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Official Calls Kurd Oil Deal at Odds With Baghdad By Alissa J. Rubin and
Andrew E. Kramer BAGHDAD, Sept. 27 — A senior State Department official in Baghdad acknowledged Thursday that the first American oil contract in Iraq, that of the Hunt Oil Company of Dallas with the Kurdistan Regional Government, was at cross purposes with the stated United States foreign policy of strengthening the country’s central government. "We believe these contracts have needlessly elevated tensions between the K.R.G. and the national government of Iraq," the official said, referring to the Kurdistan Regional Government. The official was not authorized to speak for attribution on the oil contract. The tensions between Kurdistan and the central government go well beyond the oil law. Already a semiautonomous region for more than 15 years, Kurdistan in many respects functions as independent state and wants as much latitude as possible to run its region. Recently, the Kurdistan government has pushed to extend its borders to include nearby areas that have sizable Kurdish populations. Hunt Oil, a closely held company, signed a production-sharing agreement with the Kurdistan Regional Government this month. The company’s chief executive and president, Ray L. Hunt, is a close political ally of President Bush and serves on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Hunt Oil and the Kurds signed the contract after the Kurdish government passed a regional oil law in August. But it is unclear how the regional law will interact with a national oil law under discussion in the Iraqi Parliament. Under draft versions of the national law, the central government would have a say in whether individual oil contracts are legal. The Iraqi national oil law is one of the 18 benchmarks established by the Bush administration to evaluate the Iraqi government’s progress. The senior official said the State Department had advised Hunt Oil, before the signing, that contracts with the Kurdistan Regional Government might contravene Iraqi law once national oil legislation was passed by the Iraqi Parliament. "We think they are legally uncertain," the official said of Hunt’s contracts with the Kurdistan government. Iraq’s oil minister, Hussain al-Shahristani, has said the Hunt Oil contract is not valid, though there is a provision for reviewing and possibly approving it in the proposed oil law. The intent of that law is to pool oil revenue to distribute it equitably to the Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish areas of Iraq. The embassy official said at least four other American and international oil companies had consulted with the State Department about energy investment in Iraq, and all received the same advice. Kurdistan faced trouble from neighboring countries on Thursday because of the activities of Kurdish separatists who are using the region as a redoubt from which to launch attacks on Iran and Turkey. Kurdish officials said that Iran shelled two areas along the region’s eastern border on Wednesday evening. Ten Iranian artillery shells struck Rayan, a small village about 15 miles from the Iranian border, destroying four houses and killing villagers’ animals. Twelve Iranian shells also hit the Qandil Mountains close to the border, said Jaza Hussein Ahmed, the mayor of nearby Qalat. There were no casualties reported. Iraqi Kurdish officials bristled Thursday at word that the Iraqi central government would sign an agreement with Turkey on Friday that Kurds fear might pave the way for Turkish soldiers to cross into Iraq to pursue Turkish Kurdish separatists who take refuge in Iraqi Kurdistan. Turkey has long been in an armed conflict with the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party), which launches hit-and-run attacks on Turkey from camps in the northern Iraqi mountains. They are fighting for autonomy for Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast. American forces said Thursday that they were investigating the deaths of nine civilians in a village about 60 miles southwest of Baghdad. The bodies — five women and four children — were found after a raid in Babahani village by American forces on Tuesday, according to a news release. "Coalition Forces conducted operations in the area using ground and air assets prior to the discovery of the bodies," the release said. According to Iraqi military sources, the American raid began around 11 p.m. when a bomb was dropped on one of the houses in which the women and children apparently were staying. Shortly afterward, a second house was struck, killing two men and wounding two others, according to an officer from the Iraqi Army’s Eighth Division, First Brigade. Soldiers then entered a mosque and detained the imam, Mohammed Hassan al-Janabi, the officer said, and the operation was over by 1 a.m. Recent intelligence reports suggested that staying in one of the houses was a local leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a homegrown Sunni Arab extremist group whose leadership is foreign, according to Western intelligence sources. Nine bodies were also found in Baghdad on Thursday, according to an Interior Ministry official. Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting from Istanbul, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Sulaimaniya, Hilla and Kirkuk.
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A Feast
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