Wednesday, April 18, 2007
INM daily summary – 18 April 2007
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- Iraq's hotly debated draft oil law is to be sent to parliament "within the coming few days if everything goes well," the Oil Ministry spokesman said on Wednesday.
- About 100 Kurds are trapped on the Jordanian-Iraqi border and another 100 or so refugees are at the nearby Rweished camp.
- A two-day conference sponsored by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on Iraqi displaced persons opened in Geneva on April 17.
- Syria has changed the rule for temporary resident visas for Iraqi refugees.
- Iraq plans to take security control of all its provinces from foreign forces before the end of the year, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said.
- U.S. troops have laid siege to two villages in the restive Province of Anbar.
- The Director of Basra International Airport said that the airport stopped flights on Tuesday for security reasons, while eyewitnesses said that the British base in the airport was rocketed.
- Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said on Tuesday $25 million was allocated to support Iraqi refugees abroad.
- Attackers set off deadly bombs in neighborhoods across Baghdad on Wednesday, killing at least 45 people and wounding others, an Interior Ministry official said.
- Political and sectarian fighting in Iraq's oil capital, Basra, intensifies, threatening most of Iraq's oil production and all its oil exports.
- Hairdressers are being threatened and killed by extremist groups in Kirkuk.
- In a conference in Erbil, KRG President Massound Barzani said failure to reach a consensus on Article 140 would spell disaster.
- The World Bank signed a credit agreement to finance the Emergency Electricity Reconstruction Project for US$124 million.
- Strict security measures are being implemented to keep Arbil safe from car bombs and infiltrators including building a tunnel to segregate the border between Arbil and the turbulent Mosul and Kirkuk provinces.
- A group of senior Sunni clerics visited Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, in Najaf yesterday and emerged from the meeting saying followers of the two sects are 'brothers.'
- Saudi Arabia has decided to write off 80 percent of the more than $15 billion it is owed by Iraq, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday.
- Security round-up.
