BEIJING, July 24--China and the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (PGCC) have completed a round of talks on a free trade agreement as part of Beijing’s efforts to secure long-term supplies of oil, AFP reported Monday.
Chinese trade officials held talks with council members Saudia Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates in the eastern province of Zhejiang from July 19-22.
“Once we establish a free trade zone, then a new, unlimited ’Silk Road’ will be formed,“ Vice Minister of Trade Yi Xiaozhun said.
More than 40 percent of China’s oil imports come from the six Persian Gulf states so Beijing is eager to secure long-term and stable supplies, especially as crude prices continue to rise to record heights.
There was no mention of when the next round of talks would be held nor of a timeframe for finalizing the agreement.
The official Xinhua news agency said the talks began in July 2004 and the just completed discussions were the third time the two sides had met on the issue.
The European Union is also currently in negotiations to set up a free trade agreement with the PGCC, which this year is celebrating its 25th anniversary.
In principle, the PGCC plans a common market among member states in 2007 and a monetary union and a single currency by the start of 2010.
However, a slew of political and economic differences among member countries ruled by powerful and sometimes competing dynasties has gotten in the way.
Over the past year, Bahrain and Oman have signed free trade agreements on their own with the United States is seeking similar deals with Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.

LONDON, July 24--Iraq has completed repairs to one of two sabotaged oil pipelines that export crude from its northern fields to Turkey and aims to restart the flow this week, Iraq’s oil minister said on Sunday.
“We completed the repairs today,“ Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani told Reuters in London. “We hope to restart it very soon. This week.“
Shahristani is trying to restore Iraq’s dilapidated oil industry, the country’s main source of the hard currency needed to rebuild its economy.
The industry needs billions of dollars of investment to overhaul infrastructure and boost output after years of sanctions, war and mismanagement.
Iraq hopes to boost exports from the giant Kirkuk oilfields in the northern part of the country further next month when it will have completed repairs on the second parallel pipeline, Shahristani said.
The pipelines to Kirkuk have been mostly unusable due to sabotage since the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
Both pipelines were fractured in the most recent attack on July 9. The attacks forced Iraq to halt sales of Kirkuk crude from Turkey.
In the weeks before that attack, Iraq had sold 8.5 million barrels of Kirkuk crude from Ceyhan, boosting total exports to match their highest levels since October 2004 in June at 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd).
Iraq has tried to boost security along the line by placing it in the protection of the army. Prior to that, security was in the hands of a special dedicated force and attacks were frequent.
When the line is down, the country relies exclusively on exports of around 1.5 million bpd from its southern Basra terminal.
Iraq’s daily oil output is currently 2.5 million barrels per day (bpd), but it is aiming to boost production to 2.9 million bpd by the year end and may even reach 3.0 million bpd, Shahristani said.
“We aim for 2.9 million bpd, and with a little bit of luck maybe we can reach 3 million,“ he said.
The oil minister also said he was confident that a new hydrocarbon law that will allow foreign investment to flow into the industry will be passed by the end of the year.
“I can’t say exactly when it will pass because it depends on parliament,“ he said. “But it will be this year.“

Police block anti-Arroyo demonstrators from marching to the congress as President Gloria Arroyo delivers annual state of the nation address on Monday at the congress building in Manila, Philippines. (AFP Photo)

MANILA, Philippines, July 24--President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo promised that successful economic reform will cure social divisions and injustice in the Philippines in an address to Congress Monday, as thousands rallied against her.
According to AP, Arroyo steered clear of divisive political scandals in her annual address to the nation, saying, “I am not here to talk about politics, I am here to talk about what people want.“
“We now have the funds to address social inequity and economic disparity,“ Arroyo said. “We now have the funds to stamp out terrorism and lawless violence.“
Up to 16,000 police and soldiers were deployed around the Congress, facing about 10,000 left-wing protesters armed with placards and streamers denouncing Arroyo and calling for her ouster.
Earlier this month, security officials arrested a group of fugitive soldiers who allegedly planned to seize the legislature, take lawmakers hostage and declare a revolutionary government to oust Arroyo.
The president survived an alleged coup attempt in February but continues to be hounded by allegations of vote rigging in the 2004 election, human right abuses, corruption and dictatorial tendencies, amid concern over military restiveness.
She has denied any wrongdoing, but lawmakers will tackle in coming months new impeachment complaints against her, after throwing them out last year on a technicality.
“Surely there must be a better way to do politics so that those who lose elections do not make the country pay for their frustrated ambition,“ Arroyo said in a jab at the opposition. “There must be a better way so that those who win the nation’s mandate can work without delay and whimsical obstruction.“
In her sixth address since she came to power in 2001, Arroyo also condemned the unsolved killings of hundreds of people, mostly left-wing activists, but most of her speech was focused on building new roads and airports and establishing economic “super-regions“ to spur development.
“We have achieved record revenue collections, we are lining up corrupt officials to face the consequences of their misdeeds,“ she said, adding the Philippines has “finally earned the respect of the international community after serious and viable stake for our fiscal discipline and billions of pesos (dollars; euros) in annual interest savings that are now going into necessary public investments.“

An oil-driven economic boom has made Angola the toast of the town in boardrooms from Houston to Beijing. But on the outskirts of the African nation’s bustling capital of Luanda, the talk is not of a more prosperous future but rather of a stolen one, Reuters said.
Led by a collection of reformed Marxists and Western-leaning technocrats, Angola’s government is struggling to convince sceptical citizens that it will use the proceeds of vast oil reserves to improve living standards in a country shattered by a brutal 27-year civil war.
Construction cranes dot Luanda’s skyline and dozens of freighters are anchored in its busy port, waiting to load the 1.4 million barrels of oil produced each day in Angola.
Texan drawls are now common on the city’s arcing seafront. But such marvels are a distant dream for the people in Kilamba Kiaxi.
In this slum 7 km (4 miles) outside Luanda, raw sewage seeps into the ditches, garbage piles up on unpaved streets and residents queue, sometimes for hours, at communal taps for water that is often unsafe to drink.
“The government is building 30-storey developments in Luanda, but we don’t have basic sanitation,“ said Fortunato Cangombre, a 43-year-old car mechanic who fled to Luanda in 1993 after the war engulfed his hometown in southern Angola.
“They must open their eyes,“ Cangombre said.
Others are less charitable to the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) government, which has been in charge of the country since it won independence from Portugal in 1975.
“We will not see any of the money from the oil,“ said an elderly man who identified himself as Miguelito.
The belief that a significant portion of Angola’s estimated $16.8 billion in oil revenue this year will be siphoned off by corrupt bureaucrats or misdirected into projects benefiting a scant few is strong in Luanda’s slums.
Here an average monthly salary is only $50--barely enough to pay for a steak dinner in an upscale restaurant catering to those made rich by the oil boom.
Frustration among the poor has risen since 2002, when the government’s lengthy war with the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) came to an end. Expectations were high for a so-called peace dividend that would see Luanda turn its spending from guns to butter.
“Angola is a rich country and the people expect to see results pretty soon,“ said Cynthia Efird, the US ambassador to Angola.
Efird credited the Angolan government for addressing corruption and making its economy more transparent, but added that officials in Luanda did not have the capacity to tackle all the country’s glaring social and economic problems at once.
Although Angola’s economy grew 18 percent last year, placing it among the world’s high flyers, the country continues to plumb the depths in a number of vital categories.
Infant mortality rate is among the worst in Africa, with one-quarter of all children dying before the age of five, often from malnutrition, malaria and other preventable diseases.
Illiteracy is rampant, especially in the countryside--less than 10 percent of civil servants have a university education.
The war’s legacy--more than one million people died in the conflict--also continues to cast a dark shadow.
The transportation system outside of Luanda is a shambles, with defunct rail lines and many inaccessible roads. In addition, the government is busy reintegrating thousands of refugees who fled into neighboring countries as well as tending to the scores of amputees and orphans that crowd major cities.
Against this backdrop, Angola is looking ahead to its first general elections since 1992.
It was expected that the election would be held in 2006, but Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos announced several months ago that it would not likely occur until 2007. He cited the poor state of the roads and other infrastructure as the key reason for the delay.
The scheduling hiccup has prompted fears that the MPLA, which was modeled on the Communist parties that once ruled the former Soviet Union and other Warsaw Bloc nations, is reluctant to relinquish power--and the oil revenues that go with it.
International observers, however, are willing to give the government the benefit of the doubt for the time being, although they are keeping a watchful eye on Luanda’s preparations ahead of the poll.
“Whether the election is in May or October next year is not important. The key thing is that it must be done the right way,“ said Arild Oyen, Norway’s ambassador to Angola.

GENEVA, July 24--Last ditch talks to keep hopes alive of a global free deal faced a deepening crisis on Monday after trading powers failed to achieve a breakthrough at a marathon first session, Reuters quoted diplomats as saying.
The so-called G6--Australia, Brazil, India, Japan, the European Union and the United States--must reach agreement on how to boost trade in farm and industrial goods or risk seeing nearly five years of WTO negotiations crumble in failure.
But 14 hours of negotiations on Sunday, chaired by World Trade Organization (WTO) chief Pascal Lamy, who has the task of brokering a deal, failed to advance in the key area of farm subsidies, known as domestic support, where the United States is under pressure to make further concessions.
“There was no movement at all on domestic support. We will meet again tomorrow to see if things have changed overnight, whether new ideas have popped up,“ European Union Agriculture Commission Mariann Fischer Boel told Reuters.
“There was no progress, we are getting more and more pessimistic,“ said a diplomat from another WTO state that took part in Sunday’s talks.
Washington has been insisting that the EU and other WTO members that it calls “protectionist“ go further in agreeing to lowering farm tariff barriers before it moves further on subsidies.
Trade ministers were due to gather again on Monday at the lakeside offices of the WTO in what could be a final attempt to salvage a deal.
Diplomats say another failure by the six, who have already made several “last ditch“ bids for a deal, would leave the 149-state WTO without enough time to complete all the complex details of a global free trade treaty by the end of the year.
Lamy has set a further two days of talks for July 28 and 29, but diplomats said that without some progress this weekend there could be little point in a further meeting.
After promising their negotiators would be more flexible, the Group of Eight leading industrial powers last week set a fresh mid-August target for a breakthrough in the key area of agriculture and manufactured goods.

HARARE, Zimbabwe, July 24--Zimbabwe has suspended the sale of its stockpile of nine tons of ivory to dealers for as long as no proper monitoring system has been put in place, officials said Monday.
The halt in ivory trade on the southern African country’s local market will remain in place until a committee finishes drafting a working document to be used as a guide, based on international regulations, said National Parks spokesman Edward Mbewe. “We have suspended the sale of ivory to all dealers with immediate effect,“ Mbewe told AFP.
“The selling of ivory used to be done by us (National Parks), but this new structure will result in setting up independent structures which will be able to coordinate monitored sales under Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) structures.“
International trade in ivory has been banned since 1989, following a massive surge in illegal poaching that cut down elephant populations sharply in the 1970s and 1980s.
Ivory trading is controlled in Zimbabwe under the 1997 United Nations CITES regulations which state that only ivory from elephants that have died from natural causes can be traded.
Under the CITES agreement, Zimbabwe is only allowed to sell locally to carvers but is not allowed to exceed $500 (396 euros) per person, while any international trade is regulated and has to be sanctioned by CITES, Mbewe said.
“Since the ivory is cheap this might influence the conduct of some of our dealers, so the committee has to address these problems before any sale resumes.“
Parks officials complained that due to the flourishing illegal ivory market in mostly China, Taiwan and Singapore, some of Zimbabwe’s ivory finds its way to the Far East.
Zimbabwe has in recent years been grappling with a ballooning elephant population, with 100,000 elephants inhabiting forests that can accommodate 45,000.

KUWAIT CITY, July 24--The one million citizens of Kuwait, where government financial assets have topped 166 billion dollars, are to receive a grant of 200 dinars ($690) each, the government has announced.
“In accordance with directives by the emir, the cabinet decided to provide all Kuwaiti citizens with a grant of 200 dinars each,“ state minister for cabinet affairs Ismail al-Shatti said Sunday after the cabinet weekly meeting.
The two million foreign workers in the oil-rich emirate were not included, AFP said.
The OPEC member posted a surplus in each of the past seven fiscal years, totaling more than $50 billion. Kuwait is also headed for record revenues this year.
The government offered a similar grant in October 2004 and raised salaries of citizens by $170 monthly last year. MPs in the outspoken parliament have been pressing for a new hike.
The Persian Gulf Arab state provides a cradle-to-grave welfare system to its citizens who receive most public services at heavily subsidized prices and pay no income tax.
Some 92 percent of Kuwait’s 300,000-strong workforce are employed in government jobs, with high wages and minimal work pressure.