Usamah “Sam” Husseini

Transcript

Sam Husseini: A majority of Iraqis in poles seem to want to view the US as negative and to be wanting a timeline for pulling out. What’s your view?

Iraqi Ambassador to the United States, Samir Al Sumadaie: Well I think that’s a reaction. Well, I don’t know the exact details of these statistics, but that’s a reaction to their lives at the moment. Losing control of their lives, they are subject to a lot of threats. And they see this as a direct result, or the responsibility more accurately, of the United States. Whether rightly or wrongly, people react to their feelings rather than to a rational analysis always.

SH: In sectors of the US press and also of the Turkish press there are reports that Iraq is being used as a staging ground for attacks on Iran through the PKK and also through the MEK. What can you tell us about that? And why is that happening?

AS: Well, I can tell you if that is happening it is certainly against the will of the Iraqi government. The Iraqi government has made it very clear that we don’t want to the be staging ground for any attack on our neighbors. We want to pose no threat to our neighbors and we will cooperate with them and with anybody else to stem such actions.

SH: Do you have any knowledge of this?

AS: I have no knowledge of this. If you tell me there are reports about this then I’ll just listen to you, but I don’t know of any such activity.

SH: Some people have been attacking the current Iraqi government and saying that its being protected by the United States in the green zone and its doing things that the US wants like passing the Iraq Oil Law, which opens the door to massive privatization and might lock in Iraq for decades to come in very unfair things that will siphon off Iraq’s oil wealth.

AS: Well that criticism is both unfair and untrue. The Iraqi Oil Law in its draft form has been negotiated very carefully between all parties in the Iraqi government. Its got to go through Parliament and have more negotiations in it. Its an entirely Iraqi process, and the United States, apart from encouraging the Iraqis to finish this task has not interfered in the details of this negotiation. So its an entirely Iraqi process.

SH: Does it open the door to privatization? And could that be—

AS: Well, if you read—Of course it does. It opens the door to the involvement of the private sector. That’s what we want. That’s a policy decision. That’s a conscious decision. But it is based on the fundamental principle that the oil and gas belongs to all Iraqi people. That is an article in the Constitution and the law does not depart from that.

SH: What about the bases? Long term US bases in Iraq, are you concerned about that?

AS: Well, that again for future Iraqi governments and parliaments to decide. Its not something that will be decided by this government. And its not going to be decided finally by this Parliament. For the time being, there is an American presence, in fact, an international presence in Iraq anchored in international law based on security council resolutions. With the consent of the elected Iraqi government, there is in Resolution 16.37 a clause which permits the Iraqi government to request the departure of these troops at anytime. So this presence is subject to the agreement and the approval of the Iraqi government, the elected Iraqi government. Now, in future what will happen will have to be left to future governments.

SH: You mentioned the international community and so on. How would you envision—are there plans or ideas on the table to get the international community in to take the place of the United States either through the Arab League or through the United Nations?

AS: Well I don’t know if it is to take the place of the United States, but everybody is need to help. The recent meeting in Baghdad plus the P5, the permanent members of the Security Council, was an important first step in engaging our neighbors and the rest of the community in helping with the security situation. We had the launch of the Iraq Compact in New York on the 16th of this month. Again that’s engaging the international community on the development and reconstruction in Iraq because we cannot just move on the security tract, we need to move on parallel with that on the political and economic tracks to make that work.

SH: But it terms of the security track its questionable whether its going to be working with the United States?

AS: It is questionable, but we cannot declare victory, as it were, but there are encouraging signs. We have to remember that deployment has not been completed, to take another month or two before deployment is complete even and its far too early to know the results, we expect it to become clear in sort of late summer, early autumn. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you.