French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner is scheduled to make a fresh trip to Iraq's largely autonomous Kurdistan Region in the upcoming period, Head of the Department of Foreign Relations in the Region Falah Mustafa Bakir said on Saturday.

Kouchner's visit aim to buttress bilateral relations, as the French official is expected to meet with the Region's Chief Masuad Barazani and

other high profile officials of the Region, Bakir told reporters.
Should the visit take place, it would be the second for Kouchner since August 2007.

France already has an embassy in Baghdad and announced last year that it would open a consulate in Irbil northern Iraq.

Bakir noted that preparations to inaugurate the consulate were "underway", with the likelihood of Kouchner attending the ceremony.

Former Iraqi oil minister called for keeping oil ministry away from political contests and let the independent oil experts handle the issues of that potentially vital ministry.

"Let us rescue the oil ministry from those political conflicts that happened in the ministries of defence and interior, sophisticated people should be appointed to run the ministry with having enough authority to carry out their jobs professionally" said former minister Ibrahim Bahir al Olum Frideay in an interview with Radio Sawa.

This comes after New York Times newspaper reported in an article that oil minister Hussein Shahristani had not experience in the oil industry and he had become the trouble maker for the other ministries despite his own ministry.

Bahir al Olum called the government to build enough refineries to solve the problem of lacking kerosene and other fuels, which the country was suffering from for more than 5 years.

As he called the Iraqi government to take advantage from the natural Gas, claiming that now 60 per cent of Iraqi natural gas revenue was wasted on the daily bases, because it was not used properly.

Iraq exports more than 2 million barrel crude oil each day, and the rate is expected to go up to 6 million by 2010 if the Iraqi oil and Gas bill was passed.

The Daily Telegraph

By David Blair in Tehran

Iran's Supreme Leader cast his vote in parliamentary elections yesterday and, in his solemn and severe dark robes, told his compatriots that taking part was their "national and religious duty".

Yet millions of Iranians appeared to be registering a silent protest against the regime by ignoring Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's plea.

Polling stations across Tehran were quiet, orderly and only sparsely attended. One virtually empty polling station in a mosque on Dowlat Street pointedly declined to say how many people had voted by 3pm. "You are not allowed to know that," said the official in charge.

After about 90 per cent of reformist candidates were banned from contesting the election, Iran's 70 million people - two thirds of whom are under 30 - were left to choose between an array of hardline conservatives.

State television devoted hours to exhorting people to vote, with one official feeling confident enough to proclaim a "glorious" response. But early signs suggested the turnout might equal the 52 per cent registered in the last election in 2004.

This compares with turnouts exceeding 80 per cent in the presidential polls of 1997 and 2001, both won by Mohammed Khatami, a reformist cleric.

At the gates of Tehran University, a polling station was devoid of students and served a modest procession of elderly men with white beards.

"All Iranians have a national duty to vote," said Abbas Noroozi, 79, leaning heavily on a walking stick.

"Elections decide the destiny of the nation. The students will come to vote later. There is still time."

Nearby, a preacher told an audience at Friday prayers that America was hoping for a low turnout. "Bush is interfering in Iran and asking people to stay away from the election. But Mr Bush, look and see that the Iranian people are voting," he said, before leading vigorous chants of: "Death to America!"

Voting procedures could hardly be more cumbersome. In Tehran, Iranians must select 30 candidates - one for each of the city's constituencies - then write out each name by hand and add a special code number. Processing one voter takes at least 15 minutes.

This was not why a 27-year-old student declined to participate. "I don't agree with any of the candidates. We are only allowed to vote for the candidates who are approved by the government. So what is the point?" he asked. Another 25-year-old said: "I would have voted if the reformers had been allowed to stand.

"When Mr Khatami was president of Iran, he did much for the young and people were not miserable as they are today. But those who are responsible for the country now do nothing for us."

Iran's inflation runs at 20 per cent and crushing levels of unemployment blight the prospects of the young. This election might change the course of Iranian politics if hardline opponents of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad do well. Whatever the outcome, however, Ayatollah Khamenei's position as Iran's chief power-broker will probably be reinforced.

But a low turnout would rob the contest of legitimacy and signal the quiet but persistent discontent of millions of young Iranians. Early results are expected tomorrow.

The Times

Martin Fletcher in Jamkaran

As darkness falls the floodlit domes and minarets of the great Jamkaran mosque begin to glow in translucent greens and turquoise. Coaches, cars and minibuses soon clog the four-lane highway leading up to the vast complex in the desert outside the holy Iranian city of Qom. By 10pm perhaps 200,000 pilgrims have poured into the concourse in front of the mosque – as they do every Tuesday night – for two hours of prayer and preaching.

The pilgrims are young and old, men and women, the latter dressed in all-encompassing ink-black chadors. Many have brought babies and children, rugs and picnics. They have come from across Iran to pray for the reappearance of the Mahdi, the Hidden Imam, the 12th successor to the Prophet, who – Shia Muslims believe – was born in AD868, vanished as a young boy, but will return to save humanity when the world is engulfed in violence, corruption and injustice.

These are busy days for the mosque, built where the Madhi was allegedly seen one Tuesday night in AD984. Pilgrims are arriving in ever-greater numbers, its facilities are being rapidly expanded and its most celebrated visitor is President Ahmadinejad, who has suggested that his Government’s mission is to prepare Iran for the Mahdi’s return.

The pilgrims see signs that that moment may be nearing – wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, greed, social injustice and moral decay. They are shocked by the decadence of cities such as Tehran – the make-up, the figure-hugging clothes, the skimpy headscarves. They laud Mr Ahmadinejad’s attempt to reimpose the strict Islamic mores relaxed by President Khatami’s reformist Government between 1997 and 2005. “He’s bringing morality back. He’s defending our religion,” said Muhammad Kazeim, 24, a nurse.

These pilgrims are decent, devout people whose traditional, conservative views are probably shared by the majority of Iranians. However, those views often conflict with Western ideas of freedom, and many urban Iranians now accuse Mr Ahmadinejad’s Government of imposing suffocating restrictions, censorship and repression inspired as much by politics as religion.

The most obvious manifestation of this changed atmosphere are the “moral police” whose “guidance patrols” are an almost permanent presence in Tehran’s congested squares – not just in the summer, when people naturally wear less. They stop women for bad hijab (headscarves), high boots, tight jeans or bright clothes, men for ostentatious Western hairstyles, men and women for holding hands.

But the backlash against Western culture goes much farther. Sometimes it is trivial – a Tehran restaurant chain called Apache, for example, was ordered to adopt a more Islamic name. Sometimes it is more serious, as in the case of the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Locked away in the museum’s basement is one of the world’s finest collections of modern Western art – works by Renoir, Picasso, Monet, Van Gogh, Jackson Pollock, DalÍ, Magritte, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec and others collected by the former Empress of Iran, Farah Pahlavi, before the Islamic Revolution and now worth more than $3 billion (£1.5 billion).

They were last displayed just after Mr Ahmadinejad’s Government took office in 2005. The long-planned exhibition was so popular that the Ministry of Culture could not shut it down immediately and demanded the removal only of a Francis Bacon triptych with homosexual overtones. But Ali Reza Samiazar, who resigned as the museum’s director when he saw the tenor of the new Government, believes that it is very unlikely the collection will be shown again because the Government would see that as “promoting Western values and culture”. Instead, he says, the museum now stages exhibitions with ideological themes about the Islamic revolution or Islamic resistance.

Habibollah Sadeghi, Mr Samiazar’s successor, cancelled a meeting with The Times this week, but has in the past described Western art as an “aggressive, dominant” force to be resisted. Nor is it just Western art that is now being censored. The output of Iran’s world-renowned film industry has plummeted because its directors are reluctant to invest in films lest they are banned.

Dariush Mehrjui, one of Iran’s most famous directors, told The Times how the Ministry of Culture blocked his latest film, Santoori – about a musician who becomes a heroin addict – three days before its much-heralded release.

“It’s like your ship suddenly sinking, and this is all because of their censorship policy,” he said. “In the past 25 years it’s never been so bad . . . These are very hardline people who think dogmatically . . . The difference between Ahmadinejad’s Government and Khatami’s is 180 degrees.

“This Government thinks whatever was done under Khatami is antirevolutionary.”

Reformist newspapers have been shut. The rest do what they are told. Not one has dared to print a story much talked about in the capital this week about a top official in Tehran who was forced to resign after being caught with prostitutes. Two dissident websites recently published a leaked government directive to the media on how to cover political events.

UN Security Council condemnation of Iran’s nuclear programme should be presented as an “interference in Iran’s domestic affairs”, it said. Reports should say that “Iran’s peaceful nuclear programme will serve the Islamic world”, and that “the West does not want Muslim scientists to have access to modern technology for their energy industry”. They should highlight policy differences between Europe, the US, Russia and China.

Few foreign journalists are still permitted to work full-time in Iran. The Times was allowed in for ten days to cover the elections. We had to register with the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, employ an official translator and obtain written permission to visit anywhere outside Tehran.

This week the Government announced that it was investigating Noureddine Pir Mouazen, a reformist MP, for treason. He gave an interview critical of yesterday’s elections to Voice of America, a US-funded station that the Government regards as a vehicle for propaganda against the Islamic republic. “There’s an enormous paranoia about foreigners that pervades everything,” a Tehran-based diplomat said. That paranoia also extends to organised dissent, especially by women’s rights organisations.

The pilgrims of Jamkaran can rest assured that Mr Ahmadinejad is rolling back the liberalisation of the reformist era. Whether the Islamic republic he is rebuilding is one in which they want to live is another matter.