New Visitor Visa Requirements in Force Soon

[seruriermarshal]

New Visitor Visa Requirements in Force Soon

Source: www.irinnews.org


BAGHDAD, 31 May 2004 (IRIN) - All visitors to Iraq, including diplomats and aid workers, will soon need to apply for visas to enter the country as part of the scheduled 30 June handover of sovereignty to Iraqis, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Sunday.

"This is something that indicates that things are getting back to normal. It was easy to come in (without visas), but we'll get what we need in terms of security now," Branko Dubajic, programme coordinator at Lifeline, Relief in Crisis aid agency, told IRIN in Baghdad. A number of foreign fighters are believed by Coalition forces to be in Iraq, having taken advantage of lax border security.

Since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in April 2003, all that has been required to enter Iraq is a valid passport. Officials at the Jordanian-Iraqi border simply stamp visitors in and out of the country without any computerised system.

However, at Baghdad International Airport, border officials have state-of-the-art computer equipment, taking pictures of each passenger who enters. Other border points have varying degrees of security, which prompted the US-led administration to close all but three of the 13 official crossings between Iraq and Iran earlier this year.

"If I stop someone with a bomb from coming in, I protect the 25 million people of Iraq," Jameen Najem Abed, general director of the Al-Karkh nationality and civil affairs department of the Interior Ministry, told IRIN in Baghdad. "We say, 'Let's watch our internal security. Let's keep
ourselves safe'."

Once the system is in place, all foreigners will be required to apply for visas outside Iraq, Samir al-Sumaydii, Iraq's interior minister, told a recent press conference, although Thamir Adhami, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, says that some places, such as the airport, may also sell various visas.

"We are reviewing all of the rules and regulations already in our laws," Adhami said. In the past, Iraq always had a variety of visas - for short-term visitors, business people, those wishing to study and others, he noted.

"We will begin a registration system. We now have thousands of non-Iraqis [living in Iraq], whom it is not easy to count and get enough information about in one or two days," al-Sumaydii added.



From (http://www.cjtf7.com/coalition-news/coalition-current-news/news040601b.htm)

[seruriermarshal]

Iraqis Taking Control

Source: www.uniraq.org

The windows on one side of the air traffic control tower -- a place where a 360-degree view is of paramount importance -- had been painted black, obscuring the vision of one of Saddam Hussein's presidential palaces, as well as that of some arriving aircraft.

"He had the windows on that side of the tower painted over to prevent controllers from looking down upon him,

" said Frank Hatfield, the senior aviation adviser to Iraq.

By June, when Hatfield arrived at Baghdad International Airport, coalition forces had scraped the paint off the windows. But it serves as a vivid illustration of the challenge Hatfield and a small team of Federal Aviation Administration officials have faced as they attempt to restart commercial aviation in a war-ravaged country.

Hatfield, a former Long Beach resident who until last year was the FAA official in charge of the skies over New York, will celebrate a milestone of sorts Tuesday. For the first time since the war, a team of civilian Iraqi air traffic controllers will walk into the Baghdad tower and begin work. Helping the transition will be Mike McCormick of Miller Place, who is assigned to run the FAA's air traffic control center in Ronkonkoma but has spent the past three months in Iraq.

"It's the first step," Hatfield said in a telephone interview from Baghdad, "in giving the new Iraqi government control over their own aviation system."

It has been a long time coming. Hatfield spent last summer in Iraq, first readying the war-damaged airport for traffic, before returning to an FAA post in Washington.

"Most of the buildings, including the control tower and the passenger terminal, sustained battle damage and were ransacked or looted. The base building for the tower, the equipment rooms and the control tower itself were in very bad condition," he said.

He returned in March and helped locate the air traffic controllers who had worked at the airport before the war. But they needed extensive training: For more than 10 years, Iraq's aviation system had been operating under sanctions that prevented any international flights, and the controllers in Baghdad had handled only two or three airplanes a day. Several dozen Iraqi controllers have been sent to Jordan, or will be, for a monthlong refresher course, and dozens of new recruits have gotten initial training in Singapore.

The new setup that begins Tuesday puts Iraqi civilians in charge of the civilian airplanes that land on the east side of the airport. Military planes that land on a parallel runway to the west will continue, for now, to be handled by air traffic controllers from the Royal Australian Air Force, who took over shortly after the major conflict in Iraq ended last year. The civilian controllers will work out of a second control room built directly below the original.

The next goal may be more elusive. Last year, the coalition government asked commercial airlines to apply for rights to fly into Baghdad. More than 30 airlines, including major U.S. carriers Northwest and Continental, expressed interest. The Dutch carrier KLM even listed Baghdad briefly as a destination in its reservation system, but never made the first flight in. One major obstacle is what a carefully worded coalition document last summer called "a few localized issues": the threat of attacks from shoulder-fired missiles. Aircraft flying into and out of Baghdad have been the targets of six missile attacks -- five of them unsuccessful -- since major conflict ended.

Only a few dozen civilian planes land daily now at Baghdad, from Red Cross prop planes to chartered flights carrying contractors involved in the rebuilding effort. "Once that threat is at an acceptable level, they'll have scheduled service," Hatfield said. "It's not a date; it's a goal."

Hatfield, a former air traffic controller for the U.S. Navy, believes his own military service has been valuable, giving him a working knowledge of military chain-of-command and procurement processes. His FAA team members have similar backgrounds. McCormick, who was a Marine, is the FAA official who made the unprecedented decision to shut down New York airspace at 9:04 a.m. on Sept. 11 from his office at the FAA facility in Ronkonkoma.

On June 30, when the U.S.-led coalition hands over control of Iraq to the Iraqis, Hatfield's title of senior aviation adviser to Iraq will transfer to an official with the new government. He and other FAA team members will remain as consultants.

There are still challenges ahead, many that Hatfield can't control. The shoulder- fired-missile issue is one. Another is the condition of the road from Baghdad to the airport, which some Americans have nicknamed "Ambush Alley." He carries a Glock pistol in his truck.

Tuesday's milestone may seem small, but it is significant. "There are two things every country in the world wants: a national flag carrier and regularly scheduled air service to connect them to the rest of the world," said George Novack of George Washington University's Aviation Institute. Bringing the civilians back into the control tower "is a clear demonstration to the aviation community that things are headed toward normalcy."


From (http://www.cjtf7.com/coalition-news/coalition-current-news/news040601c.htm)

[seruriermarshal]

UN Security Council Heads for New Showdown on Iraq

UNITED NATIONS: The UN Security Council is headed for a contentious debate this week on a US-British draft resolution on Iraq after the rest of the interim government is named in Baghdad.


With Friday's announcement that Iyad Allawi had been tapped to become prime minister when a caretaker government assumes office on June 30, the council is now one small step closer to a vote on the draft.

China,

France and Germany -- with Russia taking a quieter role -- are pushing for changes to the text to strengthen the commitment of full sovereignty for Iraqis once the US occupation has formally ended.
But the US State Department has already made it clear that Washington would not accept calls to fix a date for US troops, who will remain in Iraq after the handover of power, to leave.
The key disagreement means that the United States is unlikely to get as rapid a vote as it might have liked, council diplomats said.
US ambassador John Negroponte, who will soon leave his post at the United Nations to take over what will be come the largest US embassy in the world in Baghdad, has played down calls for major revisions.


The current draft gives the US-led multinational force a one-year mandate that can be renewed, and says only that the interim Iraqi government can ask to review its status.
Meanwhile, Mexico will meet regularly with France, Germany, Spain and Chile on UN solutions to the Iraq conflict, Mexican President Vicente Fox said after a European Union-Latin American summit.
"One solution we arrived at with France, Germany, Spain and Chile was that we would meet often, exchange opinions and look for ideas and exit strategies," said Fox, speaking after a series of bilateral meetings on the summit sidelines.


Baghdad message adds: A Sunni Muslim on Iraq's Governing Council was tipped Sunday to become the first post-Saddam Hussein president, as an interim government took shape amid fresh violence in the holy city of Najaf.


Arab media networks have aired various unconfirmed reports on the line-up of the government to take over after the June 30 return of sovereignty, but several posts including that of president are wide open.



From (http://www.cjtf7.com/coalition-news/coalition-current-news/news040601d.htm)