Israel
Seeks Pipeline for Iraqi Oil
By Ed Vuillamy
in Washington
The Observer
23 April, 2003
Plans to build
a pipeline to siphon oil from newly conquered Iraq to Israel are being
discussed between Washington, Tel Aviv and potential future government
figures in Baghdad.
The plan envisages
the reconstruction of an old pipeline, inactive since the end of the
British mandate in Palestine in 1948, when the flow from Iraq's northern
oilfields to Palestine was re-directed to Syria.
Now, its resurrection
would transform economic power in the region, bringing revenue to the
new US-dominated Iraq, cutting out Syria and solving Israel's energy
crisis at a stroke.
It would also
create an end less and easily accessible source of cheap Iraqi oil for
the US guaranteed by reliable allies other than Saudi Arabia - a keystone
of US foreign policy for decades and especially since 11 September 2001.
Until 1948,
the pipeline ran from the Kurdish-controlled city of Mosul to the Israeli
port of Haifa, on its northern Mediterranean coast.
The revival
of the pipeline was first discussed openly by the Israeli Minister for
National Infrastructures, Joseph Paritzky, according to the Israeli
newspaper Ha'aretz .
The paper quotes
Paritzky as saying that the pipeline would cut Israel's energy bill
drastically - probably by more than 25 per cent - since the country
is currently largely dependent on expensive imports from Russia.
US intelligence
sources confirmed to The Observer that the project has been discussed.
One former senior CIA official said: 'It has long been a dream of a
powerful section of the people now driving this administration [of President
George W. Bush] 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.'
The editor-in-chief
of the Middle East Economic Review, Walid Khadduri, says in the current
issue of Jane's Foreign Report that 'there's not a metre of it left,
at least in Arab territory'.
To resurrect
the pipeline would need the backing of whatever government the US is
to put in place in Iraq, and has been discussed - according to Western
diplomatic sources - with the US-sponsored Iraqi National Congress and
its leader Ahmed Chalabi, the former banker favoured by the Pentagon
for a powerful role in the war's aftermath.
Sources at the
State Department said that concluding a peace treaty with Israel is
to be 'top of the agenda' for a new Iraqi government, and Chalabi is
known to have discussed Iraq's recognition of the state of Israel.
The pipeline
would also require permission from Jordan. Paritzky's Ministry is believed
to have approached officials in Amman on 9 April this year. Sources
told Ha'aretz that the talks left Israel 'optimistic'.
James Akins,
a former US ambassador to the region and one of America's leading Arabists,
said: 'There would be a fee for transit rights through Jordan, just
as there would be fees for Israel from those using what would be the
Haifa terminal.
'After all,
this is a new world order now. This is what things look like particularly
if we wipe out Syria. It just goes to show that it is all about oil,
for the United States and its ally.'
Akins was ambassador
to Saudi Arabia before he was fired after a series of conflicts with
then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, father of the vision to pipe
oil west from Iraq. In 1975, Kissinger signed what forms the basis for
the Haifa project: a Memorandum of Understanding whereby the US would
guarantee Israel's oil reserves and energy supply in times of crisis.
Kissinger was
also master of the American plan in the mid-Eighties - when Saddam Hussein
was a key US ally - to run an oil pipeline from Iraq to Aqaba in Jordan,
opposite the Israeli port of Eilat.
The plan was
promoted by the now Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and the pipeline
was to be built by the Bechtel company, which the Bush administration
last week awarded a multi-billion dollar contract for the reconstruction
of Iraq.
The memorandum
has been quietly renewed every five years, with special legislation
attached whereby the US stocks a strategic oil reserve for Israel even
if it entailed domestic shortages - at a cost of $3 billion (£1.9bn)
in 2002 to US taxpayers.
This bill would
be slashed by a new pipeline, which would have the added advantage of
giving the US reliable access to Gulf oil other than from Saudi Arabia.