BAGHDAD, Dec 29: Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh warned of “vicious and dangerous” attempts to convert political and economic problems in Iraq to an Arab-Kurdish conflict.

He also criticised the anaemic progress in increasing national oil exports, although eight billion dollars have been poured into the sector over the last three years.

“There are vicious and dangerous attempts to convert the political and economic problems in Baghdad on a number of issues to an Arab-Kurdish conflict,” Saleh said in an interview.

“There are differences inside the government regarding how to handle political and economic cases like the issue of Kirkuk or the disputed areas and also the oil-gas law,” added Saleh, who is a member of the Kurdish Alliance political group.

The four Kurdish provinces will not take part in Iraqi provincial elections which are going ahead in the country’s other 14 provinces on Jan 31.

Oil-rich Kirkuk province, with 900,000 inhabitants, is ethnically mixed, but the Kurds have demanded that it be added to their autonomous region in the country’s north.

A national oil law has been delayed in parliament over bitter differences among the assembly’s Shia, Sunni and Kurdish factions over the sharing of the revenues generated from oil sales.

Concerning crude oil exports, Saleh said: “We have invested eight billion dollars in the oil sector in the past three years and oil exports are still around 1.8 million barrels per day instead of three million.” The pre US invasion export ceiling was about three million barrels per day (bpd), but, Iraq which was a founding member of Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, used to export 3.4 million bpd in the 1980s.

Saleh did not explain where he thought that money had gone to, but Iraq routinely comes at the bottom of international surveys on corruption and transparency.

With an estimated 115 barrels of crude oil deposits, Iraq has the world’s third largest reserves behind Saudi Arabia and Iran.

However, because of ageing installations and a lack of investment, Iraq produces only 2.18 million barrels a day, out of which 1.6 million is for export according to figures on the Opec website.

Iraqi Oil Minister Hussein Shahristani has launched a plan envisaging the tripling of oil exports to six million barrels a day by 2018.

The Iraqis are optimistic about their capacity to attract foreign investment into the oil industry, thanks to the relative improvement in security in the war-torn country.—AFP