Tour de Baghdad

Started early today, at 8am, which was a good move as everything shuts down by about 2pm. Met with the Communist party and had visited Al-Da'wa and the Kurdish Islamic Party (who were charming hosts) to fix proper meetings when their chief ponchos were back in town - it's frustrating because everyone seems to have left Baghdad as I've arrived! My two best contacts, Adnan Pachachi and Sinan Al Shabibi are apparently both out of town for a couple of weeks, and I'd hoped to get introduction from them to all the other key parties and individuals. Hey-ho. Blagged my way into the Central bank and a freindly British lady from the CPA agreed to arrange for me to meet with a group of the politicians en masse to more efficiently arrange individual interviews. Hopefully that'll work out, but I'm going to keep driving around knocking on doors. It's bizarre that many of the main political parties in Iraq are currently inhabiting pretty derilict buildings that belonged to the Ba'ath regime and were looted in April and then taken over my whichever political group got to them first.

Some Iraqi students have suggested, and agreed to help organise, a public meeting in the main conference centre on Sunday in order to give many smaller groups a chance to air their views on the debt. I fixed to get some business cards printed ($5 for 200) but the resulting cards gave my email as "jubikeirag.org" so back to the drawing board.

Got in a bit of sightseeing as we drove about: passed by the nuclear plant which was bombed by the Israelis in 1982. Worryingly it's about 100 yards from my friend Hatham's family farm - though he seems to be fine! Also sped past the British 1st World War cemetary, the ammo dump that blew up (back in April I think), the famous Iran-Iraq war memorial of gigantic swords crossed over the highway... in fact buzzed all over Baghdad. Sadly not many of the sites are flat and so not that photo genenic, or have nervous troops standing nearby, hence I haven't been snapping much. Here's a pile of photos I took yestarday for my hotel's manager who's bought a old looted casino which he's converting into a car showroom, and wanted to send some photos to a potential investor. A couple of nice views of the river.

I think i'm becoming Iraqi now as i lost track of time and missed an appointment with someone by about 45mins - but it turned out fine as he was late too. I'm also getting so used to powercuts that last night i carried on eating my dinner in the pitch dark!

Mum - I've tried to phone the last few evenings but my satalite phone is dreadful and never seems to connect - but everything is fine, so don't worry.