Iraqis resist U.S. pressure to enact oil law

As Bush pushes the Iraqi Parliament to meet it's so called bench marks as a way of continuing to ensure congressional support for his Iraq policies, there are signs that the Iraqi's are not keen to move forward on what Bush would no doubt see as essential legislation: Iraq's new oil laws.

It seems certain that the May deadline that Bush has set for the passing of this new law is not going to be met with resistance amongst Iraqis varying from vehement to measured. But, almost across the board, the new oil laws are meeting with resistance.

Republican leaders in Washington have warned administration officials that if the Iraqi government fails to meet those benchmarks by the end of the summer, remaining congressional support for Bush's Iraq policies could crumble.

Their impatience was underscored Wednesday by Vice President Dick Cheney during a visit here. "I did make it clear that we believe it's very important to move on the issues before us in a timely fashion, and that any undue delay would be difficult to explain," Cheney told reporters.

But Iraqi lawmakers show little sign of bending to accommodate Bush on an issue as crucial as oil.

"We have two clocks — the Baghdad clock and the Washington clock — and this is a perfect example," said Mahmoud Othman, a lawmaker from the semiautonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq. "This has always been the case. Washington has been pushing the Iraqis to do things to fit their agenda."

One of the main objections that the Iraqis have is to how vague the new law is regarding how much foreign investment is to be allowed under the legislation with some estimates putting it as high as 70%.

"Quite a lot of it is not good, to be honest," said a Western energy expert in Baghdad who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid angering Iraqi officials.

"A lot of the difficult questions were fudged, like revenue sharing and who controls the oil fields. These obviously are vitally important, but they wanted a benchmark passed, so it was pushed," he said, referring to U.S. officials.

This is already in violation of existing US legislation (No: 109-234) which stipulates that "no funds...may be made available to establish permanent United States military bases in Iraq or to exercise control by the United States over the oil infrastructure or oil resources of Iraq."

More than 60 Iraqi experts and officials signed a petition against the new oil law in March 2007. One member of the Iraqi parliament participating in the Amman-Jordan conference said, "This law must be rejected as whole, there is no way it can be enhanced or fixed." Many Iraqis and Iraqi parliamentarians agree.

The Bush administration, however, are unsurprisingly rushing this through, although - thankfully - it is appearing unlikely that the Iraqis are going to be rushed on a subject as important as the future of Iraq's oil, especially as many Iraqis suspect that the US invaded Iraq to get their hands on the country's oil.

Even those who support the proposal as a framework have reservations about the details.

"All in all, we need the new law. The existing ones are very old," said Haider Abadi, a member of Maliki's Islamic Dawa Party, a Shiite group. "Having said this, though, it does not mean that at this stage we are for a full opening of the doors to foreign investment in the oil sector."

Salim Abdullah Jabouri, a spokesman for the Sunni bloc, also expressed concern about having foreign companies profiting from Iraqi oil. "We think that the timing of this law is not suitable," he said.

Some of the fiercest opposition has come from oil workers, who threatened to go on strike this week to protest the legislation.

Imad Abdul Hussain, a leader of the Federation of Oil Unions, said workers want oil production to remain in government hands.

"Oil is Iraq's sovereignty. It is the only wealth in Iraq. It unifies Iraqis. When we give it to a foreign investor, this means the sovereignty is taken away," he said.

I have no doubt that getting their hands on Iraq's oil was a very large part the Bush oil administration's grand plans, and it gives me some pleasure to note that, for the moment, the Iraqi parliament is simply not playing ball.

The Iraq oil law, if implemented in it's proposed form, could possibly hand most of Iraq's basic resource to foreign investors with an amendment that states that the law cannot be changed for twenty five years no matter what a new Iraqi parliament wishes.

The Iraqis are right to treat it with suspicion and Cheney's threat - that congressional support will dwindle if the Iraqis don't give the Bushites what they want - deserves to be treated with contempt. Even the prospect of an escalating civil war is preferable to handing over your country's only asset to American oil companies for the next quarter century.

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Tags: Iraq, Iraq war, Iraq's oil, Iraq's new oil laws, Iraqi Parliament, Maliki, Bush, Cheney