Afghan oil news

[Doug Millison]

"The United States' new special envoy to Kabul once lobbied for the Taliban
and worked for an American oil company that sought concessions for
pipelines in Afghanistan. [...] his oil contacts are bound to raise
suspicions about both his priorities and those of the Bush administration.
At the NSC, Mr Khalilzad worked for the National Security Adviser,
Condoleezza Rice, who had served on the board of the Chevron Corporation as
an expert on another central Asian state with major oil reserves,
Kazakhstan.

President Bush and Vice-president Dick Cheney have extensive backgrounds in
the oil business, too, and it will not be lost on any of them that central
Asia has almost 40 per cent of the world's gas reserves and 6 per cent of
its oil reserves.

In addition, Mr Khalilzad has links to the most hawkish wing of the
administration. In the 1980s, he worked on Afghanistan alongside Paul
Wolfowitz, now the Deputy Secretary of Defence and an ardent advocate of
military action to depose Saddam Hussein in Iraq - a hardline view that has
also sometimes been voiced by Mr Khalilzhad. "

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=113662