Satterfield: Iraq progress awaits vision

WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 (UPI) -- Top U.S. official in Iraq David Satterfield said Iraqi leaders lack a "common vision" for Iraq, which is delaying success on key items like the oil law.

"Far too little progress has been made" on the national level on the list of measures, or benchmarks, especially legislative, said Satterfield, the senior adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the State Department's Coordinator for Iraq.

"There is no common vision. No common agreed set of concepts," he said at a briefing at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, "that says what it is to be an Iraqi."

The lack of an agreement on Iraq, specifically on the extent of federalism in Iraq and the powers given to the provinces and regions, is what is holding back a proposed law governing Iraq's 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves -- the third largest in the world.

"There is a need for a hydrocarbons law," Satterfield said.

The U.S. is trying to create more "accommodation" among Iraqi factions, he said, "a process that can produce reconciliation over time."

The oil law is held up in Parliament by factions bitterly divided over the limits of federal control over the oil sector and extent foreign and private investors can enter the hydrocarbons sector.