BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 17--Almost a month after saboteurs shut down a northern Iraqi oil pipeline, the government said Sunday it should resume pumping crude from northern fields to an export terminal in southeastern Turkey by month's end, AP reported.
A Dec. 18 explosion caused by saboteurs halted the flow of oil through the northern pipeline, which was carrying about 400,000 barrels a day before the attack.
"Repair work on the damaged export pipeline that carries crude oil from Kirkuk oil fields to the Turkish port of Ceyhan is expected to finish in 10 days time from now," the Oil Ministry statement said. "Exports via the pipeline to Turkey's Ceyhan port are expected to resume immediately after completing repair work."
The statement also said a damaged feeder pipeline that carries crude oil from Kirkuk oil fields to the Beiji refinery, in northern Iraq, has been repaired and has started resupplying the refinery with 300,000 barrels a day.
Iraq's northern pipeline has been the target of repeated insurgent attacks, and the storage facilities at Ceyhan, Turkey, ran dry last month.
Iraq's State Oil Marketing Organization last week informed customers it would reduce southern term export contracts by about 10 percent, or 160,000-170,000 barrels a day, for five months due to insurgent attacks, bad weather hampering the southern export terminals' operations and demurrage costs.
The organization's chief, Dhiaa al-Bakka, said last month that exports averaged 1.55 million barrels a day in 2004, with 1.43 million barrels coming from the south and 120,000 from the north.
The annual average export level fell below the target of 1.85 million barrels a day because of the country's deteriorating security situation.

Engineers in Indian Kashmir are working round the clock building an electricity plant that officials say will ease the state's dire power shortage but which has neighboring Pakistan up in arms, AFP reported.
Pakistan, which fears the one-billion-dollar project could deprive its wheat-bowl state of Punjab of a vital irrigation river, charges that the plant violates a 44-year-old water sharing treaty.
But Indian Kashmir officials say the 450-megawatt Baglihar project on the Chenab River in south Kashmir does not contravene the pact and could go a long way to ending routine 12-hour blackouts plaguing the Himalayan state.
"Given our disastrous power situation, the project will help end the acute power deficiency," said Nayeem Akhter, secretary to Kashmir Chief Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed.
The power shortages affect people most during the freezing winters. With no electric heat, people spend the chill nights huddling around stoves or clutching kangris--pots for carrying hot charcoal--inside their clothes.
Pakistan says it never approved the project's design as stipulated under the Indus Water Treaty and has threatened to go to the World Bank which brokered the agreement to block the project.
The row comes as the two countries which have fought three wars--two over Kashmir--inch forward in a bid to settle their differences over all issues including the disputed region, which each holds in part but claims in full.
The treaty bars India from interfering with the flow of the three rivers feeding Pakistan--the Indus, the Chenab and the Jhelum--but allows it to generate electricity from them.
The treaty is one of the nuclear-armed South Asian rivals' most enduring agreements and has survived two wars between them.
Kashmiri power authorities insist the project, on which work began in April 1999 and is due to be completed next year, will not store water, thus cutting off the flow to Pakistan.
"We're complying with the treaty religiously," said Kashmir's Irrigation Minister Qazi Mohammed Afzal. "There have been no violations at all."
Engineers in construction helmets are working 24-hours-a-day on the project, cutting through massive Himalayan rock formations and using ropeways to get to hard-to-reach parts of the site on the banks of the fast-flowing Chenab.
"It's a dream project that will become a main source of power," said Abdul Aziz, a senior project engineer. He said the addition of 450 megawatts of power would reduce load-shedding--the cutting off of power to certain lines when demand is greater than supply-by 20 to 25 percent.
The government plans to start work on a second 450-megawatt phase once the first stage is completed.
Kashmir government officials fear halting the project will not only keep the state in the dark but will also spell big financial difficulties for the state.
The Jammu and Kashmir state government has taken loans from nine financial institutions to fund the project.
"If Pakistan believes it's a friend of Kashmiris, it should not jeopardize this project," state Finance Minister Muzaffar Beig said, adding that it is vital for the region's economic development.
Kashmir has the potential to generate 20,000 megawatts of power, but less than 10 percent of it has been exploited. Massive power theft has compounded the state's woes with people refusing to pay power bills.
India has said it believes the dispute can be resolved with more talks but Pakistan has refused and says it wants to consult neutral arbitrators.

Gerhard Schroeder

FRANKFURT, Germany, Jan. 17--German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has called for radical reform of the EU's stability pact to grant countries more flexibility over their budget deficits, BBC reported.
Schroeder said existing fiscal rules should be loosened to allow countries to run deficits above the current 3 percent limit if they meet certain criteria.
Writing in the Financial Times, Schroeder also said heads of government should have a greater say in reforms.
Changes to the pact are due to be agreed at an economic summit in March.
The current EU rules limit the size of a eurozone country's deficit to 3 percent of GDP.
Countries which exceed the threshold are liable to heavy fines by the European Commission, although several countries, including Germany, have breached the rules consistently since 2002 without facing punishment.
The European Commission acknowledged last month that it would not impose sanctions on countries who break the rules.
Schroeder--a staunch supporter of the pact when it was set up in the 1990s-- said exemptions were now needed to take into account the cost of domestic reform programs and changing economic conditions.
"The stability pact will work better if intervention by European institutions in the budgetary sovereignty of national parliaments is only permitted under very limited conditions," he wrote.
"Only if their competences are respected will the member states be willing to align their policies more consistently with the economic goals of the EU."
Deficits should be allowed to rise above 3 percent, Schroeder argued, if countries meet several "mandatory criteria".
These include governments which are adopting costly structural reforms, countries which are suffering economic stagnation and nations which are shouldering "special economic burdens".
The proposed changes would make it harder for the European Commission to launch infringement action against any state which breaches the pact's rules.
Schroeder's intervention comes ahead of a meeting of the 12 Eurozone finance ministers on Monday to discuss the pact.
The issue will also be discussed at Tuesday's Ecofin meeting of the finance ministers of all 25 EU members.
Schroeder also called for heads of government to play a larger role in shaping reforms to the pact.
A number of EU finance ministers are believed to favor only limited changes to the eurozone's rules.

Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono

JAKARTA, Indonesia, Jan. 17--Indonesia said Monday it needs up to $150 billion over the next five years to build the roads, communications and power plants needed to jolt its economy back to life, AFP reported
The price tag for projects, some 22.5 billion of which are being offered to foreign investors, comes on top of an estimated 4.0 billion needed to rebuild the Sumatra island province of Aceh in the wake of the devastating tsunami.
Indonesia, still struggling fully to shrug off the effects of the 1997/98 Asian financial crisis, was rolling out the red carpet for foreign money at an infrastructure conference in Jakarta.
"One of the answers to our economic future is clear enough: get more investments in infrastructure," President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told delegates.
With rampant corruption and terrorism still vexing overseas investors in Indonesia, Yudhoyono said his government was removing barriers to economic activities, with an improved tax policy, streamlined administration and better competitiveness.
He said that while rebuilding after the tsunami disaster was a "national priority" it would not interfere with his other priorities.
"What happened in Aceh and North Sumatra does not in any way detract and/or distract my government from achieving the things that we intended to do when we came into office," Yudhoyono said.
The president said Indonesia's failure to achieve its potential as Southeast Asia's largest economy was largely a result of its poor infrastructure.
He admitted Monday that his government's goals of reducing unemployment from 9.5 percent to 5.1 percent, halving poverty to 8.2 percent and achieving annual economic growth of 6.6 percent in five years were ambitious.
Indonesia targeted 2004 economic growth at 4.8 percent but officials have said it could exceed this.
The European Union also expressed doubts over Jakarta's ability to balance private-sector involvement and public interest in strategic areas. It cited recent Constitutional Court decisions including one that limited foreign involvement in the power sector. "These verdicts are reasons for concern. How government and parliament will translate the respective guidelines of the court into law will be critical for the future of public-private investment partnerships," the EU said in a statement.
The EU also urged the government quickly to follow emergency aid in Aceh with "integrated reconstruction activities."

MANILA, Philippines, Jan. 17--Standard and Poor's said Monday it has cut the Philippines sovereign credit ratings citing the government's failure to shore up its shaky public finances, AFP reported.
"The downgrades reflect the government's inadequate response to its fiscal problems," the international ratings agency said in a statement.
"With public sector debt at 110 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and government interest expense at nearly 40 percent of revenue, prompt passage of the government's fiscal plan was necessary to support the Philippines ratings at their previous levels," it said.
Manila's long-term foreign currency rating was cut one notch to BB-minus from BB and its long-term local currency rating to BB-plus from BBB-minus.
SP also lowered the country's short-term local currency rating to B from A-3 but affirmed its short-term B foreign currency sovereign credit rating. The outlook is stable.
SP credit analyst Agost Benard said SP "has now revised downward its expectations that the government will be able to raise tax receipts materially from their current low level of 12 percent of GDP and that the governments debt trajectory will move to a clear downward trend."
President Gloria Arroyo asked Congress last year to pass a series of revenue enhancement measures to avoid a potential fiscal crisis in three years' time.
However, only one measure, on tobacco and liquor products, has been passed so far and that in what the rating firm described as a "watered-down version."
Half the country's debt is in foreign currency, exposing it to the risk that rising global interest rates or a weakening peso would "sharply limit policymakers room to maneuver."
Benard said the stable outlook "reflects the more comfortable rating relativities at this lower rating level at which the Philippines weak fiscal and debt profiles are balanced by the country's external position.
"Total public and private sector external debt at year-end 2005 is projected to be less than 120 percent of current account receipts and the Philippines 2005 gross external financing requirement should equal only 77 percent of unencumbered net official reserves.
"Coupled with modest success in enacting some of the governments fiscal measures in the upcoming legislative session, Standard and Poor's sees the upside and downside risks to the Philippines new ratings as balanced," Benard added.

SINGAPORE, Jan. 17--Singapore's key non-oil domestic exports (NODX) rose 17 percent in 2004 and total trade reached a historic high but growth will moderate this year, the city-state's trade agency said Monday, AFP reported.
Total trade rose 22 percent to a record 580 billion Singapore dollars (354 billion US) in 2004 thanks to the strong economic recovery in the United States, Japan and European Union and robust global electronics demand.
The NODX expansion in 2004 was an improvement over 15 percent the year before but 2005 is expected to be a "year of consolidation" for the overall trade performance, International Enterprise (IE) Singapore said in a statement.
NODX for all of 2004 reached $132.8 billion.
In December 2004, NODX--regarded as the best measure of Singapore's trade performance--expanded 8.0 percent compared with a year earlier, which was within economists' forecasts.
"All top 10 NODX markets recorded strong positive growth in 2004," IE Singapore said, with exports to China, Hong Kong, the EU, South Korea and Australia maintaining double-digit growth rates.
The EU, United States and Malaysia are Singapore's top three export markets. In 2004, the EU accounted for the highest share of Singapore exports at 19.9 percent, closely followed by the United States on 17 percent. China and Hongkong had a combined share of 16.8 percent.
The government expects NODX growth to moderate to 6.0 to 8.0 percent in 2005 on the back of weaker global electronics demand and high oil prices, while growth in total trade would slow to 7.0 to 9.0 percent.
IE Singapore chief executive Lee Yi Shyan said the consensus was for flat growth in electronics exports, which account for just over half of NODX.
The volatile pharmaceuticals sector may not be able to offset the weakness in electronics, Lee said, as its contribution to growth usually lags.
For 2004, however, Lee said the sector performed particularly well because it was a "harvest year" for the pharmaceutical plants that were set up earlier.
IE Singapore research and statistics division manager Rebecca Loh said no new production facilities are expected to be built in Singapore this year and that may be a "limiting factor" for export growth in 2005.