The main players: US, Israel, Jordan, Iraq (Kurdistan) ....... including those players with interest Britain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey and Syria.

This thread is for expressing ideas and opinions concerning the discussions for constructing a larger new oil pipeline from Kurdistan, Iraq to Haifa, Israel. Who wins... who loses? Who benefits the most and who suffers? Which countries unites, and which ones alienate from such a project? What are the real intentions for this pipeline? Will war esculate further and follow this oil pipeline?


http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=332835
Sun., June 05, 2005

U.S. checking possibility of pumping oil from northern Iraq to Haifa, via Jordan

By Amiram Cohen

The United States has asked Israel to check the possibility of pumping oil from Iraq to the oil refineries in Haifa. The request came in a telegram last week from a senior
Pentagon official to a top Foreign Ministry official in Jerusalem.

The Prime Minister's Office, which views the pipeline to Haifa as a "bonus" the U.S. could give to Israel in return for its unequivocal support for the American-led campaign in Iraq, had asked the Americans for the official telegram.

The new pipeline would take oil from the Kirkuk area, where some 40 percent of Iraqi oil is produced, and transport it via Mosul, and then across Jordan to Israel. The U.S. telegram included a request for a cost estimate for repairing the Mosul-Haifa pipeline that was in use prior to 1948. During the War of Independence, the Iraqis stopped the flow of oil to Haifa and the pipeline fell into disrepair over the years.

The National Infrastructure Ministry has recently conducted research indicating that construction of a 42-inch diameter pipeline between Kirkuk and Haifa would cost about $400,000 per kilometer. The old Mosul-Haifa pipeline was only 8 inches in diameter.

National Infrastructure Minister Yosef Paritzky said yesterday that the port of Haifa is an attractive destination for Iraqi oil and that he plans to discuss this matter with the U.S. secretary of energy during his planned visit to Washington next month. Paritzky added that the plan depends on Jordan's consent and that Jordan would receive a transit fee for allowing the oil to piped through its territory. The minister noted, however, that "due to pan-Arab concerns, it will be hard for the Jordanians to agree to the flow of Iraqi oil via Jordan and Israel."

Sources in Jerusalem confirmed yesterday that the Americans are looking into the possibility of laying a new pipeline via Jordan and Israel. (There is also a pipeline running via Syria that has not been used in some three decades.)

Iraqi oil is now being transported via Turkey to a small Mediterranean port near the Syrian border. The transit fee collected by Turkey is an important source of revenue for the country. This line has been damaged by sabotage twice in recent weeks and is presently out of service.

In response to rumors about the possible Kirkuk-Mosul-Haifa pipeline, Turkey has warned Israel that it would regard this development as a serious blow to Turkish-Israeli relations.

Sources in Jerusalem suggest that the American hints about the alternative pipeline are part of an attempt to apply pressure on Turkey.

Iraq is one of the world's largest oil producers, with the potential of reaching about 2.5 million barrels a day. Oil exports were halted after the Gulf War in 1991 and then were allowed again on a limited basis (1.5 million barrels per day) to finance the import of food and medicines. Iraq is currently exporting several hundred thousand barrels of oil per day.

During his visit to Washington in about two weeks, Paritzky also plans to discuss the possibility of U.S. and international assistance for joint Israeli-Palestinian projects in the areas of energy and infrastructure, natural gas, desalination and electricity.

Found an article about it from uk telegraph



http://www.prisonplanet.com/iraq_israel_oi..._to_reopen.html

Here is a map that helps gives a visual of this old British built pipeline during the '30s I believe. I goes right thru Jordan into Haifa.



http://www.nogw.com/images/h123.jpg

This is the current state of Iraq's oil infrasstructure:


Now, let's play "I'm an Iraqi" for a minute...let's think about that pipeline going to Syria that was shut down, and for the moment consider yourself a non-Baathist. You do not want that Syrian pipeline to be extremely important to you right? Because aren't they harboring the Baathists and letting them into your country to kill your people? Yes, they definately are.

Now stop and consider that the map you have is from the 1930's, and that old pipeline was there simply because it made good economic sense and it was a Ba'athist who shut it down because he was bitter he lost a war. You, as a new country Iraqi, are not interested in Saddam's stupid moves that cost your country money. You simply want to export your oil.

You look around you, and you find Turkey has an Israeli embassy and ambassador, and Jordan has as well, and Egypt too. You think to yourself, you know the Pahlavi Shah had good relations too, up until 1979 they were perfectly friendly....then the mullahs came and the country has gone down hill since then. Why should *I* follow the path of the losers? Why shouldn't *I* want to be more like Bahrain, or Jordan or Turkey than like Iran or Syria.

So, you see if the Jordanians are interested, and you see if the Israelis are interested....they are...so you think 'GOOD'....and you go to Amman to the economic forum and you find out that all the big companies and all the politicians from all the Arab countries are there, and Israel is there as a matter of course, no one thinks this is strange...it's normal...and so you talk to the Israeli guy and you find you kind of like him. You can deal with him, and this is a good thing.

You think about all that oil in western Iraq right by the Jordanian border. You imagine a future where a big refinery will probably be there too, so now you have even more oil to think about..how are you going to get that to port so it can be sold?

You start talking to a bunch of oil companies about building a new pipeline because "Hey, that oil has to get to the ocean, so let's get it there the safest and most effective way possible"....that would be thinking like a reasonable person about your countries assets instead of a crazy person who would rather his people starve than to make amends!

What you have just done is found a group of people to build this new pipeline....and viola...you have a new method of getting your nations major export to market. Who benefits? Everyone! It's a great thing! Everyone wins...except perhaps Syria....but there is enough oil to export if Syria gets it's act together, and that pipeline is ready to reopen anytime.

Heart...Get real. That will never happen. Arab oil to Isreal? Every bomb in the arab world will be after the pipeline. Everyone knows this. No business will put up the money for a bomb target.

David, I didn't bring it up, I didn't postulate the whole deal here, Ghost did. His question was about a potentiality...I merely provided the perspective and the reasons why this would be good for everyone. I don't know if this will happen, but ghosts point was that this is what the war was really about, and if it is as you say, that it will never happen, then I guess that nixes that. If it is a plan, then I say it's a good one....however there is no rocket science to the reasons why an Iraqi leader, a Jordanian leader and an Israeli leader might want the investor consorium to do this...it's simple...it's because it makes sense! No malicious intent, no cabal of conspiracists needed..it would just make good sense.

The intentions that you bring up are actually intentions by which many good ppl wish to see happen, not only in their own back yard, but as much around the world as possible. In your case scenario for which such a oil pipeline would benefit the ppl is one of which it should. I would be on the same page with that oil pipeline operation, along with any future foreign aid in proper proportions , if, and I say “IF”, all that’s involved were fair and honest. This has been an ever growing problem in how US foreign aid and business involvements have become more corrupt than ever before. It is because of such ongoing corruption that has caused my extreme doubt that supports any operations presented by those countries that I listed in my opening statement . Any deals that are discussed by the BushCons, Israel govt, and those few Arab govts who are aligning themselves with BushCo, are only designed to benefit themselves and not the ppl as we’d wish for. I have recently learned of how corrupt the Kurdish govt is and I only sense growing corruption from their oil fields and operations especially when it involves BushCo.

It makes good common sense to transfer oil from point A to point B in it’s most reasonable shortest distance in which it ends up at a major port, which in this particular case concerning the N Iraq / Haifa pipleline is Haifa, since Syria is in turmoil... or there's a special better deal made with Israel. The one problem with long distances of oil pipelines running through different countries is maintaining cooperation and peace between those countries in the years that follows. Disputes will create problems for such pipelines that usually ends up being sabotaged along that pipeline’s long route. The oil pipeline into Turkey is undergoing the same problem. That was the case for the ‘old’ Haifa Mosul Oil Pipeline built through Jordan by the Brits during the ’20s and ’30s as Jordan then became one area of such a problem… who later shut it down and destroyed sections of that pipeline inside their country.

Oil is not the only reasons for why BushCo has invaded Iraq. It was one of the main reason, but not the only one. The other need for Iraq was one is a major strategic military location in the Middle East that furthers supports BushCo’s aggressive actions for further encroachment into other Arab countries while pursuing the PNAC. Per BushCo’s plans, banking also will become of importance to control in the Middle East. In the meantime, all the ‘privileged’ contractors, such as Halliburton, will reap multi $ billions of American taxpayer’s monies via it’s connections with BushCo and the GOP party with shabby infrastructure projects.

Under a ’fair and balanced’ US govt, I would support such a project. Thinking as an Arab Iraqi, I would also wish for such a successful project where everybody wins, but that is not the case under this current corrupt Bush regime! Whatever proposals that are now put into motion will only further profit the wrong scoundrels. The ones who need the help the most will not get fair pay in the way that think they would. Without proper UN supervision and protection, foreign aid to Iraq or anywhere else is subject to deep seeded corruption. I even now hold deeper suspicions as to what Israel’s corrupt involvement may be with the Neocons and BushCons. Jordan has been developing along with this Bush regime as of late. If Jordan and Israel secures a lasting cooperation between them, then this pipeline project may very well be put into motion because the key factor that bonds them all together is their corruption that plays along with BushCo mantra. The common ppl will lose as they always do, until the common ppl stand up to such scoundrels. Stopping the money that fuels this corruption is one way of doing that. Stopping what supports corrupt govt is another way of doing that. Is this why some, who sabotage's things such as pipelines, are only trying to stop corruption and those who does other's wrong?

So your major problem is that you believe that the politicians are corrupt? I take that as a given. Questioning motives is fine, as long as you are offering an alternative that is realistic. I find healthy suspicion is helpful, but unhealthy suspicion keeps you from doing the obvious thing for fear that someone MIGHT profit that you personally do not wish to profit. If every highway contract in every state were analized, I think you would find cronyism, corruption and bill padding....but if the FEAR of these things kept the highway from being built we would all, and I mean the theives, the theiving politicians AND THE PEOPLE, would be less well off, and have no highway. This is a similar case.

That is very true David S. Any existing or preplanned pipeline to be built in Iraq will be sabotaged many times over. In fact, if it were not for this BushCon invasion into Iraq, a few major oil companies would have started this project by now. I read a few months ago, that the major oil companies that has been eyeing these pipeline projects inside N Iraq was just waiting to see how it goes with a few smaller oil companies who are now first to enter some dangerous regions in N Iraq. I know of one small oil company out of Canada who has sealed such a contract. Of course, if things would ever settle down in Iraq enough to proceed forward, those major oil companies will simply step in and buy up those who got this started. In my opinion, I do not think Iraq will be a 'safe' place for many many years and such sabotages and attacks will continue forth in Iraq.

Under the PNAC pact, the Neocons and BushCons all thought that this Iraq invasion would be a cake walk. That is why heavy discussions back in 2002-03 to build this pipeline between Iraq and Israel was on the table as I am sure they figured by 2005, that pipeline would have been started. If we'd had different presidents other than the Bushes, the approach to harvesting oil from Iraq may have gone very differently.... in a more 'honest' business manner. Same as the 'select' automatic dishonest govt contractors that are close to the vest of Cheney and the BushCons. It is all this dishonestly and greed that has US in so much trouble now.... and any further attempts to better Iraq and other Arab nations will struggle and fail. Saddly we have thrown so much good money after bad, that it's now so common place in acceptance ... just like how we shrugged off the $9 billion missing in Iraq several months ago and Halliburton and others mispend or misplace $100s of millions over time.

I would list all the discrepencies by these contractors over the last 5-10 years but that would turn into a book long posting. I know you know yourself of the disgusting performances by such 'special privilaged' contractors ushered in by Bush and Cheney.



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2837477.stm


Monday, 10 March, 2003, 17:24 GMT

US firms vie to rebuild Iraq

Five companies have been invited to bid for contracts to put Iraq's infrastructure back together after a decade of sanctions and the expected US-led war.

Among the five is a subsidiary of Halliburton, the oil and construction giant run by US Vice President Dick Cheney for five years till 2000.

Aside from Halliburton unit Kellogg Brown and Root, they include Bechtel, Fluor, Louis Berger and Parsons. All five are US-owned and headquartered.

here's a section of an opinion piece on this from The Nation



The Entire Column

This was an excellent post Cloudy! I had read maybe less than a week ago about something similar, but also had recently lost more items saved on my computer and did not have the report of that available to post, but you brought in very good source of information with your posting about it. Thanks!

This supports the Israelis being involved in the N Iraqi region and also brings in the other trump card of Turkey, who has been of late, feeling a little left out in the BushCo adventure in the Middle East as their economy slumps. Not only do the Israelis have operatives in N Iraq but Iran as well. This is a key story to follow in the mths to yrs to come, same as following Jordan's relations with the BushCons and Israel as I am still having some doubts about Jordan and Israel snuggling close on any future relations. In my opinion, the northern region of Iraq is going to turn into a seperate hell of it's own as these countries clash over who gets what from N Iraq and the American's monies. I'm sure the Brits has some interest with this as well but I have not found any supportive info about it yet.

Thanks Ghostgovt
I became curious about what the pipeline threads were all about so did a little digging

Seems like this could enrage the Arab world overall.

Your diggin' is highly appreciative Cloudy.

Yes, not only has BushForce invasions enraged the Arabs world wide, but the fact that Israel is attaching itself to the oil gushing industry using Iraqi oil will certainly add a lot of fuel to that fire... unless some miracle settlement comes about. I'm afraid too much damage has been done now that will prevent the Muslim population to calm down enough to allow any positive progress to be made. They (Muslims) are and will continue to be very unhappy campers. Money is usually a temporary answer for 'some' peace but we are close to running out of the funny money stuff ourselves.

"Birds Do It. Bees Do It. Even Educated Fleas Do It."

Now you do want the Iraqis to get some money from exports so they can buy some of the things the other Arab countries buy from Israel don't you?

Exports to Iraq to reach almost $1 mil.
By ORLY HALPERN

If sales continue at this rate, by the end of this year Israel will have exported about $1 million in Israeli goods to Iraq, according to statistics published Wednesday by the Israel Export Institute (IEI).

The IEI published a report Wednesday showing an overall increase of 8.3 percent in exports, totaling $42m., to Arab states compared with last year. What the numbers did not show was that exports to most Arab countries are still lower or nonexistent compared to pre-intifada levels. The only exception was Jordan – and it's a whopping exception.

In 1998, Israel exported $108m. worth of clothes, chemicals and plastic materials, mechanical equipment, food and agricultural products to Arab countries from the United Arab Emirates to as far as Morocco. About a quarter of those exports, $26m., went to Jordan.

In the first quarter of 2005, Israel trucked $29m. of goods to Jordan. That amount accounts for a large portion of the total $42m. worth of goods bound for Arab countries in that period. But exports to other Arab countries remain low.

"When the intifada broke out the [Arab] economic missions ended and exports decreased dramatically," said Gabi Bar, director of the Middle East division of the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor.

But Jordan was not affected because of the QIZs – qualitative industrial zones – which were created in the late 1990s in a joint agreement between the US, Israel and Jordan.

"The QIZs continued [importing Israeli products] because of the contract," said Bar, referring to the stipulation that the Jordanian-made US-bound products must have an Israeli component. "So there was no political effect on the Israeli exports to Jordan because without the Israeli component they can't export to the US without paying tariffs."

The agreed-upon Israeli input is 8%, but Bar said that it usually averages more. The Israeli component can be anything that makes up part of the cost of the product, be it buttons for shirts, or refined oil for machines.

Jordan's exports to the US hit $1 billion last year and almost all of that is produced in the QIZs, meaning that about $100m. of it is from Israeli exports. Jordan has some 15 QIZs.

In Iraq, it isn't the locals who are buying up blue-and-white goods. It's the Americans. The difference between this year and last is probably due to the multimillion dollar contract awarded in 2004 to Sonol, in conjunction with Morgantown International, to provide the US Army with oil. That's despite the fact that Israel has no oil.

"About 90% of the exports to Iraq are to the Americans," said Bar.

The total is actually lower than the year before. In 2004, the total annual exports was some $5 million. In the first quarter of this year it was $220,000.

The exports to the US military in Iraq do not make up for the loss of exports to UN forces stationed in southern Lebanon. In 1999, the year prior to the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon, Israeli companies exported $14.1m. of goods to some 5,000 troops, observers and civilian UNIFIL workers. Today, there are some 2,000 people stationed there.

Egypt signed a QIZ contract with Israel and the US last December, which requires an 11.7% Israeli input in products to get exported to the US without tariffs. Not surprisingly, Israeli exports to Egypt rose by 72% in the first quarter of 2005 with a total of $1.7m. compared to the same period last year.

Nevertheless, Israel has a ways to go before it reaches its 1998 level of annual exports of $54m. to Egypt.

Both the Israelis and the Egyptians expect that the number of QIZs will rise. "The QIZs will help in opening up the Egyptian economy, create badly needed jobs and promote exports," said Seif Allah Fahmy, president of Almona, an Egyptian business consulting firm. "It will help us attain the GDP [gross domestic product] growth badly needed to stimulate our economy."

Presently there are three. The first batch of exports is due to be sent to the US this summer, according to Egyptian reports.

Bar was hopeful that Israel would be open to QIZs with other Arab countries. "If other countries will come and say they want QIZs and the US agrees we would be ready to open negotiations," he said.

http://www.portaliraq.com/
Xposted http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pag...d=1117594049393

I'm not sure who you directed your question to heart, but as for myself, yes I'd not mind for the Iraqis to aquire $ from Israel in the GDP sector or by any QIZ project(s).

I suppose the basic and general point that I would make is:

1) How will all these Arab countries find it in themselves to cooperate after they have proven that they are at odds with each other and with Israel also? Just as we have mentioned lately, the latest one at odds with N Iraq and US/Israel is Turkey. In fact Turkey is now discusing bilateral relations with Iran. Turkey and the Kurds do fight in spuratic fashion. It's not a problem with me or many others in the fact that countries should try to work with each other in peace, but it's just hasn't been going down that way.

2) Then I go back to point A with all of this. Since Saddam was a product of our own CIA and had worked along with the US govt for several decades, why was there not govt actions to work with Saddam to allow the Kurds to pursue such economic success, especially after 1991 when we had no fly zones established which were patrolled by our Air Force? Plus, why didn't Bush I finish the job dismantling Saddam when our military had practically encircled Baghdad? At least at that point in time, I was still for that action since we already had $90 billion invested into that operation and did our bombing raids to get those ground troops to that point near Baghdad. Would it not have made good common sense to pursue that objective, of which Bush I abandoned? Also all the time after 1991 we patrolled the no fly zones of Iraq of which that included the Kurdish Region and would/should have allowed the Kurds to pursue it's economic relations with Israel, etc etc?

Can you see why many Americans are feed up with this crap about foreign aid and police actions/wars that only sinks us further, not to mention all the lies discovered in the processes??? Just in 15 years BOTH Bushes had destroyed us! Israel's govt does the same as well, plus they work in the same cess pool as our courrupt govt. How can we ever trust what anyone says about anything??? It's not most everybody is knocking that actual act of ppl pursuing their success in order to survive and live BUT it's how it's handled that pisses everybody off.. especially when it ends up coming out of our pockets and hides.

Then add in these Neocon GOP flavored Big Corporations who end up controlling the show from most every business transaction with such foreign countries. Same thing happens over and over... more corruption... more lies... more sufferage created as wars seems to follow that corrupt money trail laid by our very own corporations in most cases.

I'm for whatever good can happen for 'all' the Iraqis in how they may substain themselves in life, but when it involves the likes of the BushCons or Halliburtons, the Worldbanks or Exxons ..... look out! We get SOAKED by corrupt blood money that continues to ruin our own economy here.

Take a look at what happens economically, not what any of the politicians say. Politicians are always blustering, but business interests intervene:
http://www.ameinfo.com/58157.html
http://www.portaliraq.com/shownews.php?id=...41e8a29b7568729

Turkey is heavily invested in Iraq, and yes...in Kurdish Iraq.

Talibani has been to Ankara, and he has been to Syria, to Jordan, and met Israelis too. He is today in Iran, and planted a sloppy kiss on Iranian leaders. They don't care about half the things they say they do...it's for public consumption, just like here.

Saddam was not a PRODUCT of our CIA....only after the Iranian revolution when he allowed us to spy on Iran from there did he become even remotely involved.

They did not crush Saddam in 1991, because the UN coalition would not let them. Shame isn't it? But, the things he did after 91 were just as bad for people and business as what he did before 91. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the resulting re-alignment, there was no longer any reason to let him sit there. Also, there was credible evidence that Uday Hussein was planning on a coup and THAT would have been a dangerous thing. The violation of the sanctions was making Saddam rich, along with the UN and the countries that were violating them (Russia, China, France ect...) and that was decimating his citizens, putting money into terrorism in various places around the world, and allowing one of the most secular, educated, and modern nations in the middle east die on the vine while the Al Tikriti non-educated thugs killed people, tortured people and plotted their own little intrigues.

The Kurds did pursue their relations with Israel during the no-fly zone periods. The Israelis could not do so with the public knowing it, and Saddam had spies everywhere...even in Kurdistan. An Israeli went to visit his brother in Kurdistan in 2000, they smuggled him in as a Turkish truck driver, but his brother would not see him because Saddam had already killed two of his sons for no reason really. When the Israeli brother met with his cousins, and then left and went home, he sent a letter of thanks and this was intercepted by Saddam, and the cousins were detained for six months and one of them disappeared.

Don't forget though, the Iraqis know their own history, no matter how many times they were lied to...and they know that King Faisal, the Sherif of Mecca and the "king" of Iraq met with T.E. Lawrence (yes, Lawrence of Arabia) and Chaim Weitzman, the first president of Israel and specifically stated that no Arab nation would find any Jewish nationalism disagreeable and he approved of the emergence of a Jewish state in Palestine (the roman designation for the area there). It was not until the rise of this pan-arabism, that the issue changed.

As for not trusting the politicians....lord knows that is an old saw. We know they are going to do what is best for business. We can usually vote something out of them for ourselves. That's the way politics have always been.

I'm afraid that our CIA did create a bigger monster in Saddam. He was a part of the CIA known as 'six-pack' sometime around 1958-59. I have read some sources that say the involvement goes back as far as the mid '50s. The CIA created Saddam for the soul purpose of assasinating the current PM Qasim of Iraq during that time period and taking over Iraq while working with the US govt to date until he was ousted.


http://www.plp.org/comm03/1saddamncia.html

Saddam-Baath Fascists’ Long-Time Love Affair with the CIA

"…in the past Saddam was seen by U.S. intelligence services as a bulwark of anti-communism and they used him as their instrument for more than 40 years, according to former U.S. intelligence diplomats and intelligence officials… (Saddam’s) first contacts with U.S. officials date back to 1959, when he was part of a CIA-authorized six-man squad tasked with assassinating then Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim.

"In July 1958, Qasim had overthrown the Iraqi monarchy in what one former U.S. diplomat, who asked not to be identified, described as ‘a horrible orgy of bloodshed.’ According to current and former U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Iraq was then regarded as a key buffer and strategic asset in the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

"Little attention was paid to Qasim’s bloody and conspiratorial regime until his sudden decision to withdraw from the (anti-Soviet) pact in 1959… Washington watched in marked dismay as Qasim began to buy arms from the Soviet Union and put his own domestic communists into ministry positions of "real power," according to this official.,,(This) prompted CIA Director Allan Dulles to say publicly that Iraq was "the most dangerous spot in the world."

"…Saddam, while only in his early 20s, became a part of a U.S. plot to get rid of Qasim. According to this source, Saddam was installed in an apartment in Baghdad on al-Rashid Street directly opposite Qasim’s office in Iraq’s Ministry of Defense, to observe Qasim’s movements.

"Adel Darwish, Middle East expert and author of "Unholy Babylon," said the move was done "with full knowledge of the CIA," and that Saddam’s CIA handler was an Iraqi dentist working for CIA and Egyptian intelligence. U.S. officials separately confirmed Darwish’s account.

Darwish said that Saddam’s paymaster was Capt. Abdel Maquid Farid, the assistant military attaché at the Egyptian Embassy who paid for the apartment from his own personal account. Three former senior U.S. officials have confirmed that this is accurate.

"The assassination was set for Oct. 7, 1959, but it was completely botched. Accounts differ. One former CIA official said that the 22-year-old Saddam lost his nerve and began firing too soon, killing Qasim’s driver and only wounding Qasim in the shoulder and arm. Darwish told UPI that one of the assassins had bullets that did not fit his gun and that another had a hand grenade that got stuck in the lining of his coat. "It bordered on farce," a former senior U.S. intelligence official said. But Qasim, hiding on the floor of his car, escaped death, and Saddam, whose calf had been grazed by a fellow would-be assassin, escaped to Tikrit, thanks to CIA and Egyptian intelligence agents, several U.S. government officials said. Saddam then crossed into Syria and was transferred by Egyptian intelligence agents to Beirut, according to Darwish and former senior CIA officials. While Saddam was in Beirut, the CIA paid for Saddam’s apartment and put him through a brief training course, former CIA officials said. The agency then helped him get to Cairo, they said.

One former U.S. government official, who knew Saddam at the time, said that even then Saddam " was known as having no class. He was a thug — a cutthroat." In Cairo, Saddam was installed in an apartment in the upper class neighborhood of Dukki and spent his time playing dominos in the Indiana Café, watched over by CIA and Egyptian intelligence operatives, according to Darwish and former U.S. intelligence officials.

No ghost. Please go to the front page of your source, look at their other offerings and then come back and talk okay?
http://www.plp.org

I do understand that the Kurds share the big oil pipeline that goes into Trukey, but I feel that economic strain will develope between the Turks and Kurds in time as the BushCons do what they do best, screw over ppl.


http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/jun2005/turk-j11.shtml

Turkey: poverty increases with economic expansion

By Kerem Kaya and Sinan Ikinci

11 June 2005

Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author

Despite the expanding Turkish economy, the figures recently released by the State Institute of Statistics (DIE) point to growing poverty in the country. According to DIE figures, in 2003 the number of individuals living in poverty exceeded 20 million. This represents close to a third of the population (29 percent) and an increase of 5 percent—close to a million people—in the number of poor from the previous year.

If taken by household, the poverty rate reached 23 percent, with an increase of 4.3 percent in the number of poor households. During this same period, the economy has grown by 5.9 percent, while the population increased by about a million people.

In the 1990s, Turkey was characterized by many sharp and short cycles of growth and crisis—two years of rapid growth followed by a deep recession. As a result, in the late 1990s successive governments sought salvation in a series of IMF-directed economic rescue programs, through which the major levers of the country’s economy are practically run by the institution.

The increase in poverty was all the more significant because it surpasses the 2002 figures, when the effects of the biggest economic crisis in the nation’s history, in 2001, were still being felt.

The criteria used for determining the poverty line is 186 million TL for a single individual and 417 million TL for a family of four. With Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) used by the DIE for that period, this represents US$254 and US$569 respectively.

Another survey in May 2005 by the largest union in the country, Turk-Is, sets the poverty line at 1,603 million TL ($US1,172) for a family of four. Although this figure is much more realistic, it does not take into account the gross disparities between different regions in the country. Not only has income distribution seriously deteriorated over the last 25 years, regional income disparities have also taken on catastrophic dimensions. There is a huge gap between the income levels of the west-coastal and east-inland regions. Not surprisingly, neither survey is interested in this aspect of the problem, which has close connections to the Kurdish question.

Exclusive: Saddam key in early CIA plot

By Richard Sale
UPI Intelligence Correspondent
Published 4/10/2003 7:30 PM

U.S. forces in Baghdad might now be searching high and low for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, but in the past Saddam was seen by U.S. intelligence services as a bulwark of anti-communism and they used him as their instrument for more than 40 years, according to former U.S. intelligence diplomats and intelligence officials.

United Press International has interviewed almost a dozen former U.S. diplomats, British scholars and former U.S. intelligence officials to piece together the following account. The CIA declined to comment on the report.

While many have thought that Saddam first became involved with U.S. intelligence agencies at the start of the September 1980 Iran-Iraq war, his first contacts with U.S. officials date back to 1959, when he was part of a CIA-authorized six-man squad tasked with assassinating then Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim.

In July 1958, Qasim had overthrown the Iraqi monarchy in what one former U.S. diplomat, who asked not to be identified, described as "a horrible orgy of bloodshed."

According to current and former U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Iraq was then regarded as a key buffer and strategic asset in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. For example, in the mid-1950s, Iraq was quick to join the anti-Soviet Baghdad Pact which was to defend the region and whose members included Turkey, Britain, Iran and Pakistan.

Little attention was paid to Qasim's bloody and conspiratorial regime until his sudden decision to withdraw from the pact in 1959, an act that "freaked everybody out" according to a former senior U.S. State Department official.

Washington watched in marked dismay as Qasim began to buy arms from the Soviet Union and put his own domestic communists into ministry positions of "real power," according to this official. The domestic instability of the country prompted CIA Director Allan Dulles to say publicly that Iraq was "the most dangerous spot in the world."

In the mid-1980s, Miles Copeland, a veteran CIA operative, told UPI the CIA had enjoyed "close ties" with Qasim's ruling Baath Party, just as it had close connections with the intelligence service of Egyptian leader Gamel Abd Nassar. In a recent public statement, Roger Morris, a former National Security Council staffer in the 1970s, confirmed this claim, saying that the CIA had chosen the authoritarian and anti-communist Baath Party "as its instrument."

According to another former senior State Department official, Saddam, while only in his early 20s, became a part of a U.S. plot to get rid of Qasim. According to this source, Saddam was installed in an apartment in Baghdad on al-Rashid Street directly opposite Qasim's office in Iraq's Ministry of Defense, to observe Qasim's movements.

Adel Darwish, Middle East expert and author of "Unholy Babylon," said the move was done "with full knowledge of the CIA," and that Saddam's CIA handler was an Iraqi dentist working for CIA and Egyptian intelligence. U.S. officials separately confirmed Darwish's account.

Darwish said that Saddam's paymaster was Capt. Abdel Maquid Farid, the assistant military attach� at the Egyptian Embassy who paid for the apartment from his own personal account. Three former senior U.S. officials have confirmed that this is accurate.

The assassination was set for Oct. 7, 1959, but it was completely botched. Accounts differ. One former CIA official said that the 22-year-old Saddam lost his nerve and began firing too soon, killing Qasim's driver and only wounding Qasim in the shoulder and arm. Darwish told UPI that one of the assassins had bullets that did not fit his gun and that another had a hand grenade that got stuck in the lining of his coat.

"It bordered on farce," a former senior U.S. intelligence official said. But Qasim, hiding on the floor of his car, escaped death, and Saddam, whose calf had been grazed by a fellow would-be assassin, escaped to Tikrit, thanks to CIA and Egyptian intelligence agents, several U.S. government officials said.

Saddam then crossed into Syria and was transferred by Egyptian intelligence agents to Beirut, according to Darwish and former senior CIA officials. While Saddam was in Beirut, the CIA paid for Saddam's apartment and put him through a brief training course, former CIA officials said. The agency then helped him get to Cairo, they said.

One former U.S. government official, who knew Saddam at the time, said that even then Saddam "was known as having no class. He was a thug -- a cutthroat."

In Cairo, Saddam was installed in an apartment in the upper class neighborhood of Dukki and spent his time playing dominos in the Indiana Caf�, watched over by CIA and Egyptian intelligence operatives, according to Darwish and former U.S. intelligence officials.

One former senior U.S. government official said: "In Cairo, I often went to Groppie Caf� at Emad Eldine Pasha Street, which was very posh, very upper class. Saddam would not have fit in there. The Indiana was your basic dive."

But during this time Saddam was making frequent visits to the American Embassy where CIA specialists such as Miles Copeland and CIA station chief Jim Eichelberger were in residence and knew Saddam, former U.S. intelligence officials said.

Saddam's U.S. handlers even pushed Saddam to get his Egyptian handlers to raise his monthly allowance, a gesture not appreciated by Egyptian officials since they knew of Saddam's American connection, according to Darwish. His assertion was confirmed by former U.S. diplomat in Egypt at the time.

In February 1963 Qasim was killed in a Baath Party coup. Morris claimed recently that the CIA was behind the coup, which was sanctioned by President John F. Kennedy, but a former very senior CIA official strongly denied this.

"We were absolutely stunned. We had guys running around asking what the hell had happened," this official said.

But the agency quickly moved into action. Noting that the Baath Party was hunting down Iraq's communist, the CIA provided the submachine gun-toting Iraqi National Guardsmen with lists of suspected communists who were then jailed, interrogated, and summarily gunned down, according to former U.S. intelligence officials with intimate knowledge of the executions.

Many suspected communists were killed outright, these sources said. Darwish told UPI that the mass killings, presided over by Saddam, took place at Qasr al-Nehayat, literally, the Palace of the End.

A former senior U.S. State Department official told UPI: "We were frankly glad to be rid of them. You ask that they get a fair trial? You have to get kidding. This was serious business."

A former senior CIA official said: "It was a bit like the mysterious killings of Iran's communists just after Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in 1979. All 4,000 of his communists suddenly got killed."

British scholar Con Coughlin, author of "Saddam: King of Terror," quotes Jim Critchfield, then a senior Middle East agency official, as saying the killing of Qasim and the communists was regarded "as a great victory." A former long-time covert U.S. intelligence operative and friend of Critchfield said: "Jim was an old Middle East hand. He wasn't sorry to see the communists go at all. Hey, we were playing for keeps."

Saddam, in the meantime, became head of al-Jihaz a-Khas, the secret intelligence apparatus of the Baath Party.

The CIA/Defense Intelligence Agency relation with Saddam intensified after the start of the Iran-Iraq war in September of 1980. During the war, the CIA regularly sent a team to Saddam to deliver battlefield intelligence obtained from Saudi AWACS surveillance aircraft to aid the effectiveness of Iraq's armed forces, according to a former DIA official, part of a U.S. interagency intelligence group.

This former official said that he personally had signed off on a document that shared U.S. satellite intelligence with both Iraq and Iran in an attempt to produce a military stalemate. "When I signed it, I thought I was losing my mind," the former official told UPI.

A former CIA official said that Saddam had assigned a top team of three senior officers from the Estikhbarat, Iraq's military intelligence, to meet with the Americans.

According to Darwish, the CIA and DIA provided military assistance to Saddam's ferocious February 1988 assault on Iranian positions in the al-Fao peninsula by blinding Iranian radars for three days.

The Saddam-U.S. intelligence alliance of convenience came to an end at 2 a.m. Aug. 2, 1990, when 100,000 Iraqi troops, backed by 300 tanks, invaded its neighbor, Kuwait. America's one-time ally had become its bitterest enemy.

http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030410-070214-6557r

http://www.fantompowa.net/Flame/cia_iraq.htm

CIA coups in Iraq in 1963 & 1968 helped put Saddam Hussein in power

Sean Mac Mathuna


In 1957 at the age of 20 Hussein joined the Baath Party - a movement founded by two Syrians in the early 1940s. It's ideology combined elements of Arab nationalism, anti-imperialism and socialism and were strongly opposed to the Iraqi Communist Party - which was largest in the Arab world. Evidence suggests that Hussein was already working as a CIA agent in 1958, and that he may well have recruited by them in the previous year. There was no way the the US or the U.K. was ever going to allow a popular and secular Communist party to come to power - or allow any leftist government in Iraq. 4 years earlier, in August 1953, the CIA and MI6 in operation TPAJAX deposed the moderate Iranian government of Mohammad Mossadeq and installed the brutal Shah dictatorship.According to The Secret of the Iranian Coup, 1953:

A military coup in 1958 coup brought to power Abd al Karim Qassim. Hussein participated in a 1959 attempt to assassinate Qassim. The assassins killed Qassim's driver and wounded Qassim, but not fatally. One of the assassins was killed, and Hussein was shot in the leg and got away.

After the botched assassination, Hussein had to flee Iraq. He spent the next four years in the Lebanon, Egypt and Syria, the only period he has lived outside Iraq. While Hussein was in Beirut, the CIA paid for his apartment and put him through a brief training course, former CIA officials said according to Richard Sale writing for the United Press. The agency then helped him get to Cairo, where he attended law school in Cairo and is believed to have made frequent visits to the U.S. embassy there, according to Eric Star writing in Star Tribune on February 2nd 2003 (A history of Iraq, the cradle of Western civilization). Star writes that:

Ghost: A foursome of anarchists in South London with an online magazine detailing the poles shifting on their magnetic axis does not count as credible either. Do you ever read the sites you quote from, or do you just find things?

Could you explain 'public' for me heart? Which one(s) in particular.




Since these past 5 yrs with Goober Bush in office, this is a discussion that I often have with several friends heart. It's not that politicans and govt has never been corrupt to some degree, as they certainly have, but it's just never been at this extreme amount of corruption, deceit and lies ever before in our lifetimes that has me totally against anything they try to do now ... yes even more worse than the Nixon yrs. We lived with that lesser amount of deceit and corruption before, but now, we are becoming much too far gone to be saved as this causes serious harm to our nation and it's ppl..... plus destroy other foreign countries as well. That old saw is about to snap in two.

Not sure which moon you are reporting from heart, but how many dang sites do you need to be proven that Saddam was part of the CIA in the late '50s?

Former U.S. official says CIA aided Iraqi Baathists

"There's no question," Morris told Reuters. "It was there in Cairo that (Saddam) and others were first contacted by the agency."

See Also: Iraq-Gate: How The United States Illegally Armed Saddam Hussein

By David Morgan

PHILADELPHIA, April 17 (Reuters) - If the United States succeeds in shepherding the creation of a postwar Iraqi government, it won't be the first time that Washington has played a primary role in changing the country's rulers.

At least not according to Roger Morris, who says the CIA had a hand in two coups in Iraq during the darkest days of the Cold War, including a 1968 putsch that set Saddam Hussein firmly on the path to power.

"This takes you down a longer, darker road in terms of American culpability," said Morris, a former State Department foreign service officer who was on the National Security Council staff during the Johnson and Nixon administrations.

In 1963, two years after the ill-fated U.S. attempt at overthrow in Cuba known as the Bay of Pigs, Morris says the CIA helped organize a bloody coup in Iraq that deposed the Soviet-leaning government of Gen. Abdel-Karim Kassem.

"As in Iran in '53, it was mostly American money and even American involvement on the ground," said Morris, referring to a U.S.-backed coup that had brought the return of the shah to neighboring Iran.

Kassem, who had allowed communists to hold positions of responsibility in his government, was machine-gunned to death. And the country wound up in the hands of the Baath Party.

At the time, Saddam was a Baath operative studying law in Cairo, one of the venues the CIA chose to plan the coup, Morris says. In fact, he claims the former Iraqi ruler castigated by U.S. President George W. Bush as one of history's most "brutal dictators," was actually on the CIA payroll in those days.

"There's no question," Morris told Reuters. "It was there in Cairo that (Saddam) and others were first contacted by the agency."

U.S. ROLE ALLEGED IN SADDAM'S RISE

Five years later, in 1968, Morris says the CIA encouraged a palace revolt among Baath Party elements led by long-time Saddam mentor Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, who would turn over the reins of power to his ambitious protege in 1979.

"It's a regime that was unquestionably midwived by the United States, and the (CIA's) involvement there was really primary," Morris said.

His version of history is a far cry from current American rhetoric about Iraq -- a country that top U.S. officials say has been liberated from decades of tyranny and given the chance for a bright democratic future without their making mention of America's own alleged role in giving birth to the regime.

A spokesman for the Central Intelligence Agency declined to comment on Morris' claims of CIA involvement in the Iraqi coups but said his assertion that Saddam once received payments from the CIA was "utterly ridiculous."

Morris, who resigned from the NSC staff over the 1970 U.S. invasion of Cambodia, says he learned the details of American covert involvement in Iraq from ranking CIA officials of the day including President Teddy Roosevelt's grandson Archibald Roosevelt.

Now 65, Morris went on to become a Nixon biographer and is currently writing a book about U.S. covert action in Afghanistan and Iraq.

He regards Saddam as a deposed U.S. client in the mold of former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos and former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega.

"We climb into bed with these people without really knowing anything about their politics," Morris said in an interview from Seattle where he is working on his book. "It's not unusual, of course, in American policy. We tire of these people, and we find reasons to shed them."

POISONED HANDKERCHIEF?

But many experts, including foreign affairs scholars, say there is little to suggest U.S. involvement in Iraq in the 1960s.

David Wise, a Washington-based author who has written extensively about Cold War espionage, says he is only aware of records showing that a CIA group known as the "Health Alteration Committee" tried to assassinate Kassem in 1960 by sending the Iraqi leader a poisoned monogrammed handkerchief.

"Clearly, they felt that Kassem was somebody who had to be eliminated," Wise said.

Morris contends that little is known about CIA involvement in the Iraqi coups because the Middle East did not hold as much strategic importance in the 1960s and most senior U.S. officials involved there at the time have since died.

But even if the United States played no role in the rise of Iraq's Baath Party, experts say Washington has obviously had to confront unintended consequences of former U.S. policies -- including those of Bush's father, President George Bush, a former CIA director.

"There are always some unintended consequences. There were unintended consequences in World War One that brought the rise of Hitler," said Helmut Sonnenfeldt, guest scholar in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution and former NSC staffer.

The United States and other Western powers supported Saddam's regime during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, even after the Baghdad government used chemical weapons to kill thousands of Kurdish villagers in Halabja.

The 1988 atrocity recently was used by U.S. officials to justify the toppling of Saddam's regime.

But Jon Alterman, Middle East program director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said he was a legislative aide on Capitol Hill at the time and recalls Bush allies dismissing the Halabja issue as a ploy by pro-Israel lobbyists to disrupt U.S.-Iraqi relations.

U.S. SENDS ANTHRAX, OTHER PATHOGENS

Before war broke out last month, a flurry of U.S. headlines also called attention to reports that pathogens used by Iraq for its biological warfare program came from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the private Manassas, Virginia-based biological samples repository called the American Type Culture Collection.

Officials at the two institutions said shipments of anthrax, West Nile virus, botulinum toxins and other pathogens were sent to Iraq in the 1980s with U.S. Commerce Department approval for medical research purposes.

Even Iraq's alleged nuclear weapons program, which U.S. officials said was on the verge of producing a nuclear bomb last year, got under way with help from a 1950s Eisenhower administration program to share the peaceful benefits of nuclear energy called "Atoms for Peace."

That is according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a Washington-based group co-founded by media mogul Ted Turner and former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn to reduce the global threat of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

James Phillips, senior Middle East analyst for the Heritage Foundation, disagrees that President Bush's war in Iraq is the result of CIA involvement or U.S. policy.

But he said the United States did turn a blind eye to the chance to topple Saddam during the 1991 Gulf War, just as it left Afghanistan to the mercy of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network after Soviet forces left that country.

"I am reminded of the biblical expression about the sins of the father," Phillips said.

"The first Bush administration was the one that decided to cut off aid to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan and set them adrift. And they were also the ones who decided not to go to Baghdad during the first Gulf War."

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3016.htm

Ghost: The original assertion that the CIA put Saddam in power is partially true, and partially not true. We opposed all Communists everywhere in the 1950's. We had ties with every thug on the planet, and slipped every one of them some kind of intelligence. We were unconcerned with "arabs" someplace in the world who were by 1950's assessment "going to kill each other anyway". We wanted the Commie's dead and screw anyone who didn't like it. When Saddam came to power, much of the CIA were shocked...some few were not. The CIA gave Hussein the names of the Communists, and he killed them. That was pretty much it. The CIA, with it's agents everywhere didn't care one iota which two-bit dictator was selling us oil as long as they weren't Communists.

Saddam went on to develop relationships with the Soviets however, and we tried to play a small hand to balance it out. We failed. It was not until after the 1979 Iranian revolution that we developed any type of relations with Saddam, and I think we reopened these relationships with Donald Rumsfeld going to Baghdad to pay a visit. That's the extent of what we all really know to be true vs what some people say, balanced against what others say.

The US corruption in the world, was always much, much worse than it is now. The internet is the ONLY difference. Just as the difference about Vietnam was the television and the media coverage of the battlefield, so too is the amount we know about how our government really works attributable to the access we have in 24/7 cable news and on the interet. Otherwise, we would be just as clueless as we always were.

This is by way of saying, nothing has changed, in fact it's gotten better...but we have changed as a nation in our ability to know.

Why do you think the administration says they knew Saddam had WMD? Because they DID know it...the CIA was probably involved, and so was MI6...and they could not imagine that he would have EVER given them up? Could you imagine a Saddam Husseing who had some horrible weapon giving it up voluntarily? I can't.

The Israeli involvement in Kurdish areas was doing what the US asked them to do, and training the Pesh...smuggling aid through Turkey in food, money and arms. Provding logistical support and funds for the refugee camps that were actually partially government and partially charities that I myself participated in...people did not want to see Saddam commit genocide against the Kurds....I mean...people...I am not sure the government cared...in the same way they never care unless it is their interests at stake.

Roger Morris. "A Tyrant 40 Years in the Making," New York Times, 14 March 2003

Seattle -- March 14, 2003 -- On the brink of war, both supporters and critics of United States policy on Iraq agree on the origins, at least, of the haunted relations that have brought us to this pass: America's dealings with Saddam Hussein, justifiable or not, began some two decades ago with its shadowy, expedient support of his regime in the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980's.

Both sides are mistaken. Washington's policy traces an even longer, more shrouded and fateful history. Forty years ago, the Central Intelligence Agency, under President John F. Kennedy, conducted its own regime change in Baghdad, carried out in collaboration with Saddam Hussein.

The Iraqi leader seen as a grave threat in 1963 was Abdel Karim Kassem, a general who five years earlier had deposed the Western-allied Iraqi monarchy. Washington's role in the coup went unreported at the time and has been little noted since. America's anti-Kassem intrigue has been widely substantiated, however, in disclosures by the Senate Committee on Intelligence and in the work of journalists and historians like David Wise, an authority on the C.I.A.

From 1958 to 1960, despite Kassem's harsh repression, the Eisenhower administration abided him as a counter to Washington's Arab nemesis of the era, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt -- much as Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush would aid Saddam Hussein in the 1980's against the common foe of Iran. By 1961, the Kassem regime had grown more assertive. Seeking new arms rivaling Israel's arsenal, threatening Western oil interests, resuming his country's old quarrel with Kuwait, talking openly of challenging the dominance of America in the Middle East -- all steps Saddam Hussein was to repeat in some form -- Kassem was regarded by Washington as a dangerous leader who must be removed.

In 1963 Britain and Israel backed American intervention in Iraq, while other United States allies -- chiefly France and Germany -- resisted. But without significant opposition within the government, Kennedy, like President Bush today, pressed on. In Cairo, Damascus, Tehran and Baghdad, American agents marshalled opponents of the Iraqi regime. Washington set up a base of operations in Kuwait, intercepting Iraqi communications and radioing orders to rebels. The United States armed Kurdish insurgents. The C.I.A.'s "Health Alteration Committee", as it was tactfully called, sent Kassem a monogrammed, poisoned handkerchief, though the potentially lethal gift either failed to work or never reached its victim.

Then, on February 8, 1963, the conspirators staged a coup in Baghdad. For a time the government held out, but eventually Kassem gave up, and after a swift trial he was shot; his body was later shown on Baghdad television. Washington immediately befriended the successor regime. "Almost certainly a gain for our side", Robert Komer, a National Security Council aide, wrote to Kennedy the day of the takeover.

As its instrument the C.I.A. had chosen the authoritarian and anti-Communist Baath Party, in 1963 still a relatively small political faction influential in the Iraqi Army. According to the former Baathist leader Hani Fkaiki, among party members colluding with the C.I.A. in 1962 and 1963 was Saddam Hussein, then a 25-year-old who had fled to Cairo after taking part in a failed assassination of Kassem in 1958.

According to Western scholars, as well as Iraqi refugees and a British human rights organization, the 1963 coup was accompanied by a bloodbath. Using lists of suspected Communists and other leftists provided by the C.I.A., the Baathists systematically murdered untold numbers of Iraq's educated elite -- killings in which Saddam Hussein himself is said to have participated. No one knows the exact toll, but accounts agree that the victims included hundreds of doctors, teachers, technicians, lawyers and other professionals as well as military and political figures.

The United States also sent arms to the new regime, weapons later used against the same Kurdish insurgents the United States had backed against Kassem and then abandoned. Soon, Western corporations like Mobil, Bechtel and British Petroleum were doing business with Baghdad -- for American firms, their first major involvement in Iraq.

But it wasn't long before there was infighting among Iraq's new rulers. In 1968, after yet another coup, the Baathist general Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr seized control, bringing to the threshold of power his kinsman, Saddam Hussein. Again, this coup, amid more factional violence, came with C.I.A. backing.

Serving on the staff of the National Security Council under Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon in the late 1960's, I often heard C.I.A. officers -- including Archibald Roosevelt, grandson of Theodore Roosevelt and a ranking C.I.A. official for the Near East and Africa at the time -- speak openly about their close relations with the Iraqi Baathists.

This history is known to many in the Middle East and Europe, though few Americans are acquainted with it, much less understand it. Yet these interventions help explain why United States policy is viewed with some cynicism abroad. George W. Bush is not the first American president to seek 'regime change' in Iraq. Mr. Bush and his advisers are following a familiar pattern.

The Kassem episode raises questions about the war at hand. In the last half century, regime change in Iraq has been accompanied by bloody reprisals. How fierce, then, may be the resistance of hundreds of officers, scientists and others identified with Saddam Hussein's long rule? Why should they believe America and its latest Iraqi clients will act more wisely, or less vengefully, now than in the past?

If a new war in Iraq seems fraught with danger and uncertainty, just wait for the peace.

Roger Morris, author of 'Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician,' is completing a book about United States covert policy in Central and South Asia.

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/bush/morris.htm

I have read several different takes on the same set of facts...and some say it happened like that, others say it was different. Like I said, the CIA did not "bring Saddam to power"...but it was almost like a "petty cash" fund operation barely noted, not important, and only one of a 1000 different thugs to get a stipend that year. I think what I am trying to say is that the sands were always changing, we were always paying someone, somewhere, to destabilise these governments. Not much has changed. Yet, we did not do with Saddam what we did in Iran with Moquessadeq...although I am not sure he could have held any government together on his own either because the upper classes and businesses were rioting and trying to force Moquesedeq out of office. I'm not sure if he would have solidified power.

If I remember correctly, we were busy killing our own communists here at home, or something close to it weren't we?

The poor Kurds, I swear that they have been used by every revolution in history....and it seems they might have learned their lesson about controlling the resources and solidifying their own power base....maybe this time they will be "indispensible".

Pure and simple, our CIA formulated Saddam just as they did OBL. The only thing that holds true is the fact that we only know about 1/50th of what the CIA really does.

Just for added measures....



http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sh...ws/aburish.html

During the time of that assassination attempt in 1959, when Saddam first leaves the country and goes to Damascus, goes to Cairo, what was the great game being played in the Middle East at that time?

The great game played in the Middle East in 1959 was Arab nationalism under Nasser. Nasser wanted to unite the Arab countries into one great one, capable of being completely independent. Most of the Western powers were opposed to that. The Ba'ath Party, to which Saddam belonged, believed in Arab unity as well. The man who ran Iraq, the man Saddam tried to assassinate, Gen. Abdel Karim Kassem, did not believe in that. And this is why Saddam and his crew tried to kill him. And that is also why once Saddam escaped after the assassination attempt, he found refuge in Cairo, under Nasser's patronage. That was the situation: The Arabs trying to unite; the West, the United States and Britain in particular, were opposed to this unity.

While he was in Cairo, there's some belief that he may have had contact with Americans, with the CIA. What can you tell us about that?

There is very good reason to believe that Saddam Hussein was in contact with the American embassy in Cairo when he was in exile. This is not strange, because alliances of convenience were taking place every day, and the United States was afraid that Iraq, under Kassem, might be going communist. So was the Ba'ath Party. So they had a common enemy, a common target -- the possibility of a communist take-over of Iraq.

So there is a record of Saddam visiting the American embassy frequently, and there is a record of the Egyptian security people telling him not to do that. However, one must remember that at that time, Saddam was a minor official of the Ba'ath Party. He was not terribly important. And he was really following in the footsteps of other people who are much more important.

What *I* am saying, as opposed to what *you* are saying, is that everyone of them was on the CIA payroll. It didn't matter who won, only that they were NOT the Communists. That is a different proposition than "we put Saddam in power" We didn't give a damn who was in power, and we were likely funding anyone we could find!

Time to bring in Syria's role in the Pipeline II projection via 2003.



http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/oil/2003/0409syria.htm

In the Pipeline: More Regime Change

By Hooman Peimani
Asia Times
April 5, 2003

An Israeli daily, Ha'aretz, has reported that Israel is seriously considering restarting a strategically important oil pipeline that once transferred oil from the Iraqi city of Mosul to Israel's northern port of Haifa. Given the Israeli claim of a positive US approach to the plan, the Israeli project provides grounds for a theory that the ongoing war against Iraq is in part a joint US, British and Israeli design for reshaping the Middle East to serve their particular interests, including their oil requirements.

According to the daily, Israeli National Infrastructure Minister Yosef Paritzky considers the pipeline project as economically justifiable as it would reduce the country's cost of oil imports. This is currently very high, as Israel imports oil from Russia. There would also be a strategic justification for the project, as importing oil from an oil supplier in Israel's close proximity would increase its fuel security and would address its major handicap, that is, its total dependence on imported fuel from far-away suppliers. While living in the oil-rich Middle East, the Israelis cannot count on regional oil exporters because of the existing Arab-Israeli conflict. Prior to the 1979 Iranian revolution, Iran, which was on friendly terms with Israel, provided its oil requirements. That arrangement ended in 1979 when the new Iranian revolutionary regime cut ties with Israel.

Paritzky has requested an assessment of the Mosul-Haifa pipeline's current state, which ceased to operate in 1948. Presumably, the pipeline will require major repair and/or upgrading, if not an overhaul, as it has not been in use for more than half a century. However, its full operation, including the required repair work, needs the consent of Iraq, the would-be oil supplier, and Syria, a country neighboring both Iraq and Israel, through which the pipeline passes.

Iraqi consent will be out of the question as long as the current regime of Saddam Hussein is in power. As acknowledged by the Israeli minister, a prerequisite for the project is, therefore, a new regime in Baghdad with friendly ties with Israel. However, such a regime, if ever it comes to power, will still require Syria's consent to operationalize the pipeline. Given the overall political environment in the Middle East and Israel's continued occupation of Syria's Golan Heights, the existing Syrian regime will never grant its consent as long as the status quo prevails. As stated by the Iranian government, during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88) when Iraq enjoyed cordial and close relations with Israel's mentor, the United States, Israel tried, but failed, to resume the oil flow through the pipeline. Syria, a friend of Iran and an enemy of Iraq, blocked the flow of Iraqi oil.

Hence, unless the pipeline were redirected through Jordan, another country bordering Israel and Iraq with normalized relations with Israel, the pipeline project will require a different regime in Syria. In other words, regime change in both Iraq and Syria is the prerequisite for the project. As Paritzky did not mention a redirecting option, it is safe to suggest that the Israelis are also optimistic about a regime change in Syria in the near future.

Oil pipelines are a highly vulnerable means of exporting oil, requiring a predictable long-term reliability of the countries through which they pass. Knowing this, the Israelis can only begin their technical assessment of the pipeline once they are convinced that the existing political barriers can be overcome. This requires new regimes in Baghdad and Damascus.

According to the Israeli minister, the United States will back his project since the pipeline would bring Iraqi oil directly from Iraq to the Mediterranean. In such a case, the Americans could bypass the Persian Gulf for their imported Iraqi oil, while having secured access to the world's second-largest oil reserves. Especially since the early 1990s, they have repeatedly expressed their concern about over-reliance on the Persian Gulf for their oil imports, which contains more than 60 percent of the world's proven oil reserves. Given the concentration of the major oil exporters in that region, its instability could interrupt or completely stop the flow of oil by oil tankers, with a consequent major impact on the US economy, as it is so dependent on oil.

To decrease their vulnerability to such a worst-case scenario, the Americans have sought to diversify their oil suppliers. Apart from the Caspian oil-exporters, they have resorted to non-OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) African countries (Chad and Angola), whose resources are also closer to the United States than those of the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea. However, these alternative suppliers could only allay the US fear for a while, given the small size of their oil deposits. Thus, in the long run, the US will have to import heavily from the Persian Gulf region, where existing oil reserves will outlast those of other regions, and while some of its oil-rich countries, such as Iran, keep finding new oilfields.

Given this situation, finding reliable alternative export routes and means to sea routes and oil tankers for Persian Gulf oil exports is the long-term solution for the Americans requiring an increasing amount of imported oil. In this regard, land-based pipelines to carry oil to easily accessible warm-water open seas such as the Mediterranean would be a suitable option. A fully operational Mosul-Haifa pipeline could address that US problem, while satisfying Israel's oil requirements at same time.


Against this background, the US government's growing anti-Syrian rhetoric, including accusing Syria of supplying military equipment to Iraq, may well be the initial stage toward the expansion of the war to Syria. If this happens, it could lead to a regime change there to serve various purposes, including the cooperation of Syria in future oil exports via the Mosul-Haifa pipeline.

I think they had this wrong. The writer seems to think the pipeline goes through Syria, but it goes through Jordan. I also think that the writer is weighing the whole economic theory of non-cooperation due to the PA conflict way too much. Also, anything pre-death of Arafat is not relevant to today at any rate.

I could only speculate at this point in time that while in 2003, they (govts) were considering options, and Syria was one option for which that proposed pipeline would either cross Syria bypassing Jordan or catching a portion of Syria from N Iraq into Jordan depending on situations that would develope in the future in those regions.



http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/oil/2003/0409syria.htm


In the Pipeline: More Regime Change

By Hooman Peimani
Asia Times
April 5, 2003

Paritzky has requested an assessment of the Mosul-Haifa pipeline's current state, which ceased to operate in 1948. Presumably, the pipeline will require major repair and/or upgrading, if not an overhaul, as it has not been in use for more than half a century. However, its full operation, including the required repair work, needs the consent of Iraq, the would-be oil supplier, and Syria, a country neighboring both Iraq and Israel, through which the pipeline passes.

Hence, unless the pipeline were redirected through Jordan, another country bordering Israel and Iraq with normalized relations with Israel, the pipeline project will require a different regime in Syria. In other words, regime change in both Iraq and Syria is the prerequisite for the project. As Paritzky did not mention a redirecting option, it is safe to suggest that the Israelis are also optimistic about a regime change in Syria in the near future.

The Israeli oil pipeline plan, though, runs contrary to the stated US war objectives in Iraq. The two key members of the "coalition of the willing" - the United States and the United Kingdom - have rejected oil as a motivation for the war, a point not taken seriously by many all over the world. Nevertheless, the Israeli plan, the US-stated goal of securing Iraqi oilfields, including those of Mosul, and the declared US objective of a regime change in Iraq offer some evidence to the contrary.

Against this background, the US government's growing anti-Syrian rhetoric, including accusing Syria of supplying military equipment to Iraq, may well be the initial stage toward the expansion of the war to Syria. If this happens, it could lead to a regime change there to serve various purposes, including the cooperation of Syria in future oil exports via the Mosul-Haifa pipeline.

I was not refering to Saddam being on the CIA's payroll.... for many secret operatives are not on payrolls 'persay'. In fact, we are lucky to have this much information about Saddam and his ties with the CIA. The CIA, FBI and our Pentagon doesn't like for Americans to know much of everything and anything that they do... it usually spells trouble for them and shows how incompetent and wreckless they really usually are.

Now I wonder heart, maybe you can toss your worth in here. There's aprrox 1.7 million Kurds in Syria today. What roll do you possibly see for those Kurds that may tie into this particular pipeline project in Syria if the Bushcons were to get there way and overrun the Syrian govt and actually run such a pipeline. Is this something that may be in the Kurds future inside Syria? Israel would support this postion for the Kurds in Syria correct?

THE PIPELINE NEVER WENT THROUGH SYRIA!!!!! NOR DOES IT EVER HAVE TO! Why can't you understand that?

I think we know a whole lot about CIA operations in the Middle East and other areas. I don't really understand how much there is to know? Many people seem to have a variety of versions of the story, but I try to mix them and come to some midway understanding.

What do you know about the Syrian Kurds and their situation? Please elaborate on their position vis a vis Israel and the Iraq war? Are they Syrian citizens? Are they allowed to serve in Syria's military? Do you think they care one bit about a pipeline? Why would they?

I know that the British built piplene never went thru Syria heart. I am only looking at the option of such a possiblity that it might go through a portion of Syria in the future. Why would I bring up such an option? Because since BushCo has started this mess in the Middle East, it's hard telling who will be in good relations with each other over there or how safe certain areas will be enough to pursue such a pipeline again. Since BushCo has had their eye on Syria to invade, and if they think that they will be able to secure that territory as they previous planned on doing in Iraq (but failed), they just might consider building a pipeline that crosses a portion of Syria. I myself, believe that BushCo and the oil companies will stay on course with Jordan, and nobody else ... but Syrian territory just may work it's way into that oil pipeline route when all else fails. So far, I'd say Jordan has the green light all the way.

You are aware of how upset the Kurds are in Syris of late.... over the death of Sheikh Mohammed Mashouq al-Khaznawi. I was seeking your wisdom about the situation with the Kurds in Syria. Why would the Kurds be interested in such a pipleline route? I would assume that some Kurds may get work with such a pipeline possibly as general labor. No? I also would assume that is BushCo invades Syria, would these Kurds also seek independence and their own governing body in Syria? Would they not be supportive of a BushCo invasion of Syria? I'm only suggesting that they would. I also would think that the Syrian Kurds would also be on fair terms with Israel. Yes? I seek your opinon?



http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0616/p01s03-wome.html

World > Middle East
from the June 16, 2005 edition

A murder stirs Kurds in Syria

Syria's 1.7 million Kurds are impatient over their rights, and key to Syrian stability.
By Nicholas Blanford | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

QAMISHLI, SYRIA – At a meeting of Syrian political-intelligence officers in late April in the Kurdish northeast, the only item on the agenda was Sheikh Mohammed Mashouq al-Khaznawi.


A moderate Islamic cleric who once worked with the Syrian government to temper extremism, Sheikh Khaznawi was emerging as one of its most outspoken critics. He advocated Kurdish rights and democracy, galvanizing many of the 1.7 million Kurds against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. At the same time, Kurds were gaining political power in Iraq, Lebanon was casting Syrian troops out, and the US was criticizing Syria's government.

"[Syrian intelligence] wrote a report saying he ... should be stopped. They said he would start a revolution," says Sheikh Murad Khaznawi, the eldest of Sheikh Mohammed's eight sons.

On May 10, the cleric disappeared in Damascus. Three weeks later, he was found dead.

His murder sent shock waves through Syria's marginalized Kurdish community, sparking mass demonstrations earlier this month and mobilizing a community that represents the most potent domestic threat to President Assad.

"The sheikh was a symbol for the Kurdish people and he wanted all the people to unite and struggle peacefully," says Hassan Saleh, secretary-general of Yakiti Party, a banned Kurdish group.

No, the pipeline, should it ever come to be, will be a direct route pipeline. There is no need to go through any part of Syria. It's a bit like going through Canada to get from Ohio to Iowa, why make that detour?

The plight of the Syrian Kurds is horrible beyond words. It's very hard to get any information out of there, and everytime someone does get information out it goes something like this:

The Kurds are considered foreigners in Syria, they do not even have Syrian citizenship, they must marry a Syrian and take an arab name in order to even have papers that validate that they exist. They cannot enroll their children in schools because they do not have papers, they have only "refugee" camps. They do not have an "Israeli" policy. It's like asking a refugee in Darfur what their policy on "Israel" is? They don't care. I do know that some Syrian Kurds in Vienna took over the embassy there this past week, in protest over the arrest, and torture of not just the cleric, but several hundred other Kurds, who have not been heard from at all...and were probably tortured to death.

There is no benefit to them or even to the Jordanian citizens to have a pipeline, because the money is a transit fee only, and that would be paid to the Jordanian government. Right now, Turkey gets that money, that's why they want to sell the oil to Israel....so they can collect the fee.

No argument there from me about the plight of the Kurds. Their situation in Syria is not a good one for sure. I'm sure when one traces it all back in history that either side can be blamed for wrong actions towards the other at some time or another. Arab Syrians struggles themselves just well as the Syrian Kurds. Syria's economy is in the dumpers and that certainly does not allow for much comfort zone with most anybody in Syria.

Here's a peek at Syria and it's oil industry as of April 2004.


http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/syria.html

Syria

With proven oil reserves expected to last only about 10 more years and a population growing at around 2.3% per year, Syria may become a net importer of oil within the next decade. Thus, the exploration for oil and natural gas is a top priority in Syria.

Syria lost a major source of revenue in late March 2003, when a pipeline bringing in crude oil from Iraq was shut down due to the war. In the short-term, relatively high oil prices have made up for some of the lost revenue. In November 2003, the United States Congress passed the "Syria Accountability Act," which was signed into law by President Bush in December. The Act provides for economic sanctions against Syria in response to its continuing support for terrorism, offering a menu of options from which the president can choose. At present, a decision on implementing the Act is still pending, and no new sanctions have yet taken effect. The volume of merchandise trade between the United States and Syria is modest -- around $400 million per year -- but there are U.S. companies involved in a developing Syria's oil and gas sectors.

OIL
Syria's oil industry faces many challenges in the years to come. Oil output and production continues to decline due to technological problems and depletion of oil reserves. Since peaking at 590,000 barrels per day (bbl/d) in 1996, Syria's oil output has fallen, to an estimated 535,000 bbl/d in 2003, as older fields, especially the large Jebisseh field discovered in 1968, have reached maturity. Syrian oil production is expected to continue its decline over the next several years, while consumption rises, leading to a reduction in Syrian net oil exports. If this trend continues, it is feared that Syria could become a net oil importer within a decade. Export levels, which had been temporarily buoyed by illegal imports from Iraq, fell sharply after the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Syria hopes to reverse the trend toward declining oil exports through intensified oil exploration and production efforts, plus a switch from oil-fired to natural-gas fired electric power plants. Syria also has opened up new blocks for oil and natural gas exploration, with the Oil and Mineral Resources Ministry receiving bids from several international companies in December 2001 on five exploration areas. Awards for these blocks were made in January 2003, with Shell receiving exploration rights in the Damascus-Palmyra area and India's ONGC Videsh receiving another onshore block. Independents Ocean Energy and Stratic Energy also received awards. In 2003, three new exploration deals were announced, with companies receiving awards including Canada's Tanganyika and PetroCanada, China's CNPC, and Devon Energy and Gulfsands Petroleum of the United States. Another round of awards took place in January 2004, with companies involved including U.S. independent IPR Transoil, India's ONGC, and Croatia's INA Naftaplin. Another 14 onshore blocks are being offered in the current 2004 bid round.

Syria's main oil producer (by far) is al-Furat Petroleum Co. (AFPC) a joint venture established in 1985 and owned by the Syrian Petroleum Company (SPC), Shell, and PetroCanada. AFPC's fields are located in the northeastern Syria -- particularly the Deir ez-Zour region, where commercial quantities of oil were discovered in the late 1980s -- and are producing about 400,000 bbl/d of high quality light crude.

AFPC's main oil field is al-Thayyem, although production there has been declining since 1991. Another important field -- Omar/Omar North -- began production in February 1989 at 55,000 bbl/d. Shortly thereafter, operator Shell was pressed by the cash-strapped Syrian government to step up production (against Shell's advice) to 100,000 bbl/d. The result was serious reservoir damage, and in April 1989, output plummeted to 30,000 bbl/d. Currently, Omar produces about 15,000 bbl/d from natural pressure and 30,000 bbl/d from water injection. Other AFPC fields include al-Izba (light oil), Maleh (34o API gravity oil), Sijan, and Tanak. Production from fields run by SPC peaked in the late 1970s at more than 165,000 bbl/d.

SPC's fields include: 1) Karatchuk -- Syria's first discovery, located near the border with Iraq and Turkey; 2) Suwaidiyah -- a giant heavy oil field located south of Karatchuk in the Hassakeh region (and extending into northwestern Iraq) which currently produces around 85,000 bbl/d; 3) Jibsah -- a major field producing both oil and gas; 4) Rumailan -- a small field near Suwaidiyah which produces heavy oil; and 5) Alian, Tishreen, and Gbebeh -- three small, depleting fields producing heavy oil. China's CNPC signed a contract with SPC in March 2003 to undertake an enhanced oil recovery project for Gbebeh, which is to increase production from the current 4,500 bbl/d to 10,000 bbl/d.

Other Syrian oil fields include Maleh, Qahar, Sijan, Azraq, and Tanak. Jafra, discovered in late 1991 and located near Deir ez-Zour, is operated by TotalFinaElf and has current production of around 60,000 bbl/d. Besides conventional oil reserves, Syria also has major shale oil deposits in several locations, mainly the Yarmouk Valley stretching into Jordan.

Oil exploration activity in Syria has been slow in recent years due to unattractive contract terms by SPC, and poor exploration results. For these reasons, only a few companies out of more than a dozen operating in the country in 1991 remain in Syria at present. The recent bid rounds are an attempt to reverse this trend, but it is unclear how successful this will be. Officials of TotalFinaElf publicly expressed their intention to scale down their Syrian operations in May 2002, and ConocoPhillips announced in February 2004 that it was ending its operations in Syria.

Heart, refresh my memory. Which United States President should these quotes be attributed to?

Clinton, Gore said much the same, as did most everyone. Clinton did not have the excuse of being in the oil business either!

So, ghost, that's a nice article on Syrian oil, but can you tell me why you posted it? You wanted to know about Syrian Kurds right? Then you wanted to know before that about the oil pipeline which does not go through Syria. I do not understand what you are driving at?

Ok kiddies, now listen up....

Here's what this thread is about which will include discussions and opinions which refers to Syria also. It was clearly written in this thread's very first post.

[The main players: US, Israel, Jordan, Iraq (Kurdistan) ....... including those players with interest Britain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey and Syria.

This thread is for expressing ideas and opinions concerning the discussions for constructing a larger new oil pipeline from Kurdistan, Iraq to Haifa, Israel. Who wins... who loses? Who benefits the most and who suffers? Which countries unites, and which ones alienate from such a project? What are the real intentions for this pipeline? Will war esculate further and follow this oil pipeline?]

See? It mentions everything that we have touched on here so far. All these Arab and non Arab countries in the Middle East that will be involved in the outcome of this BushCo Middle East invasion and the possibility of this one particular pipeline being constructed from Haifa to N Iraq.

Since you are the resident expert on the Kurds in CGCS, I seek your wisdom about such when referring to the Kurds when you contribute to some of the threads here. Since we last chatted here, I discovered that most of the Syria Kurds (migrated) originated from Turkey. Is that a correct statement? I'm actually trying to understand the layout of the SE region of Syria also....is it completely all desert... and are there pockets of Kurds who live in that part of Syria, and what, if any, underground oil reserves may be there. I had already explained to you that with such plans as this particular pipeline construction, Bush war and politics changes situations and therefore, so does certain plans, like this possible pipeline and I find it interesting to discuss these situations surrounding various possibilities.

If you all stay tuned, I have more Arab countries to discuss other than Syria... it's just been one educational discussion to this point. I see one of your adversaries has joined you here in this thead. It'll bring lots of high resolution military propaganda pictures and more than likely the usual 'off topic' goobleygook to the table, but we are used to that now.

I, myself, did not realize how much oil works that was going on in Syria, until I checked into it. The 'food for oil' scam does come into the picture as well concerning Syria. Yeah, we see some familiar names attached to that fine list of oil operations.

This article projects a rosey market picture for many involved with oil and gas products in the ever changing Middle East.

http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/19835/

Unique regional focus - In mid-2000 the seven countries of the East Mediterranean (Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Turkey) were becoming increasingly important energy development and transit centres.

As Europe's fastest growing gas market, Turkey was considering no fewer than eight new proposals for pipeline and LNG infrastructure.

Egypt was seeking to move ever greater amounts of Gulf oil to West European markets - an effort also involving Israel and Turkey, and directly affecting the future export prospects of the newly emerging oil producers in Central Asia.

A series of promising Egyptian gas discoveries was stimulating the development of a trans-regional gas distribution infrastructure - an infrastructure that might one day link all the seven East Mediterranean countries into a single gas grid.

In-depth treatment of key issues

The report is a detailed examination of the problems and prospects for East Mediterranean oil and gas development and transit in the early part of the 21st century. Providing new and compelling insights into the region's complex decision making process, it addresses all the most important hydrocarbon issues:

Turkish gas imports - likely volumes and potent