VOI that insurgents murdered the three Awakening Council members while they were asleep.
The Awakening Councils are US-backed Sunni units formed to fight militants of the al-Qaeda terrorist network in Iraq.
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Projected $80 billion Iraqi budget surplusAug 6th, 2008 - 03:13:41
www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/05/iraq.oil/?iref=hpmostpop
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Iraq is raking in more money from oil exports than it is spending, amassing a projected four-year budget surplus of up to $80 billion, U.S. auditors reported Tuesday.
Leading members of Congress, noting that Washington is paying for reconstruction in Iraq, expressed outrage at the assessment. One called the findings 'inexcusable.'
'We should not be paying for Iraqi projects while Iraqi oil revenues continue to pile up in the bank, including outrageous profits from $4-a-gallon gas prices in the U.S.,' said Sen. Carl Levin, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. 'We should require that U.S. taxpayers be reimbursed for the cost of large projects.'
Baghdad had a $29 billion budget surplus between 2005 to 2007. With the price of crude roughly doubling in the past year, Iraq's surplus for 2008 is expected to run between $38 billion and $50 billion, according to a report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
The United States has put about $48 billion toward reconstruction since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, auditors reported. About $23 billion of that was spent on the oil and electricity industries, water systems and security.
In 2003, then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz told the House Appropriations Committee: 'We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.''
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California, said Tuesday's report 'is going to make a lot of American families very angry.' 'The record gas prices they are paying have turned into an economic windfall for Iraq, but the Iraqi government isn't spending the money on rebuilding,' said Waxman, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
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