U.S. 'dissapointed' with Iraq oil law

WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 (UPI) -- The United States is “disappointed” with Baghdad’s pace of passing legislation such as the oil law, a top State Department official for Iraq said.

“We agree that Iraq cannot be won by military means alone,” Lawrence Butler, deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, said during a speech at the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations’ annual Arab-U.S. Policymakers Conference.

“Candidly, we have been disappointed with the reconciliation efforts at the national level and the lack of passage of legislation such as de-Baathification laws or the hydrocarbon law package,” he said. “And we continue to press that.”

The de-Baathification law would reverse a post-invasion law that banned nearly all of Iraqis who were members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party from obtaining good jobs. Only the top officials would continue to be excluded according to the proposed law.

The hydrocarbons law package is four laws that would govern the oil and natural gas sector, decide how revenue is allocated, and the operations of the Ministry of Oil and Iraqi National Oil Company.

The oil law is stuck in Parliament after a year prior in negotiations between the Kurdistan Regional Government and central government officials. The roadblocks remain the same: what control with the federal, regional and provincial governments play in the oil strategy and how much access will private and foreign oil companies have.

The U.S. government is pushing hard for progress on the law, which they claim will lead to national reconciliation.

Kurds and some Shiites in government want a decentralized governance of the oil. Many others, especially the Sunnis, think a central strategy for the vast reserves is better. And a combination, as well as the oil unions, are very leery of reversing the nationalized model for the oil.

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Ben Lando, UPI Energy Editor

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(e-mail: blando@upi.com)