Iraqi Oil

GENEVA -- The suspension of talks between Iraq and the United Nations last week was especially bitter news for Carlos Alzamora.For more than four years, this former Peruvian diplomat and his team of experts have been collecting and sifting the claims of more than 2 million people who say they were hurt in some way -- economically, physically or psychologically -- by Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990.Thirty percent of the money that would have been collected from the sale of Iraqi oil that might have come out of the talks would have flowed into the nearly empty coffers of Mr. Alzamora's compensation fund, at the rate of about $100 million a month.

THE UNITED NATIONS last week temporarily lifted its oil embargo against Iraq, allowing the country to sell $2 billion worth of oil to buy food and medicine. OPEC nations meeting in Vienna refused to cut output to accommodate Iraqi's first exports in six years and instead raised the cartel's daily production ceiling by a half million barrels to 25 million and added 800,000 barrels to Iraq's allocation. OPEC members routinely exceed their quotas and the cartel actually produced 26.1 million barrels a day last month; the Paris-based International Energy Agency estimates demand for OPEC oil will remain unchanged at 24.5 million barrels a day for the rest of the year.

The definitive verdict on American policy toward Iraq depends on what happens next -- or what doesn't happen next. If Saddam Hussein keeps his elite troops above the 32nd parallel and does not again threaten Kuwait, President Clinton comes out a winner in facing down the Baghdad dictator through swift redeployment of U.S. forces to the Persian Gulf. If the U.N. Security Council does not lift the oil embargo strangling the Iraqi economy until all U.S. demands are met, including some add-ons, this too can be interpreted as a triumph in the use of U.S. military might.

WASHINGTON -- Two and a half years after the West and its Arab allies went to war to keep Saddam Hussein from controlling the world's oil markets, the Iraqi president is again sending jitters through oil producers and their governments.The markets are jumpy over the consequences of a one-time, $1.6 million Iraqi oil sale the United Nations is considering to allow Baghdad to finance humanitarian needs and war reparations.There also is concern among oil analysts and within the U.S. government that the spigot will be hard to turn off, particularly as the U.N. humanitarian-aid coffers are desperately short of cash.

Proposed stockbroker disclosureStockbrokers who are paid to steer orders to firms that trade stocks away from the big exchange floors would be required to disclose the payments to investors under rules proposed by federal regulators.The rule was suggested by the staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission as a way to help investors get the best deals when trading stocks.French official takes on trade rivalsForeign Minister Alain Juppe accused France's trade rivals of "intellectual terrorism" yesterday and expressed doubt that a Dec. 15 deadline for a new world trade pact could be met.Efforts to conclude the pact have been jeopardized by France's adamant opposition to a U.S.-European Community farm trade accord that would cut subsidies to farmers.

UNITED NATIONS -- Hardening its position toward Saddam Hussein's government, the Clinton administration wants to impose new requirements for lifting the United Nations ban on Iraqi oil exports.The United States is urging other members of the U.N. Security Council to insist that Baghdad recognize Kuwait as an independent country and stop persecuting dissident Kurds and Shiite Muslims.These conditions would be in addition to the Security Council's demands, made at the end of the Persian Gulf war, that Iraq disarm and let the United Nations monitor its military industries.

WASHINGTON -- In another burst of impatience with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, the U.N. Security Council ordered the seizure of frozen Iraqi oil assets yesterday to help pay for that which Iraq owes the United Nations under the cease-fire resolutions that ended the Persian Gulf War.By a 14-0 vote, with China abstaining, the Security Council adopted a U.S.-sponsored resolution that details a complicated method for nations to deal with Iraqi oil and with...

WASHINGTON -- The U.N. Security Council set the stage yesterday for destruction of Iraqi nuclear and missile facilities, by fTC force if necessary.After two days of meetings with Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, the council said Iraq "has not yet complied fully and unconditionally" with resolutions requiring disclosure and destruction of its weapons of mass destruction and the means to produce them.Reacting skeptically to Mr. Aziz's pledges of cooperation, the council said that Iraq "must immediately take the appropriate actions in this regard," and expressed hopes that the goodwill presented by Mr. Aziz "will be matched by deeds."

ANKARA, Turkey -- President Bush expressed concern yesterday over last week's renewed clashes between Kurdish rebels and Iraqi troops, but he said the immediate problem appears to be "getting resolved" and indicated that he saw no immediate role for U.S. troops.Mr. Bush spoke at a news conference as he pressed ahead with efforts to demonstrate an increased U.S. commitment to Turkey in gratitude for its steadfast backing in the Persian Gulf war.The president expressed overall support for Turkey's military modernization program, including co-production with General Dynamics of 160 F-16 fighter jets.

AMMAN, Jordan -- Although Jordan is holding to its uneasy neutrality in the gulf war, its diplomatic skirmishing with the United States continued yesterday over Jordanian use of Iraqi oil.Aoun Khasawneh, legal adviser to King Hussein, sharply criticized the U.S. assertion that Jordan's oil imports violate United Nations economic sanctions against Iraq.Iraq has been Jordan's only source of oil since October, when Saudi Arabia shut off its supply in anger over Jordan's neutrality. Because of that, Mr. Khasawneh said, the United Nations agreed informally that Jordan could continue getting oil from Iraq without violating the spirit of the sanctions.

Soaring oil prices will leave the Iraqi government with a cumulative budget surplus of as much as $79 billion by year's end, according to an American federal oversight agency. But Iraq has spent only a minute fraction of that on reconstruction costs that are now largely borne by the United States. The unspent windfall, which covers surpluses from oil sales of 2005 through 2008, appears likely to reinforce growing debate about the roughly $48 billion in American taxpayer money devoted to rebuilding Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion.

The news that no-bid contracts for oil production in Iraq were to be awarded to a number of U.S. oil companies sent keyboards tapping in the blogosphere (the contracts have been put on hold). A sampling of the commentary: "The U.S. government dictated terms that are set to bring back ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Total and Chevron, the very same multinational energy giants that dominated Iraqi oil production before Baghdad nationalized the sector 36 years ago. They, along with a consortium of smaller firms, have been offered no-bid contracts by the Iraqi government.

The "commander-in-chef" whipped up quite a meal back in 2003. As late as March 2006, he was still trying to serve a version of it at a "strategy for victory" event - though he was no longer accompanying it with a dessert of cakewalk ice cream cake. Now the nation sits at a table with an oil-stained tablecloth, uncleared places, dirty dishes, used silverware and bones strewn everywhere. And if the meal doesn't give us heartburn, the multitrillion-dollar check will. For those with short memories, here is a handy recipe for Baghdad victory stew.

Throughout a career that took him from hardscrabble wildcatter to wealthy oil tycoon, Oscar S. Wyatt Jr. hasn't been the type to back down from a fight. So Monday's guilty plea to a federal conspiracy charge by the 83-year-old founder and former chairman of Coastal Corp. surprised those familiar with his tenacity. "I am shocked by his decision to plead guilty," said David H. Berg, who represented Wyatt's brother-in-law, Houston clothier Robert T. Sakowitz, when the oilman sued him in the 1980s over some business deals.

Alan Greenspan became famous when he was chairman of the Federal Reserve for being largely indecipherable, but his comment about Iraq in a new memoir could hardly have been clearer. "I'm saddened," he wrote, "that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: The Iraq war is largely about oil." Maybe that was too clear. Mr. Greenspan quickly began backpedaling in interviews after the book came out, reverting to his familiar sift-through-this-for-meaning style. Antiwar critics nevertheless treated it as a gotcha moment, while administration defenders, including Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, poured cold water all over it. But honestly, hasn't anyone been paying attention all these years?

DAVOS, Switzerland -- The pristine, snowy mountains of this ski town present a picture totally different from scenes of bloody Baghdad. But Iraq is far from absent at the Davos World Economic Forum, where it is the subject of several high-level panels. I had the chance to talk at length with two of Iraq's smartest and most competent political leaders, Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi (a Shiite) and Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari (a Kurd). What they said - about the U.S. troop "surge," the prospects for Iraq's government, and the need for intense Mideast diplomacy to keep the war from spreading - should be factored into America's Iraq debate.

Regardless of past mistakes, the new Iraq still can be saved. In my opinion as an adviser to the Iraq Study Group, any rescue plan should focus on basic measures, including U.S. troop redeployment, prevention of oil theft and corruption, training of Iraqi troops, recognition of the influence of Iran and Syria, and promotion of democracy. Redeploy troops. Coalition forces should redeploy around critical infrastructure. They should have a defined space to defend instead of being sitting ducks for insurgents on the streets.

WASHINGTON - A member of the British Parliament called a Senate inquiry "the mother of all smokescreens" yesterday, denying accusations that he had profited from a United Nations oil-for-food program in Iraq. The British lawmaker, George Galloway, was met with skepticism from Sen. Norm Coleman, a Minnesota Republican who is chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, as well as from Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat. "It strains any concept of reasonableness for him to assert that he didn't know, or wouldn't answer the question, whether his named representative in Iraq was involved in trading for oil," Coleman said.

UNITED NATIONS - Senate investigators examining corruption in the United Nations' oil-for-food program for Iraq released a report yesterday alleging that Saddam Hussein tried to buy the influence of two senior officials from Britain and France. The names of former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua and British politician George Galloway first emerged more than a year ago on a list of influential people who allegedly were granted the right by Hussein's government to buy discounted oil under the program to sell for a profit.

Although $50-per-barrel oil is getting to feel normal, many U.S. policy-makers and other oil "optimists" still talk about high prices as a temporary spike lasting at most a couple of years. Oil prices, they tell us, are being driven mainly by those gouging Machiavellians at OPEC and are therefore relatively short term. According to the optimists, the same high prices that are filling OPEC's coffers today will encourage other, non-OPEC oil producers, such as Russia or Kazakhstan, to drill more oil wells to cash in on the hot prices.