Search results

Iraq has reduced the illegal surcharges it imposes on oil buyers, but United Nations expert overseers believe it has not abolished them, contrary to some media reports. The surcharges have been trimmed from around $0.35 per barrel to $0.15/b, as the retrospective pricing regime

The strength of demand for Iran’s début Eurobond confounded fears that U.S. opposition and deteriorating political risk perceptions could sink the issue. More bond issues are planned, but serious

Capital from the Gulf Co-operation Council region, oil from Iraq and flourishing markets across the region are playing a key role in the efforts of President Bashar Al-Assad and his allies to reintegrate Syria into the global economy and give the country a new regional role more than a decade after the former Soviet Union’s collapse.

Qatar’s future parliamentarians will have legislative powers, the right of veto over the budget and be able to scrutinise ministers — but only two-thirds will be elected, under the proposed new Constitution. One-third of the 45-member Legislative Council — probably including ministers — will be nominated by Emir Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani, who will decide when the Constitution is put into effect, probably by early in 2003.

The group negotiating to supply Apache helicopters and others selling into the Kuwaiti market are coming to terms with new offset obligations, introduced by the

In Kuwait, Finance Minister Youssef Al- Ibrahim is battling to keep his economic reform programme afloat. Ibrahim and other senior officials talked to GSN about the long-term implications of reform for economic culture, the labour market and

Islamist movements are gaining momentum ahead of Kuwait’s 2003 general elections. Liberal and leftist M.P.s have forged a National Alliance to defend constitutional gains against the march of Sharia, but they face stiff opposition, according to GSN’s analysis of the balance

King Hamad and his government, secular leftists and the women’s movement have had to confront the real extent of popular support for Shia Islamism in Bahrain, following the 9 May local elections. The return of democracy is proving a complex

The Iraqi regime’s opponents are manoeuvring ahead of a U.S. assault on Saddam Hussein, which the Pentagon now envisages in 2003. GSN analyses the proxy war in northern Iraq, U.S. and Iraqi strategic options.

Gulf leaders have understood the massive anger at Israel’s assault on the Palestinians. Ruling elites have generally moved rapidly to associate themselves with protests and distance themselves from U.S. policy. Where this has not proved possible—as in Bahrain—they have found

Qatar’s emergence as a world-scale natural gas producer has influenced its political choices—and was a factor in Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani’s 1995 putsch against his father Sheikh Khalifa Bin Hamad Al-Thani.

A rumour did the rounds of foreign currency traders returning  from  their  Easter  break  that  a  senior member  of  the  Saudi  ruling  family  and  security establishment  was  about  to  be  named  by  the  US authorities  as  a  supporter  of  Islamist  radical  groups linked  to  Al-Qaeda.  Such  were  the  concerns  that  this claim  would  prompt  the  Saudi  leadership  to  pull substantial funds out of the USA as a sanction against Washington   that   the   Euro   bounced,   further strengthening against the dollar.

The US public  was  shown  further  grounds  to  support  an attack  on  Iraq,  when  a  leaked  intelligence  report  suggested that  a  US Navy pilot  lost  in  1991  might  still  be  alive  and  in captivity. It touched on a topic of exceptional sensitivity in the USA — where  many  people  still  believe  missing  servicemen from  the  Korean and Vietnam wars  are  either  alive  or  were held  until  their  deaths.  It  also  forced  a  reluctant  Pentagon  to publicly admit that the Iraqi Air Force (IrAF) scored a single air-to-air victory on the first night of the Gulf War.

The  New  Yorker magazine,  required  reading  for  MidEast watchers,  has  revived  suggestions  of  a  “new”  link  between Iraqi intelligence  and  Osama  Bin  Laden’s Al-Qaeda network. Its claim that the two pariahs jointly ran a terrorist organisation in Kurdish northern Iraq—if true—could provide the smoking gun  that  US hawks  have  been  seeking  to  take  the  “war against terrorism” to Iraq. Efforts to link 11 September suicide hijacker Mohammed  Atta with  Iraqi  intelligence  in  the  Czech Republic did  not  convince,  and  until  now  the  Central Intelligence  Agency — but  not  its  influential  former  directorJames  Woolsey—had  largely  discounted  reported  links between President Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda.

Washington’s  intention  to  remove  President Saddam Hussein from power is no longer in  doubt, but  opposition  from  regional allies—robustly  expressed  during  Vice  President Dick  Cheney’s  mid-March  tour  of  potential coalition  partners — has  prompted  a  reassessment of  the  US  war  machine’s  capabilities  to  effect regime change in Iraq.n .