Wednesday, April 25, 2007
INM daily summary – 25 April 2007
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- The leader of the Iraqi Constitutional Monarchist Movement, Ali Bin al-Husayn, has warned of a calamity if national reconciliation cannot be achieved before foreign forces withdraw from Iraq.
- The Muslim Scholars Association issued a statement on its website on April 23 blaming Shi'ite death squads for the killing of 23 members of the Yazidi religious minority in Mosul on April 22.
- UNAMI said that for the first time since it began issuing quarterly reports on the human rights situation in Iraq, the new Jan. 1 through March 31 report did not contain overall death figures from Iraq's Ministry of Health because it refused to release them.
- The director of the security ministry for the Sulaimaniya province, Sarkawt Hassan Jalal, said he has no doubt Iran is helping send Sunni jihadists into his territory.
- Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr strongly condemned construction of a wall around a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad, calling for demonstrations against the plan.
- Officials from Iraq's central government and the Kurdistan region will meet this week to iron out last-minute disputes over a draft oil law.
- Iraqi politicians -- frustrated by violence throughout the country and the glacial pace of parliamentary lawmaking -- say the nearly one-year-old government is failing.
- Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki met with top officials from Kuwait and the US yesterday to discuss the $15 billion (Dh55.05 billion) Baghdad owes Kuwait and ways to stop the infiltration of foreign fighters.
- Iraq's Parliament Speaker Mahmud al-Mashhadani said on Tuesday that the parliament signed a contract with a security company to protect the parliament inside the green zone in central Baghdad, but did not reveal its identity.
- The Iraqi Kurdish regional government and a Dubai firm are to build a $400 million (around Dh1.4 billion) "media city" in Arbil, officials said.
- The Russian government is throwing its full support behind Lukoil's ambition to become the first big international energy group to develop a major Iraqi oil field following the 2003 US invasion.
- An Al Qaida-linked group claimed that it used "new methods" in staging a double suicide bombing with dump trucks that blasted a paratrooper outpost in volatile Diyala province.
- Delegates at a new aviation security conference taking place in Dubai next month will hear how the security situation at Baghdad International Airport, one of the world’s most dangerous aviation environments, has been dramatically improved in just three years.
- Security round-up
- NEW ADDITION TO Links: Documents: Iraq Weekly Status Report, April 18, 2007 - Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, US Department of State
- NEW ADDITION TO Links: Documents: Brookings Institute - Brookings Iraq Index 23 April 2007
