Oil Board Firms Up in Iraq; Somo Shattered

1 May 2003 US plans to set up an advisory board to oversee Iraq’s oil sector are taking shape. Fadhil Othman, a retired Iraqi oil marketing official now living in Turkey, is understood to have accepted Washington’s request that he serve as deputy head of the oil advisory board, a non-executive body. In view of Othman’s past experience as head of Iraq’s State Oil Marketing Organization (Somo), he “could be…

Iraqis Gather to Discuss Political Future

29 April 2003 About 300 Iraqis — most of them exiles until the recent fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime — met in Baghdad on Monday under the leadership of US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and began debating the process of setting up an interim Iraqi government. The Baghdad session is the fourth in a series that started in London in mid-December with a meeting of most political groupings of Iraqi exiles…