Reuters
Wednesday 04 July 2007
Iraq's parliament might take a week to start debating a key draft oil law, officials said on Wednesday, as complaints from Shi'ite and Sunni Arab politicians and Kurdish authorities signaled its passage could be rocky.
Washington has pushed Iraq for months to speed up passage of the law and other pieces of legislation seen as vital to curbing sectarian violence and healing deep divisions between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs.
Presentation of the draft to parliament after the cabinet approved it on Tuesday was a big step towards meeting a key political target set by the United States.
But Mohammed Abu Bakr, head of parliament's media office, said the law had first to go to the energy and oil committee.
"We need seven days to get the draft on the agenda of parliament to discuss it," he said.
In fresh violence, a suicide car bomber killed seven people on Wednesday, including three policemen, when he drove into a police patrol that had pulled up at a restaurant for lunch in Baiji, 180 km (120 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.
American soldiers backed by war planes killed 25 gunmen during a clash in Diyala province north of Baghdad, the military said. It said fighting took place during a three-day operation that ended on Monday. It did not specify the day of the clash.
The oil law is intended to ensure a fair distribution of the world's third largest oil reserves, which are located mainly in the Shi'ite south and the Kurdish north of Iraq.
Sunni Arabs, the backbone of the insurgency, live mainly in central provinces that have little proven oil wealth and have long feared they would miss out on any windfall.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki should have enough support in the 275-member parliament to get the law passed. But in a sign of trouble, the movement of anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said it had rejected the draft.
Sadr's bloc, which has 30 parliamentary seats, said the law must state that no contracts may be signed with firms from countries with troops in Iraq, an official said.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) said it had not seen nor approved the draft.
"We hope the cabinet is not approving a text with which the KRG disagrees because this would violate the constitutional rights of the Kurdistan region," the KRG said in a statement.
Iraq's cabinet originally approved the draft in February but faced stiff opposition from Kurdistan, which felt it was getting a raw deal.
The draft, which has not been made public, decides who controls Iraq's reserves and aims to provide a legal framework for foreign investment. The Kurds had previously said some of the law's annexes were unconstitutional.
Another complication could be Sunni Arab politicians, who have voiced concern about foreign domination of the industry.
Saleem al-Jubouri, spokesman for the main Sunni Arab bloc, the Accordance Front, said his group believed the cabinet had agreed to the changes too hastily and would seek amendments, although he added it was not trying to derail the measure.
The bloc is boycotting cabinet and parliament meetings over what it says is unfair treatment of its members.
Meanwhile, a hardline Sunni Arab clerical body, the Muslim Scholar's Association, issued a fatwa or religious edict saying the draft was "religiously prohibited" because it would allow foreigners to exploit Iraq's oil wealth.
A companion draft law that covers revenue sharing and which has been agreed by the Kurds would be approved by the cabinet soon and submitted to parliament next week, officials have said.
Parliament is running out of time to debate and approve the oil laws and other measures aimed at ensuring Sunni Arabs are cemented in the political process. It has extended its current session to the end of July, before legislators take a month off.
That leaves little time before the U.S. military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker have to present a much-anticipated report to Washington in the middle of September on Iraq's security and political progress.
---------
Additional reporting by Alister Bull and Waleed Ibrahim.
-------
No comments:
Post a Comment