Good news from Baghdad at last: the oil law has stalled

Jonathan Steele, The Guardian
Glad tidings from Baghdad at last. The Iraqi parliament has gone into summer recess without passing the oil law that Washington was pressing it to adopt. For the Bush administration this is irritating, since passage of the law was billed as a "benchmark" in its battle to get Congress not to set a timetable for US troop withdrawals. The political hoops through which the government of Nouri al-Maliki has been asked to jump were meant to be a companion piece to the US "surge". Just as General David Petraeus, the current US commander, is due to give his report on military progress next month, George Bush is supposed to tell Congress in mid-September how the Maliki government is moving forward on reform...
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Iraq's wealth in the balance

Hussein Abdallah, Al-Ahram Weekly

The US administration considers the ratification of the hydrocarbon law in Iraq as one of the major targets of the US occupation. Therefore, it has been pressing Iraq's government to pass the law, ostensibly as part of efforts to promote "reconciliation" among the country's religious and ethnic groups. Moreover, since oil provides 95 per cent of Iraq's national income, the recovery of the country's oil sector would reduce the US economic and military burden in Iraq. Recent US government reports, however, show that much-awaited approval of this law designed to govern the granting of exploration rights to foreign companies would be just the beginning in addressing the Iraq oil problem... continua / continued