IRAQ: Two of Iraq's ministers showed that despite operating under US rule, they were willing to take an independent line, reports Michael Jansen.
Once Iraq's new cabinet was sworn in, two ministers began to display a surprising degree of independence of the US occupation regime.
The Foreign Minister, Mr Hoshyar Zebari, who is a Kurd, said his government would not accept troops from Turkey to bolster Anglo-US forces.
"There is a problem with military intervention by Turkish forces in the northern Kurdish areas which created many difficulties and complications," he asserted.
Over the past 19 years, Turkish troops routinely entered northern Iraq in pursuit of Turkish Kurd insurgents waging a struggle for self- determination. Although the uprising ended in 1999, Turkish troops not only continued intrusions but also set up posts within Iraqi territory.
The minister attempted to soften his specific reference to Ankara by stating: "Our neighbours have their own political agendas which they could bring with them to Iraq, thus causing more instability in Iraq."
But he mentioned only Turkey, the main concern of the Kurds, by name. Others with "agendas" include Syria, which favours a secular Sunni-dominated Iraq; and Iran, which calls for a theocracy established by Iraq's Shia majority.
The second minister to take an independent stand was Mr Ibrahim Muhammmad Bahr Uloom, who holds the oil portfolio. In an interview with the Financial Times, he said the priority of his ministry is to provide security for its installations rather than accelerate production, the main concern of the US which seeks to finance Iraq's domestic budget and reconstruction from oil revenues.
Mr Uloom said he wants to draw up a plan and proceed slowly, producing less rather than more oil until the stabilisation of the depleted fields and refineries is achieved.
Security, he said, should be handled by Iraqis and former employees of the Iraqi national oil company, dismissed by US chief administrator, Mr Paul Bremer, should be reinstated.
Mr al-Uloom estimated that it will cost $1.5 billion to upgrade existing fields and expressed opposition to the development of new fields until the old fields are rehabilitated. He made the point that a line must be drawn between the "Iraqi interest" and the interests of foreign oil companies.
Furthermore, he said, "Privatisation has to be a matter for the Iraqi people," and could be decided only by an elected Iraqi government "at the end of the transitional period . . . Iraqi oil for Iraqi people."
He also dismissed the idea, put forward by Israel and its friends in Washington, of opening a new pipeline between Mosul and Haifa on the basis that Iraq does not need any new pipeline capacity.
This show of independence came as Sheikh Muhammad Bahr al-Uloom, the oil minister's father, said he favours the deployment of militias to counter rising insecurity.
Several such militias already exist, including the Kurdish Pesh Merga, the Shia Badr Brigades, the US-trained force of the Iraqi National Congress and the so-far unarmed Imam Mahdi Army, raised by radical Shia cleric, Sayyed Muqtada al-Sadr.
Finally, the Constitutional Monarchy Movement, which has been excluded from the Governing Council and cabinet, announced that a conference of some 500 notables from all over the country would be convened later in the month with the aim of contesting US domination.
The head of the movement, Sharif Ali Bin Hussein, a pretender to the throne abolished in 1958, stated, "Iraq is occupied and we need to discuss how we should deal with the occupation authorities because, so far, that relationship is one-sided."