A fair and just compromise

NO MATTER what any of the key player in the Kurdish crisis in Iraq does, there is little prospect for resolvign the root problem — the Kurds' quest what they consider as their birthright to independence.
For such is the strength that the Kurds have built over the decades within the region and in Europe. Their "cause" got a major boost when the US backed them against Saddam Hussein after the war over Kuwait in 1991 and gave them a protective umbrella in northern Iraq where they expanded their autonomous regime. Today, the Kurdish area is the most stable part of Iraq.
However, on the other side of the border in Turkey, the Turkish Kurds were restless and they moved into northern Iraq following the ouster of the Saddam Hussein regime. Today, the number of fighters belonging to the outlawed Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) based in northern Iraq is estimated at more than 3,000. They are waging a cross-border insurgency against the Turkish government.
The PKK has always waved between the goals of expanded autonomy and statehood for Turkish Kurds, but now it seems to have settled for statehood, a goal also pursued by the Kurds of Iraq, Iran and Syria but opposed by all the regional governments.
The latest in the stand-off is that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is willing to give diplomacy a chance despite having a mandate from the Turkish parliament to launch military attacks the PKK fighters in northern Iraq.
Indeed, there could be a diplomatic solution to the problem since the PKK also seems to be ready for a compromise (it has said it would stop cross-border attacks if the Turkish government called off a military incursion into northern Iraq). However, it is highly unlikely that the solution would hold for long since the Turkish government would only step up pressure with a view to rooting out the PKK, which in turn would retaliate with hit-and-run attacks inside Turkey.
It should not be forgotten that Kurds number between eight and nine million in Turkey, and they have always been a thorn on the side of Turkish government since the turn of the last century. It is highly unlikely that they would ever give up their dream of creating a Kurdistan which would account of a major chunk of Turkish territory.
The only solution at this juncture could come only through dialogue. The PKK should renounce its separatist quest and Ankara should address the concerns of its Kurdish people wherever they are legitimate and do not question of Turkey's sovereignty and territorial sovereignty. That should be the compromise that the US should be seeking. Nothing less would work.

Let the prediction be totally wrong

THE MOMENT of decision is close at hand for the US whether to launch military action against Iran in the confrontation resulting from Tehran's refusal to suspend its nuclear programme. That is what European experts would have us following Washington's imposition tough sanctions against Iran last week after the US failed to push through the UN Security Council a third resolution announcing additional UN sanctions against that country.
However, the apt assertion would be that it was never a question for the Bush administration "whether" to launch military action against Iran but "when," and that the nuclear dispute has offered the hawks in Washington the best opportunity to push the confrontation with Tehran towards armed conflict.
As US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently declared, Iran definitely stands in the way of the US implementing its vision of the Middle East. Such an affirmation is unlikely to gain international sympathy for the US since the world — particularly the Middle East itself — has seen and is continuing to see in Iraq the best example of the US vision for the region.
In fact, the Bush administration's behaviour after the Sept.11, 2001 attacks has given the world little reason to sympathise with the US. Indeed, the world was shocked and grieved over the death of nearly 3,000 people, the international community remains solidly opposed to such actions wherever they occur as a challenge to humanity. They violate the very basic foundations of what the civilised world believes in.
The post-9/11 US behaviour was and is as if the attacks in New York and Washington offered the perfect pretext for the US to unleash its military and political clout against any country and people that stood in the way of its interests.
It is in this context that the US-Iran "confrontation" should be seen. The dispute over whether Iran seeking nuclear weapons and charges that Tehran is actively supporting the anti-US insurgency in Iraq are only part of the broader picture.
In all fairness, Washington has declared that it is not seeking armed conflict with Iran and favours diplomacy to solve the dispute and the new sactions are aimed at averting military action. We also know that that is the favoured approach of people like Rice, Defence Secretary Robert Gates and a few others in the administration. However, the hawkish camp is definitely gaining in its push for US military action against Iran, and the Tehran regime's defiant rhetoric has already paved the way for it.
Norman Podhoretz, a pre-eminent conservative foreign policy intellectual and associate of the Republican frontrunner for presidency, Rudy Giuliani and, equally importantly, a winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest honour, aptly puts it:
"I would say it would take five minutes. You’d wake up one morning and the strikes would have been ordered and carried out during the night."
We fervently hope Podhoretz would prove to be totally wrong.

Oil game stuckwithout rules

The Washington strategists seem to be confident that the oil legislation pending before the Iraqi parliament would definitely be approved, clearing the way for US multinationals to sign exploration and production agreements that would net them tens of billions of dollars while the people of Iraq would get a pittance for their national wealth.
The confidence was reflected in last month's Iraqi announcement that the next annual renewal of the United Nations Security Council mandate for a multinational force in Iraq will be the last. The catch here is that the UN mandate the only legal basis for a continuation of the American occupation of Iraq and that is also closely linked, as far as the Security Council is concerned, to the management of Iraqi oil revenues through he "Development Fund for Iraq." Once the UN mandate for a multinational force in Iraq expires, the UN management of the country's oil revenues would also be abrogated although this requires a separate Iraqi move, which should also be coming soon.
Iraq has also announced that it hopes to sign a conventional bilateral security agreement with the United States to replace the existing UN mandate for a multinational security force by the end of 2008.
The oil script is being played out as written by the US strategists but it is currently stuck in the Iraqi parliament, with the government unable to have the assembly debate and approve it, given the reluctance of a majority of members for various reasons.
However, that has not set back the US machinery. The Republican camp in Washington is pinning high hopes on the draft legislation in order to please its financial backers, many of them oil giants and some of them with close ties with senior Bush administration officials. Not that the Democrats could be expected to fight the move; after they too have their own string-pullers in the oil industry.
We have heard arguments in public that the draft legislation is not different from many others in the region. However, in reality it is definitely different.
The draft bill, once approved by the Iraqi parliament, would clear the way for foreign oil companies to sign long-term exploration and production contracts. Compare that with the policy of most other regional governments which bans foreign control over oil development and provides for limited-duration agreements with international oil companies as contractors to provide specific services as needed without any say in oil production. Furthermore, the proposed legislation would place the Iraqi oil industry under the control of an appointed body that would include representatives of international oil companies as full voting members.
The key question that is evading an answer and probably causing major headaches in Washington is how to twist the arms of Iraqi MPs to take up the bill and push it through parliament. Definitely, it does not seem like an easy mission under the present geopolitics in strife-torn Iraq, but that is not stopping the US strategists from trying.