August 30, 2002
By TODD PITMAN, Associated Press Writer
Photo: Employees at the South Oil Company attempt to control the fire on a sabotaged section of the pipeline connecting the oil fields of Rumayia and Zubeir. Crude oil exports from southern Iraq (news - web sites) were stable at around 1.5 million barrels a day despite several recent attacks on pipelines.(AFP/Nawfal Hashim)
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Oil exports from southern Iraq have been brought to a complete halt, a senior oil official said Monday, following a spate of pipeline attacks launched by insurgents trying to undermine the nation's interim government.
Also Monday, firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr visited the Imam Ali Shrine in the city of Najaf for the first time since his militia left the holy site on Friday under a peace deal to end three weeks of fighting with U.S. forces.
Al-Sadr had asked religious authorities for permission to enter the shrine, where his Mahdi Army militia had holed up during the violence in Najaf, and he briefly went in on Monday, according to the office of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's top Shiite cleric.
Oil flows out of the southern pipelines — which account for 90 percent of Iraq's exports — ceased late Sunday and were not likely to resume for at least a week, two senior officials from South Oil Co. said on condition of anonymity.
"Oil exports from the port of Basra have completely stopped since last night," one official said Monday.
No oil was being pumped Monday through Iraq's northern export lines to the Turkish port of Ceyhan as well, according to an oil official in Ceyhan. Those lines have also been repeatedly attacked in recent months.
Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi condemned the pipeline attacks, saying they were making ordinary Iraqis suffer.
"This is causing a great loss for the Iraqi people in terms of revenues, which could be used in the reconstruction of the country and to pay the people and get the economy back on track again," Allawi said in an interview with CNN aired Monday.
A halt in southern oil exports costs Iraq about $60 million a day in lost income at current global crude prices, said Walid Khadduri, an oil expert who is chief editor of the Cyprus-based Middle East Economic Survey.
Insurgents have launched repeated attacks on Iraq's oil infrastructure in a bid to undermine the interim government and reconstruction efforts.
The latest strikes against five pipelines linked to the southern Rumeila oil fields immediately shut down the Zubayr 1 pumping station, forcing officials to use reserves from storage tanks to keep exports flowing for several hours. The reserves ran out late Sunday, the South Oil Co. official said.
Before Sunday's attack, Iraq's exports from the south were about 600,000 barrels a day — a third the normal average of 1.8 million barrels a day due to a separate string of attacks early last week. The pipelines were still ablaze Monday, the official said.
Saboteurs last brought southern oil exports to a halt in June.
In Baghdad, insurgents fired three mortar rounds into an eastern neighborhood early Monday but there were no immediate reports of casualties, Interior Ministry spokesman Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman.
South of the capital, gunmen opened fire on the motorcade of the government's top official in charge of Shiite religious affairs, Sheik Hassan Baraka al-Shami, wounding two of his bodyguards, his spokesman said Monday.
Al-Shami was on his way to a religious ceremony in the holy city of Karbala on Sunday when the attack occurred, spokesman Salah Abdul-Razzak said Monday.
North of the capital, unidentified gunmen shot and seriously wounded a woman working as a translator for the U.S. military in the city, her husband, Amer Abdul-Karim said.
Meanwhile, talks Sunday between U.S. military officials and al-Sadr aides, aimed at reducing violence in the Baghdad slum of Sadr City, failed to bring a peace agreement. Al-Sadr's aides demanded a U.S. pullout from the neighborhood, a condition U.S. officials rejected.
British forces in the southern city of Basra, also the site of recent fighting, held similar talks Sunday with al-Sadr officials there.
Both areas had erupted in violence after the Najaf fighting started three weeks ago, and the talks Sunday appeared to be an effort by both sides to expand on the peace deal that ended the Najaf crisis.
U.S. forces and the Mahdi Army have been fighting for weeks in Sadr city, the east Baghdad slum named for the rebel cleric's father. Though peace descended on Najaf on Friday, skirmishes continued Saturday in Baghdad, with militants firing mortars and automatic weapons at U.S. troops and tanks in the impoverished neighborhood.
In response, al-Sadr representatives, tribal leaders, Shiite politicians, government officials and U.S. military officers met to discuss the violence.
The head of the tribal negotiating team, Naim al-Bakhati, told reporters that all sides — including al-Sadr representatives — had agreed that damaged areas there be rebuilt, U.S. troops withdraw from the area except for their normal patrols and that Iraqi police be allowed to enter the slum.
But "there was no agreement on the Mahdi Army handing over their weapons," al-Bakhati said.
Sadr City police chief Col. Maarouf Moussa Omran said all sides agreed to observe a one-day truce until Monday morning to give the Iraqi government time to discuss the results of the meeting.
But Lt. Col. Jim Hutton, a spokesman for the U.S. Army's 1st Cavalry Division, said "there has been no agreement of any kind," adding that the talks were not negotiations.
Sadr City remained relatively peaceful Sunday. Fighting Saturday in the slum killed 10 people and wounded 126, said Saad al-Amili, a Health Ministry official.
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