BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq’s Sunni Muslim minority rejected a call for all-party talks on Wednesday, ignoring U.S. pressure for dialogue to resolve a sectarian crisis that has erupted since American forces left the country this week.

With fears mounting that the nation of 30 million might one day fragment in chaos in the absence of the U.S. troops who toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003, Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki warned Saddam’s fellow Sunnis they faced exclusion from power if they walked out on his ruling coalition.

BAGHDAD, Dec 14 (Reuters) – Four years ago, Iraq’s oil
minister Hussain al-Shahristani confronted a stark choice:
should he risk opening Iraq’s ailing oil industry to foreign
companies?

Iraq’s oil sector was limping along after years of sanctions
and conflict following the U.S. invasion in 2003, and badly
needed more investment. But bringing in Big Oil could expose a
vulnerable country to rapacious bids and exploitation.

BAGHDAD, Dec 7 (Reuters) – Militants have bombed
electrical transmission towers and lines across Iraq, government
and army sources said on Wednesday, in a wave of attacks that
cut power to several cities and towns.

In eastern Diyala province, insurgents bombed four
transmission towers, disrupting an electricity import line from
Iran, Musab al-Mudarres, an Electricity Ministry spokesman said.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq’s cabinet approved a draft 2012 budget of 117 trillion Iraqi dinars ($100 billion) with a deficit of 17 trillion dinars ($14.5 billion), Iraq’s cabinet secretary said on Monday.

The 2012 budget, which still needs parliamentary approval, is based on an oil price of $85 a barrel and oil exports of 2.625 million barrels a day next year, Cabinet Secretary Ali al-Alaq, a top aide to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, told Reuters.

BAGHDAD, Nov 15 (Reuters) – Iraq’s cabinet approved on
Tuesday a $17 billion deal with Royal Dutch Shell and
Mitsubishi to capture gas that is now being flared off
into the atmosphere at southern oilfields, a government
spokesman said.

Capturing flared gas is considered vital to ramping up power
production in Iraq, where electricity demand is around double
the supply.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Halima Dakhil lost her husband in the sectarian slaughter that engulfed Iraq after the U.S. invasion in 2003 and now spends her days tearful and scared, knowing her $250 monthly wage won’t pay the rent and feed five children.

One of an estimated 2 million women who are primary breadwinners in Iraq, Dakhil is but one face of the humanitarian crisis left behind as U.S. forces withdraw from Iraq nearly nine years after toppling dictator Saddam Hussein.

BAGHDAD, Oct 27 (Reuters) – Iraq and the semi-autonomous
northern Kurdish region have agreed to work on amendments to a
draft hydrocarbons law and reach an accord by year-end,
potentially defusing a major row, Iraqi officials said on
Thursday.

Kurdish officials have harshly criticised a draft law
approved by Iraq’s cabinet in August that would have given the
Arab-dominated central government in Baghdad more control over
the nation’s oil reserves, the world’s fourth largest.

BAGHDAD, Oct 20 (Reuters) – Foreign investors are
increasingly choosing Iraq’s stock market as a lucrative
investment, with the expected listing of the country’s three
main mobile phone firms and better regulation seen boosting
appetite.

Iraq’s bourse is still tiny in comparison with other
regional or international stock markets, but a drop in violence
since the peak of sectarian fighting in 2006-2007 and the scope
for quick growth is lifting interest.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Kurds protested in an Iraqi city on Sunday against an order to lower Kurdish flags from official buildings in a disagreement fanning tensions between Iraqi Arabs and the country’s Kurdish population.

Iraq’s disputed territories, particularly the area around the northern oil-wealthy city of Kirkuk, are considered potential flashpoints for future conflict when American troops leave as scheduled at the end of this year.

13 (Reuters) – Iraq’s semi-autonomous
region of Kurdistan has an ambitious plan to produce 1 million
barrels of oil per day by the end of 2015, the Kurdish ministry
of natural resources said on Thursday.

The near future plan is to have the capacity to produce
200,000 bpd by the end of 2011, the ministry said.