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Peace with Israel said to top new Iraq's agenda Jerusalem
Post: Apr. 21, 2003 - DOUGLAS DAVIS A peace treaty with Israel will be "top of the agenda" for a new Iraqi government, according to the Observer. Quoting US State Department sources, the paper said Iraqi National Congress (INC) head Ahmed Chalabi, who is favored by the Pentagon to lead a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, "is known to have discussed Iraq's recognition of the State of Israel." US intelligence sources also told the newspaper that Chalabi and other senior INC figures are understood to be involved in talks with Washington and Jerusalem over the construction of an oil pipeline from Mosul to a terminal in Haifa. A pipeline that linked Mosul and Haifa during the British Mandate has been inactive since the establishment of Israel in 1948, when the pipeline was redirected to Syria. The paper noted that the resuscitation of the old pipeline would transform economic power in the region, bringing revenue to Iraq, cutting out Syria, solving Israel's energy needs, and reducing domestic energy costs by more than 25 percent. It would also create an easily accessible source of oil for the US. A former senior CIA official was quoted as saying that "it has long been a dream of a powerful section of the people now driving this administration and the war in Iraq to safeguard Israel's energy supply as well as that of the United States. "The Haifa pipeline was something that existed, was resurrected as a dream, and is now a viable project, albeit with a lot of building to do." During the 1980s, when Saddam Hussein was considered an ally of the West, former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger developed the concept of a pipeline running from Iraq to the Jordanian port of Akaba. The pipeline was built and an agreement has been quietly renewed every five years, with special legislation which permitted the US to stock a strategic oil reserve for Israel, at a cost to the US of $3 billion in 2002, even if this entailed domestic US shortages. Israel currently relies on oil supplies from Russia, and National Infrastructure Minister Yosef Paritzky has estimated that the construction of an Iraq-Israel pipeline could cut Israel's fuel costs by more than 25 percent.
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