Le Parlement irakien part en vacances sans avoir voté la “loi scélérate” sur le pétrole irakien

Décidément, les gestionnaires de l’entreprise d’investissement du monde par les USA, les guignols déguisés en président, vice-président, etc., sont de la dernière médiocrité possible, — comme nous le remarquions hier en citant précisément un exemple. Il s’agit de la “loi scélérate” que Washington voudrait voir voter par le Parlement irakien, qui assurerait par des procédures diverses concernant l’exploitation des pétroles par des compagnies étrangères, et par les circonstances qui placent les USA au centre du jeu, une exclusivité d’exploitation de facto des pétroles irakiens par les compagnies US.

Un excellent article de Jonathan Steele, dans le Guardian d’aujourd’hui, expose que le Parlement irakien s’en va en vacances sans avoir voté la loi. Bien plus encore, Steele explique que ce retard est moins dû au désordre, à l’insécurité, ou à la paresse incompétente du Parlement («a lazy bunch of Islamist incompetents or narrow-minded sectarians, as is often implied»). Au contraire, il semble qu’un véritable mouvement, — un mouvement démocratique, pourquoi pas? — se fasse jour au Parlement irakien et alentour pour examiner avec attention cette loi, avec l’idée de protéger les intérêts nationaux irakiens. L’ironie serait dans ce cas complète. Certes, il commencerait à y avoir en Irak une sorte de démocratie, mais ce serait pour s’opposer à une entreprise essentielle du pouvoir américaniste, — le pillage des ressources et des matières premières du pays conquis par la force. Mais cette démocratie-là, bien sûr, se manifeste parce qu’une question de souveraineté et de légitimité se pose, devant l’habituel attentat américaniste contre ces valeurs.

Le plus extraordinaire, ou le plus sordidement révélateur, est que cette loi fait partie du “package” que le piètre GW veut présenter au Congrès pour faire accepter son “surge” militaire et son succès complètement fabriqué. L’offensive US pour l’emporter consiste donc à tuer le plus d’Irakiens possible et à voler le plus de matières premières irakiennes possible. Au moins, les choses sont exposées sans aucune de ces agaçantes ambiguïtés qui encombrent la compréhension.

«Glad tidings from Baghdad at last. The Iraqi parliament has gone into summer recess without passing the oil law that Washington was pressing it to adopt. For the Bush administration this is irritating, since passage of the law was billed as a “benchmark” in its battle to get Congress not to set a timetable for US troop withdrawals. The political hoops through which the government of Nouri al-Maliki has been asked to jump were meant to be a companion piece to the US “surge”. Just as General David Petraeus, the current US commander, is due to give his report on military progress next month, George Bush is supposed to tell Congress in mid-September how the Maliki government is moving forward on reform.

(…)

»[t]he administration — particularly the vice-president, Dick Cheney — and the oil lobby are enraged that the oil law is stalled. The main reason is not that the Iraqi government and parliament are a lazy bunch of Islamist incompetents or narrow-minded sectarians, as is often implied. MPs are studying the law more carefully, and have begun to see it as a major threat to Iraq's national interest regardless of people's religion or sect.

»This is the second bit of good news from Iraq. Civil society, trade unions, professional oil experts and the media are stirring on the oil issue and putting their points across to parliament in the way democracy is meant to work. The oil unions have held strikes even at the risk of having leaders and members arrested.

»The pervasive outside image of Iraq as a country in free-fall where violence on a mass scale is an ever-present threat is not wrong. But it can mask the fact that “normal life” and indeed “normal politics” are still possible. The real reason why the Bush administration wanted the oil law rushed through was that it feared public discussion, and was worried that the more people understood what the law entails, the greater the chances of its defeat. Key parties in the Iraqi parliament oppose it, including the main Sunni party — which this week withdrew from government — as well as the Shia Sadrists and Fadhila.

»Washington has promoted the law as a “reconciliation” issue, claiming its early passage would show that Iraq's ethnic and sectarian communities could share revenues on a fair basis. But this is a trick. Only one of the law's 43 articles mentions revenue-sharing, and then just to say that a separate “federal revenue law” will decide its distribution. The first draft of this other law only appeared in June, and it is clearly unreasonable to expect the Iraqi parliament to pass it in less than two months.

»The law that Washington and the US oil lobby really want would set the arrangements for foreign companies to operate in Iraq's oil sector. Independent analysts say the terms being proposed are far more favourable for foreign oil companies than those of any other oil-producing state in the region, including Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. They all impose some safeguards for the national interest, whether it is having a national company that controls production; specifying in contracts the maximum level of foreigners' profits; limiting foreigners to a small number of fields; or insisting that disputes are arbitrated in local rather than international tribunals. Other big oil countries, including Russia and Venezuela, insist on parliamentary approval for contracts covering “strategic” fields or for joint ventures.

»Platform, an oil industry watchdog, warns that the Iraq oil and gas law could “sign away Iraq's future”. Greg Muttitt, its co-director, says: “The law is permissive. All of Iraq's unexploited and as yet unknown reserves, which could amount to between 100bn and 200bn barrels, would go to foreign companies.”

»Public pressure has already brought some changes. The first drafts of 2006 talked of production-sharing agreements, a system of concessions like those Russia gave to foreign oil companies in the days of proto-capitalist weakness in the early 1990s, and which Moscow no longer uses. The latest Iraqi drafts now talk of “exploration risk contracts”. They could last for 30 years without a chance of revision, and be equally bad.»

Mis en ligne le 3 août 2007 à 12H48