The Iraqi Cabinet yesterday approved changes to a draft oil law, taking a big step towards meeting a key political target for national reconciliation set by the US.
Washington wants Iraq's leaders to speed up passage of the oil law and other legislation it believes is crucial to reducing violence between majority Shiites and minority Sunni Arabs.
"The Cabinet has endorsed the oil law and is sending it to parliament," government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said.
Dabbagh said he expected parliament to begin preliminary discussions on the draft today.
The draft hydrocarbon law is vital to regulating how wealth from Iraq's huge reserves will be shared by its sectarian and ethnic groups and to attracting foreign investment to revive the country's only real economic asset.
It was originally approved by the Cabinet in February but faced stiff opposition from the government in Kurdistan, which felt it was getting a bad deal.
Most of the oil is in the Kurdish north and Shiite south.
The hydrocarbon law is seen as the most important of the political benchmarks for placating disaffected Sunni Arabs.
In the latest violence, US forces killed 23 militants suspected of links with al-Qaeda during a fierce battle in the western Anbar Province over the weekend, the military said.
US and Iraqi forces, backed by war planes and helicopters, confronted a large group of militants as they were preparing to launch a series of suicide bomb attacks in the Anbar capital Ramadi, 110km west of Baghdad, the military said.
"The group, affiliated with al-Qaeda in Iraq, intended to regain a base of operations in Al Anbar with suicide car and vest bomb attacks," the military said.
In other developments, Washington on Monday echoed a US military general's accusation that Iranian forces were stirring turmoil in Iraq by using the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah, and said Tehran was probably in the know.
US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack reiterated comments by Brigadier General Kevin Bergner, who earlier told reporters that the Quds Force, a unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and Hezbollah were jointly operating camps near Tehran in which they trained Iraqi fighters before sending them back to Iraq to wage attacks.
McCormack confirmed that the US had gleaned new information about the Quds Force and its relationship with Hezbollah, and told a news conference that the Iranian unit was funneling support to Shiite fighters in Iraq through Hezbollah.
"It would be surprising if the Iranian leadership or Iranian senior officials weren't at least, at the very least, witting of the activities of this group in Iraq," McCormack said.
Bergner said US forces had captured a high-ranking Hezbollah militant in Basra on March 20 who "was directed by senior Lebanese Hezbollah leadership to go to Iran and work with the Quds Force to train Iraqi extremists," in 2005.
Bergner also said the US military believed that "senior leadership in Iran" was aware of the activities of the Quds Force.
The general said one such group carried out the Jan. 20 attack in Karbala, and that "senior leadership leading the Quds Force knew of and supported planning for the eventual Karbala attack that killed five coalition soldiers."
US commanders have accused Tehran of financing and arming the militants accused of carrying out the killings before, but this was the first time they have accused Iranian officers of prior knowledge of the attack.
Iran has dismissed the US accusations as "ridiculous."
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