Iraq MP: U.S. oil law pressure no help

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Sept. 4 (UPI) -- U.S. pressure on Iraq's government to pass an oil law as one of 18 benchmarks didn’t help and the law isn't ready to pass now, a top parliamentarian said.

Next week U.S. Embassy and military officials in Baghdad are to deliver a report on how Iraq’s government fared on the benchmarks, most of which were missed.

One benchmark, passing an oil law that shares revenues as a way of reconciling factions, was not expected to be achieved.

For one, the oil law the Bush administration was pushing for was highly controversial, getting right to the heart of the future of Iraq in terms of federalism and foreign investment. And the law doesn’t deal with revenue sharing at all; a separate revenue-sharing law does.

“This is political pressure. It’s in the media,” said Abdul-Hadi al-Hasani, deputy chair of the Parliament’s Energy Committee. “They think by really passing this law, it could improve the economy and give people better hope, better security and better political process.”

“As a member of Parliament nobody pressures us. Nobody could … because we are not one, there are 275 of us,” he said on the sidelines of an Iraq energy conference. “We pressure ourselves to get this law to come as good as possible to look after the interest of the Iraqi people.”

Hasani’s timeframe expectations were more giving than his colleague, who also spoke at the Iraq Oil, Gas, Petrochemicals and Electricity Summit organized by the London-based Iraq Development Program.

Sami al-Askari, parliamentarian and top adviser to the prime minister, said Parliament would take up the bill perhaps within weeks, after the prime minister, the president, vice presidents and Iraqi Kurdistan president vowed last week to move the law forward.

“In the beginning each group, each political group, has its own expectation. But all agreed and they all understand in the end we have to reach a common point and to reach a common point we have to lower your expectation and to agree to the others, to persuade the others. Compromise. Every party did compromise and I think we reached a point of agreement,” he said. “We have not forgotten the pressure from the outsiders as well because the Americans are keen that this law will pass.”

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Ben Lando, UPI Energy Editor