Iraq MPs back in session have lots on plate

Iraq's parliament speaker Mahmud Mashhadani on Tuesday urged MPs to resolve a dispute over provincial elections and oil-rich Kirkuk as the house resumed work after a four-week summer recess. The assembly also plans to debate the oil law and the proposed security deal with the U.S. military.

"I urge the MPs to speed up the culture of concord and participation and not get caught up in a maze that would take us back to square one," Mashhadani, who is recovering from heart surgery, said during a brief one-hour session.

"The Iraqi people are looking at you and waiting for a solution regarding Kirkuk and the elections," the Sunni Arab speaker told the 160 MPs who attended the session of the 275-member house.

Before the holidays, the draft provincial election bill was hotly debated, with Kurdish lawmakers objecting to holding elections in the northern oil province of Kirkuk whose ownership is claimed by both the Arabs and Kurds.

Baghdad had planned to hold elections, considered a barometer to judge the permanency of recent security gains, in the 18 provinces on October 1. But chances of a vote this year have diminished with the delay in the bill’s approval.

U.S. and Iraqi troops along with Sunni Arab fighters battling al-Qaeda have managed to reduce the violence across the country to a four-year low, giving space for politicians to resolve disputes.

Iraq-U.S. security deal on the table

The controversial U.S.-Iraq security deal to decide the future of American forces in Iraq once the U.N. mandate expires is also expected to come up for discussion in the parliament soon.

Iraqi negotiators have told AFP the two sides have already agreed to withdraw U.S. soldiers from cities by June 2009 and from the country by 2011.

However, they are still hotly debating issues such as whether U.S. forces should remain immune from Iraqi laws, have the right to detain Iraqi citizens and over who would command future military

President George W. Bush on Tuesday plans to order 8,000 more combat and support troops out of Iraq by February, a measured drawdown that will leave nearly the same level of U.S. forces in the war zone for the rest of the year.

The national oil law has been in the parliament since last year amid bitter wrangling between lawmakers over how to distribute revenues among the country's provinces.

Oil deal passes even as oil law debated

Shell is first Western energy company to get major deal since 1972

Even as the parliament struggles to clear the oil law, Iraqi oil ministry told AFP on Tuesday that it and Anglo-Dutch oil major Shell have agreed to form a joint venture to capture gas from fields in the southern region of Basra in a deal worth up to four billion dollars.

Iraq's cabinet approved the contract, giving the state-owned
Southern Oil Company 51 percent and Shell 49 percent in the venture, which is the first such agreement giving a
Western oil major a foothold in Iraq's huge energy reserves since executed dictator Saddam Hussein threw out foreign oil giants in 1972.

In related news, oil fell to a new five-month low on Tuesday as expectations OPEC would leave formal output targets steady outweighed concerns over the threat of Hurricane Ike to U.S. Gulf of Mexico energy infrastructure.

OPEC ministers meeting in Vienna were expected to keep output targets steady. Officials said oil prices -- which have tumbled nearly 30 percent from record highs over $147 a barrel in July -- are now more reflective of fundamentals.

Also on the table is the controversial U.S.-Iraq security deal to decide the future of American forces in Iraq once the U.N. mandate expires is also expected to come up for discussion in the parliament soon.

Iraqi negotiators have told AFP the two sides have already agreed to withdraw U.S. soldiers from cities by June 2009 and from the country by 2011.

However, they are still hotly debating issues such as whether U.S. forces should remain immune from Iraqi laws, have the right to detain Iraqi citizens and over who would command future military