With the headline "Halliburton and the strategic agreement with Iraq," the editorial said efforts by Iraq and the United States are focused on reaching a long-term strategic agreement. The agreement is to be signed between Washington and what the newspaper calls "the Iraqi government," which al-Basaer says presumably is supposed to represent the will of the Iraqi people.

It said the United States would achieve victory with the passage of the agreement, while the Iraqi government would be a toy to place Iraqi oil legitimately in U.S. hands for decades.

The newspaper said U.S. President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, as well as companies such as Halliburton and Chevron, will benefit from the agreement and not the people of either Iraq or the United States.

"These figures and companies put their own interests over those of their people, homeland and government and vainly try to make dirty deals for their own gains, even if that means stabilizing Iraq and humiliating their armies on the ground," it said.

A speech Bush gave in Germany recently in which he spoke of signing the long-term strategic agreement gave little reference to permanent military bases but everything else except the domination of Iraqi oil by Western oil companies. This, the paper said, was the main goal of the agreement.

The editorial claimed today it has become clear there is a contradiction between the interests of the oil companies and the interests of their peoples.

"The Iraqi resistance launches attacks against U.S. troops and corporations in Iraq, yet these parties are still present on the ground, signifying the contradiction that exists between the self-interested policies of the U.S. government and the oil companies and the people of the United States," the influential Sunni paper said.

As evidence of the greed of the oil companies and the carelessness they exhibit toward their people, the editorial said when the American people expressed their desire to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq and Congress took over politically administrating the war from Bush, Halliburton decided to renovate its headquarters in Dubai instead of giving it back to the people, it said.

"Dick Cheney, the main figure in Halliburton, would want to stay in his position in order to benefit from the instability of the U.S. government and its troops in Iraq. Yet, if the interests of the company clashed with that position, he would be more loyal to Halliburton than the American people," the newspaper said.

A conflict of interests between the United States and the oil companies deepened when their plans to gain control over Iraqi oil collapsed and failed, leading to enormous losses in the investments from the U.S. administration and private corporations, the editorial noted.

It said the U.S. government and the oil companies began thinking the occupation of Iraq and the domination of its oil was close to impossible, which was when the "screams" from the Democratic opposition became louder, enviously, against Halliburton for plundering war funds through its contracts with the U.S. Defense Department.

"Today, Dick Cheney's Halliburton and Condoleezza Rice's Chevron are waiting for the Iraqi Parliament to pass laws and take the decision to sign onto the long-term agreement with the United States and free Iraqi oil from state control and offer it up instead to investment by foreign companies," the Saudi-based paper said.

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