IRAQ: Baghdad press speculates about Obama
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Iraq’s newspapers speculated today on what President-elect Barack Obama means for Iraq’s future. Here is an article from Azzaman, an independent newspaper, and an editorial from Mutamar, the paper that belongs to Ahmed Chalabi, the secular politician who prodded America to invade Iraq.
Azzaman wrote:
When … the new elected president arrives at the White House, he will be looking to Iraq and Afghanistan, which of Iraq’s issues will attract the new president attention? Let’s count some of them according to the experts’ and the devastated Iraqi people’s point of view:
- Security agreement
- Iraq’s oil
- U.S. forces…
- Iranian influence …
- War’s cost…
- Federalism
- Turkey’s inclination to eliminate the PKK in the north of Iraq
- Minority rights
- Military capability
- Oppressing Christians and displacing them from Mosul
- Corruption and stealing billions of dollars during the new era …
- Insurgency, violence, terrorism
- Awakenings (Iraqi Sunni groups fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq)
- Iraq-Israel relations … ·
- Ration cards
- Iraq’s children’s health …
- The absent electricity
- Cholera …
- Polluted water
- The militias which are returning …
- The local political lies to justify internal wars against specific cities
- Big lies which justified the war against Iraq
An Al Mutamar headline and article reads, ‘Obama’s wining will change the relations between America and Iraq’:
Obama’s winning should be utilized for Iraq’s interests. For that the Iraqi government has to make immediate contact with Obama’s team for foreign affairs and American national security. It is necessary to immediately send a senior Iraqi delegation to negotiate with Obama’s team over their positions and to propose accepted solutions for the both sides, especially, regarding the legal situation of the American troops. Iraq’s prime minister has succeeded in postponing the signing of a security agreement until after the American election which will open the door for Iraq to achieve its goals: to enhance Iraq’s sovereignty, to protect the Iraqis and to maintain good relations with the neighboring countries. ... From now on we will deal with the new administration which wants to reduce the American military existence in Iraq as one of its goals; while before we were dealing with an administration whose goals included extending their presence, also Obama announced that he will start negotiations with Iran and that will reduce the tension between Iran and America which will reflect positively on the Iraqi arena. This means that Iraqi-American arena will witness a change.
-- Times staff writers in Baghdad
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