Iraqi Dinar Discussion Board

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Kurdish lawmaker rules out oil, gas law to be passed this term

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Baghdad - Voices of Iraq
Tuesday , 24 /06 /2008 Time 6:59:39 </B>
Baghdad, Jun 24, (VOI) – A leading Kurdish legislator ruled out that the draft law on oil and gas would be passed during the current legislative term.


Mahmoud Othman, a key member of the Kurdistan Coalition (KC), voiced optimism about solving outstanding issues between the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region and central governments during the visit being paid by the region's Prime Minister, Nejervan Barazani, to Baghdad.
Barazani's visit to Baghdad would "solve many pending issues between the central and Iraqi Kurdistan governments, but I don't think the draft on oil and gas would be passed during this legislative term," Othman told Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq – (VOI).
The KC is the second largest bloc in the Iraqi parliament with 55 out of a total 275 seats.
On Sunday a lawmaker said a visit by Barazani to Baghdad is "required" in order to resolve outstanding issues between the two sides.
"The pending issues need more consultations and coordination by the two governments," Jalal al-Din al-Saghir, a member of parliament from the Shiite Unified Iraqi Coalition (UIC), told VOI.
Iraq's central government had declined to recognize the oil contracts concluded by Iraqi Kurdistan with foreign corporations to explore and invest oil fields within the autonomous region and also refused to pay the salaries of more than 190,000 personnel of the region's peshmerga guards from the central defense ministry budget.
The peshmerga are irregular forces loyal to the two main Kurdish parties: Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and Iraqi Kurdistan President Massoud Barazani's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).
These forces were merged into the Iraqi army after foreign troops entered the country and toppled the ruling regime in 2003.
Falah Mustafa, the official in charge of the Iraqi Kurdistan region's foreign relations, had said on Saturday that Barazani arrived in Baghdad on Saturday on a visit to offer fresh proposals for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki pertaining to the law on oil and gas and financial appropriations for the peshmerga forces, or Region's Guards, from the federal budget


http://www.aswataliraq.info/look/eng...=2&NrSection=1