Iran to sell electricity to Iraq: state media

News, August 2003, www.aljazeerah.info

(AFP), Khaleej Times

31 August 2003

TEHERAN - Iran is to sell electricity from Mehran and Dehloran, two border cities in its western Ilam province to the eastern Iraqi provinces of Wasset and Meysan, state media reported here on Sunday.

“Based on discussions between officials from the two countries, the electricity network of Mehran and Dehloran will be connected to that of the two neighboring Iraqi provinces Wasset and Meysan,” the Mehran city governor, Morteza Lotfi was quoted as saying by official news agency IRNA. No further details were given.

On August 27, Muwaffak al-Rubai, a member of Iraq’s interim Governing Council, said Iraq was negotiating the purchase of electricity from Iran, Syria and Turkey in an effort to stem growing power shortages since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Rubai said talks Turkey were in an advanced stage, those with Syria were moving ahead and that Iran would supply power to Iraq’s predominately Shiite Muslim southern provinces. The US-led coalition imposed in late July a power rationing program which supplies electricity every three hours followed by a similar period of cuts.

Iraq’s current power production capacity is 3,200 megawatts compared with 4,000 megawatts before the start of the war in March, according to one coalition official.

Iraq’s maximum potential capacity is 6,000 megawatts, the same source said.

Iraq’s power sector needs a five-billion-dollar investment over five years to meet the country’s needs, Iraq’s US-appointed overseer Paul Bremer said at the start of July.

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

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