by Phyllis Bennis
Institute for Policy Studies

The U.S. is eager for the UN to return to Iraq to provide political cover for its occupation. The quagmire on the ground in Iraq plus recognition that the rest of the world, and most Iraqis themselves, reject Washington’s claim of legitimacy is the basis for the Bush administration reversing its earlier anti-UN positions to beg the international organization for help.

Kofi Annan’s decision to send a technical investigative team to Iraq is partly in response to mounting pressure from the U.S., but also a response to shifting sentiments among Iraqis, particularly the call from Ayatollah al-Sistani for a UN assessment of political conditions. While Annan’s announcement indicated he was responding to the request of the U.S. occupation authorities and its hand-picked “governing council” to determine whether elections could be held by Washington’s June 30th deadline, he left open the possibility of a broader definition of “what alternative arrangement would be acceptable” if not.

WHY IS THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION SO SET ON A JUNE 30TH “HANDOVER OF POWER TO IRAQIS”?

Ewa Jasiewicz
Occupation Watch

Across the Board Rise for Public Sector Workers Expected

Southern Oil Company workers won their three month struggle underpinned by the threat of an armed strike for higher and fairer wages this month. All oil sector workers in Iraq will now be receiving the SOC’s negotiated wagetable. The unity, solidarity and support of oil sector workers in the central and northern fields in Kirkuk, Baaji and Baghdad’s Daurra was key in achieving this victory. Plus the fact that the CPA/GC is heavily dependent on oil production and export from SOC, Iraq’s biggest and most lucrative oil company, following the inoperability of Iraq’s northern fields due to continuous attacks on pipelines and stations. The only Oil Companies exporting crude oil from Iraq right now are SOC and Basra Oil Company.

In December, union representatives told Occupation Watch that they had been telling workers since last month to save some of their wages in the event of strike action. When SOC workers saw that their wages were being decreed by the Occupation Administration (OA) as signed by Paul Bremer III in Order 30 on Employment Conditions of State Employees and that the wages were lower than the emergency payments the OA had been paying post regime fall, they decided to form their own wage scale based on market prices including the price of fuel, gas, rent and foodstuffs, work location, and level of risk. The CPA’s wage table slashed all family, risk and location payments workers survived on under the regime. In every workplace OW visited, workers were frustrated with their low, late and fluctuating wages, as well as the axing of all their ’survival’ payments and subsidies which sustained workers and their families.