BAGHDAD (AFP) — The final report on staging provincial elections in Iraq's disputed region of Kirkuk has been delayed by another week because of disagreements among commission members, an MP said on Sunday.

"The commission on Sunday notified parliament speaker Iyad al-Samarrai that it had not succeeded in reaching a compromise" acceptable to Kirkuk's Kurdish, Turkmen and Arab communities, Mohammad Mahdi al-Bayati, a Turkmen member of the commission, told AFP.

Samarrai asked commission members "to continue their mission another week" and said he will submit "his own suggestions for a solution," Bayati added.

Arabs and Turkmen oppose to any further extension beyond a week although the Kurds have no objection, he said.

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bbc

US forces in Iraq suffered their highest casualties last month than any month since September 2008.

May saw 24 US soldiers killed, bringing the total number of US casualties since the 2003 invasion to just over 4,300.

US forces are due to be off the streets of cities and main towns by the end of June, while combat operations across Iraq are due to end by September 2010.

Civilian deaths from violence in Iraq fell sharply in May, according to Iraqi government figures.

The defence, interior and health ministries gave a civilian toll of 124, down from 355 in April, AFP reported.

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Jun 2, 2009

Page 1 of 2
DISPATCHES FROM AMERICA
Asia Times
By Pratap Chatterjee

The Houstonian Hotel is an elegant, secluded resort set on an 18-acre wooded oasis in the heart of downtown Houston. Two weeks ago, David Lesar, chief executive officer (CEO) of the once notorious energy services corporation Halliburton, spoke to some 100 shareholders and members of senior management gathered there at the company's annual meeting.

All was remarkably staid as they celebrated Halliburton's US$4 billion in operating profits in 2008, a striking 22% return at a time when many companies are announcing record losses. Analysts remain bullish on Halliburton's stock, reflecting a more general view that any company in the oil business is likely to have a profitable future in store.

There were no protesters outside the meeting this year, nor the kind of national media stakeouts commonplace when Lesar addressed the same crew at the posh Four Seasons Hotel in downtown Houston in May 2004. Then, dozens of mounted police faced off against 300 protesters in the streets outside, while a San Francisco group that dubbed itself the "Ronald Reagan Home for the Criminally Insane" fielded activists in George W Bush and Dick Cheney masks, offering fake $100 bills to passers-by in a mock protest against war profiteering. And don't forget the 25-foot inflatable pig there to mock shareholders. Local TV crews swarmed, a national crew from NBC flew in from New York, and reporters from the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal eagerly scribbled notes.

Now the 25-foot pigs are gone and all is quiet on the western front. How did Halliburton, once branded the ugly stepchild of Dick Cheney - the company's former CEO - and a poster child of war profiteering, receive such absolution from anti-war activists and the media? Of course, the defeat of the Republicans in the 2008 election, the departure of the Bush administration, and a general apathy towards the ongoing, but lower-level war in Iraq are part of the answer, but don't ignore a potentially brilliant financial sleight of hand by Halliburton either. That move played a crucial role in the cleansing of the company.

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JUNE 1, 2009

By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS

BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan -- Body counts are back, reigniting the decades-old debate about whether victory in war can be judged by measuring the stack of enemy dead.

In recent months, the U.S. command in Afghanistan has begun publicizing every single enemy fighter killed in combat, the most detailed body counts the military has released since the practice fell into disrepute during the Vietnam War.

The practice has revealed deep divides in military circles over the value of keeping such a score in a war being waged not over turf, but over the allegiance of the Afghan people. Does it buck up the troops and the home front to let them know the enemy is suffering, too? Or does the focus on killing distract from the goals of generating legitimacy and economic development?

American commanders have detailed nearly 2,000 insurgent deaths in Afghanistan over the past 14 months. U.S. officers say they've embraced body counts to undermine insurgent propaganda, and stiffen the resolve of the American public.

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KABUL, 1 June 2009 (IRIN) - International forces under NATO command in Afghanistan will stop using white vehicles from 1 June in response to calls from NGOs for clearer markings to distinguish between civilian and military vehicles.

"All NATO-owned vehicles that are coloured white only are to have that colour changed… to a degree sufficient to render the vehicle clearly and obviously multi-coloured," said a NATO policy statement issued by Marco Bertolini, chief of staff of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

"For NATO-owned vehicles, measures are being taken to ensure that the vehicles are clearly and obviously NATO," Anthony Lutz, an ISAF spokesman, told IRIN.

Agreement on this was reached after months of strong lobbying by mostly international aid agencies which have accused NATO/ISAF of deliberately using white vehicles to get greater protection.

"As some of the largest non-governmental, not-for-profit humanitarian organizations delivering essential relief to vulnerable Afghans, we wish to bring to your attention the urgent need for NATO forces to clearly distinguish themselves from civilians in Afghanistan and to support respect and protection of humanitarian workers by not using white vehicles for transporting military personnel and for military activities," said a letter sent by over a dozen international NGOs to the NATO secretary-general in April.

The UN Security Council authorized the creation of ISAF through Resolution 1386 - initially to help ensure security in Kabul, and in August 2003 NATO took over command of ISAF. NATO/ISAF had about 58,000 troops from 42 contributing nations in April 2009, according to an ISAF leaflet.

Colour of impartiality

NGOs say white four-wheel-drive vehicles have traditionally been used by the UN and aid agencies in conflict zones to distinguish themselves from the military.

"The white colour has come to represent impartiality and independence, and those who seek to provide aid on the basis of need," Ashley Jackson, Oxfam's communications officer, told IRIN.

"When the military use white vehicles this undermines aid workers' identity and can make it easier for us to be confused with the military, which can worsen our security and our access to the communities who need our vital services," Ingrid Macdonald, protection and advocacy manager of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), told IRIN in Kabul.

Armed attacks on NGOs increased by about 40 percent in 2008 and dozens of aid workers were killed, kidnapped and wounded across Afghanistan, according to NRC and Oxfam.

Worsening insecurity has also impeded access to large swathes of the country, particularly in the volatile south and southeast, where many people are believed to be in need of humanitarian aid.

"If we cannot guarantee the safety of our staff, we cannot provide assistance to Afghans in conflict areas - and ultimately, they are the ones who will suffer," said Oxfam's Jackson.

Still room for confusion?

NATO's new policy regarding the use of white vehicles will not apply to thousands of US troops operating beyond the writ of NATO/ISAF and engaged mainly in counter-insurgency and "anti-terrorism" military activities.

"Operators of non-NATO/ISAF vehicles are encouraged to comply with this also - although this is a national matter for each contributing nation's consideration," said Lutz of ISAF.

NGOs say the use of white vehicles by military forces and for military purposes would be a violation of the modus operandi agreed between aid agencies and the military in August 2008.

"Under international humanitarian law, combatants are required to distinguish themselves from civilians in conflict," said Oxfam's Jackson.

Source: Reuters
By Golnar Motevalli

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan, June 3 (Reuters) - The first civilian plane for almost 30 years landed on Wednesday at a newly refurbished airfield in a remote corner of Afghanistan's restive southern Helmand province.

The United States spent $11.5 million reconditioning the Bost airfield, built in 1957, which officials hope will help regenerate a province, a third of which is estimated to be under Taliban control and whose economy is dependent on opium.

Helmand used to produce some of the region's best dried fruits, pomegranates and nuts. But farmers have switched to opium production, a crop that helps fund the Taliban insurgency.

The airport and a nearby agricultural and industrial park are part of a larger counter-narcotics strategy to get farmers to switch from growing opium by providing them facilities to process and fly-out food products to the domestic market.

"I live in Kabul in the U.S. embassy and I look forward to the day now that I won't have to spend five hours getting into helicopters to get to Helmand and I can catch a direct flight," United States Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry told journalists at the opening of Bost air field near Lashkar Gah.

"I'm hoping I can get a discount on the tickets," he quipped.

The first domestic passenger plane to land will be an Ariana Afghan flight on Monday, according to manager Hajji Omar.

"It is one of the most important projects in Helmand ... like good roads, good runways like this are crucial to growth of the province and investment here," Helmand governor Gulab Mangal told Reuters.

Near the airfield a British-funded agriculture centre and industrial park, expected to create some 2,500 jobs, is under construction.

Access to Bost and the park could be problematic for Helmandis because of insecurity. Road travellers are often attacked by Taliban and bandits and the virulent insurgency in recent years has hamstrung foreign forces.

"It's easy to think you shouldn't do any of these things until you've won the security battle. You won't win the security battle ... unless you're putting together a coherent programme of security, development and economic progress," British Ambassador to Afghanistan Mark Sedwill said.

"We're all very clear that security is the first building block for dealing with the insurgency. It's not for territory, it's for the hearts and minds of the people. You only win the hearts and minds of the people if you deliver civilian benefits."

* Power struggle threat to Iraq's stability

* Breakthrough on oil exports gives hope

By Tim Cocks

KHANAQIN, Iraq, June 4 (Reuters) - In a lively market town hotly disputed between Iraqi Kurds and Baghdad's Arab-led government, Khalil Ibrahim points at the ground under his feet to illustrate what he thinks the dispute is about: oil.

"Baghdad wants the oil here -- we're probably standing on some of it right now -- and that's the real reason they won't let us Kurds rule ourselves," said the retired Kurdish soldier, 58, before crossing the road to a gaudy icecream bar in majority Kurdish Khanaqin, on the edge of Iraq's violent Diyala province.

Along a fuzzy seam dividing central Iraq from the largely autonomous enclave of Kurdistan, a row is bubbling over which authority owns this patchwork of Kurd and Arab neighbourhoods, river-fed palm groves and multi-billion-barrel oil fields.

Iraqi Kurdistan is believed to have up to 45 billion of Iraq's 118 billion barrels of oil reserves. If all disputed areas were included in the Kurdish region, its share might go up to 65 billion barrels, Kurdish officials say.

Nowhere has the row come closer to violence than Khanaqin, near the Iranian border, where local commanders had to defuse a standoff between the Iraqi army and Kurdish Peshmerga forces last August to prevent it degenerating into a shootout.

Yet a breakthrough this month on a parallel dispute over oil exports from Kurdistan -- which officially began this week despite Baghdad's rejection of contracts the Kurds have signed with oil firms -- has raised hope the disagreements are not so intractable.

The stakes are high. Officials and analysts see the dispute as the biggest long-term threat to stability as U.S. troops prepare to end combat operations by the end of Aug 31. 2010, under orders from President Barack Obama.

"They will come to a stage when the Americans withdraw where a choice has to be made: fight or pursue peace," said Joost Hiltermann, International Crisis Group Middle East director.

"It's going to be very difficult to prevent a fight. Once you take the American forces out, without having settled the major disputes, it's going to fall apart."

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Saturday, 06 June 2009, 10:24 EDT
The Kurdish Globe

Kurdish lawmaker calls Kuwait's actions "unfair"

Kuwait seeks to ensure that Iraq remains under UN Chapter VII, thereby keeping sanctions imposed upon the country and assets frozen in banks around the world.

The office of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region Presidency released a statement on Wednesday calling for calm in recent tensions between Iraq and Kuwait. Tensions rose after Kuwait expressed it opposed lifting sanctions against Iraq and removing it from Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter until Iraq pays its debts to Kuwait and makes reparations over Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

"Lately, relations between Iraq and the brother Kuwait has witnessed tensions to an extent that unjustified media attacks have begun. We in Kurdistan notice there are some sides attempting to complicate and deepen the situation. For sure this situation may leave serious risks," reads the statement by a spokesman from the Kurdistan Region Presidency.

It adds that Kuwait shouldn't blame the Iraqi people and the new Iraqi government for the former system's attacks on Kuwait in 1990. Therefore, the Kurdistan Region Presidency asked that media attacks cease, and instead it recommends that "both sides have to sit at a dialogue table to find common solutions that the two governments agree upon.

"We in Kurdistan Region understand and are aware of the sufferings of the brotherly people of Kuwait. As part of our duty we have to announce that it is not in favor of the Iraqi people to enter another crisis with the Kuwaiti State," it adds.

Iraqi politicians are angered with Kuwait Parliament's demand to the United Nations that sanctions on Iraq not be removed. Iraq's assets in world banks remain frozen as long as Iraq remains under the influence of Chapter VII.

Tensions mounted when some Iraqi Parliament members demanded Kuwait in return pay reparations for the UN-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

"Kuwait must stop its campaign against removing Iraq from UN's Chapter VII," said Mahmud Osman, a Kurdish member of the Iraqi Parliament describing Kuwait's demands as "unfair."

"Kuwait gave loans Saddam Hussein and Saddam used it in wars that were harmful for Iraq. We had not agreed about those debts, and now should we pay them back?" said Osman, who stated that Iraq has paid $13 billion to Kuwait and still owes some $16 billion.

Meanwhile, Osman remarked that the crisis cannot further deepen because "Iraq has signed a security pact with the U.S. and this agreement commits Washington to remove Iraq under the UN Chapter VII. Kuwait won't be able to stop the Americans from achieving that."