Thursday, April 26, 2007
INM daily summary – 26 April 2007
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- During a meeting in Kuwait on April 24, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told David Satterfield, a senior adviser to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Iraq, that the United States should start talking to Syria and Iran.
- Former Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi reportedly met with radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr recently in the holy city of Al-Najaf, to convince al-Sadr's political movement to join Allawi's newly announced political bloc, the Iraq National Front.
- Suicide bombers attacked an Iraqi Army check-point and a KDP office in northern Iraq on Thursday.
- At the Sharm el-Sheikh May 3-4 meeting, Arab countries will demand that Iraq do more to reach out to its own disgruntled Sunni Arabs, before they pledge substantial aid to the troubled nation.
- The United Nations has rebuked Kurdish authorities over their treatment of journalists and detainees in a rare critical assessment of the human rights situation in Kurdistan.
- Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zibari on Wednesday left Baghdad heading for Tehran to urge Iranians participate in the ministerial meeting on Iraq scheduled in Sharm al-Sheikh, Egypt, in early May.
- Iraq's Kurdistan’s Ministry of Electricity on Wednesday signed a US$ 40 mn contract with the Italian company ELC, guaranteeing consultations about the restoration of the Darbendikhan and Doukan dams, which supply the Kurdistan region with electricity.
- Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said that the Kirkuk issue will be solved according to the Iraqi constitution.
- U.S forces have started issuing special identification cards to residents of Ramadi.
- The United States will continue to work with other countries on debt relief for Iraq as the International Compact with Iraq prepares to meet next week.
- A sharply divided House of Representatives ignored the threat of a presidential veto last night and passed legislation that would order George Bush to begin withdrawing US troops from Iraq in October.
- Iraq must lure between $2 billion and $2.5 billion per year in international aid and investment if it is to rebuild its devastated power sector.
- Moves in the US Congress to demand a timetable for military withdrawal from Iraq brought mixed reviews from Iraqi members of parliament.
- Turkish officials say meetings with Iraqi leaders last week included new oil export deals with Baghdad, bypassing Iraqi Kurds.
- Security round-up.
