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WASHINGTON - If I had the power to summon all 16 of the people running for president to be in one place, I would want them in a Senate hearing room for a session that is taking place this morning.

The hearing has been arranged by Kent Conrad of North Dakota, the Democratic chairman of the Budget Committee, and Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the Republican ranking member.

They have invited David Walker, the comptroller general of the United States and the head of the Government Accountability Office, an arm of Congress; William Novelli, the head of AARP, the senior citizens lobby; Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the House majority leader; and Leon Panetta, the former White House chief of staff, budget director and former congressman.

What brings all these worthies together is an effort to revive the idea of a bipartisan effort to head off the bankrupting of America by runaway entitlement programs.

They and others, including Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, clearly see that unless ways are found to reform the financing and benefits of Social Security and Medicare, the demands imposed by the retirement of millions of baby boomers will consume the federal budget and blight the prospects of the next generations.

Because neither party can solve this problem by itself, Conrad and Gregg have proposed the creation of a bipartisan task force, whose recommendations to the president and Congress chosen next November would be guaranteed quick consideration.

The idea was greeted favorably by leaders of both parties in the Senate, and Paulson found support for it in the White House. But it has encountered criticism from the opposing flanks. Vice President Cheney objected publicly to any consideration of tax increases, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi threw cold water on the idea. Apparently, she does not trust the administration to deal fairly or she may want the Social Security issue saved for Democrats in the coming campaign.

So Conrad and Gregg backed off and decided to begin again - making the case, through expert testimony, that a policy of inaction, looking the other way, is dangerous to the country’s fiscal health.

As Gregg has noted, the first of the baby boomers filed for Social Security benefits this year - and millions more will soon follow. By most official estimates, Medicare and Social Security by 2034 will eat up 20 percent of the gross domestic product - equivalent to the entire federal budget of today.

To Gregg, that flashes a clear warning that “the next president, if he or she serves eight years, will find themselves in very dangerous waters. There is no way to support this system as it is constituted.”

Conrad, who says he inherited a fear of debt from his Depression-era ancestors in North Dakota, said he laments that the government has added $500 billion to the national debt this year, just as those boomers are starting to retire. “You see the dollar going down, and interest rates going up,” he said. “And there’s more to come.”

Neither man expects a quick fix - but both insist that delay is the most costly and wasteful strategy. The task-force idea that they developed during a congressional trip to South America this past winter is an effort to assure all parties a voice - and a fair process.

It would have 16 members, equally balanced between Republicans and Democrats. Fourteen would be members of Congress, chosen by the leadership and presumably representing the major economic policy committees. Two would be from the administration, with one of them, the secretary of treasury, serving as chairman.

It would take 12 of the 16 votes to submit a report - guaranteeing each party a voice in the outcome. And the report would be translated into bill form and given a fast track to a final vote in both the House and Senate, with a requirement of 60-percent support for it to go to the president - again, protection for the minority.

Despite all these safeguards, neither Cheney nor Pelosi is satisfied, and without their backing, its prospects seem dim. But the issue will haunt the next president - unless at least the first steps to deal with it are taken now.

That is why those candidates ought to be at this hearing.

David S. Broder’s column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is davidbroder@washpost.com

WAILUKU, Hawaii - A California man bitten in the leg by a shark off Maui said he feared the shark was going come back for more.

Aaron Finley, 32, said he felt something hit his left leg very hard while he was swimming about 30 feet off Wailea beach, a popular swimming area.

“It was like a hard bump. Not a buzz saw or anything like that,” the sound engineer from West Hollywood said Tuesday from his bed at Maui Memorial Medical Center.

He then saw a gray head turn and swim away and realized it was a shark.

“I was worried he would come back for me,” Finley said, adding he focused on getting back to shore for help.

The shark bit Finley’s left calf, leaving a wound stretching from the front of his leg halfway to the back. He also sustained a puncture wound above his left knee.

Finley’s doctor, Peter Galpin, said the shark quickly let go after taking a bite.

County and state officials closed Wailea Beach after the attack Monday afternoon. They reopened the area Tuesday after an aerial check showed no signs of sharks, officials said.

Finley’s fiance, Megan Tharpe, and her family had been watching him from the beach but they didn’t realize anything was wrong until he swam closer to shore calling for help.

Family members said employees from the Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea, Chris Hoffman and Manny Zaragoza, ran into the water to assist Finley.

British politics were dominated for three decades by the strong personalities of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, the faces of Conservative and Labor governments from 1979 until 2007. Totally different in approach and style, they dominated their parties with their personal political skills.

They confounded the theory that under a parliamentary system, policies and performance, not personality, should drive debates and elections.

Don’t bother telling that to Gordon Brown. The new British prime minister, selected by Labor this summer when Blair stepped down, had one of the briefest honeymoons on record. I watched it implode during a recent visit to Britain. He is reeling under attacks from opposition parties, a hostile media and an unexpectedly aggressive independence movement in Scotland.

Brown started strong, his government handling a banking crisis, terrorist incidents in London and Glasgow, and in general looking like the no-nonsense Scot who had earned respect as Blair’s chancellor of the exchequer.

He was riding high, buoyed by polls, and at Labor’s annual conference in September his backers widely talked of a “snap election,” a hastily called national vote to elect a new Parliament and (hopefully) give Brown a personal mandate. He must hold an election by 2010, but under the parliamentary system he can call it at any time, or be forced to call it by losing a vote of confidence in Parliament.

Had Brown lost a snap vote, he would have become the shortest-serving prime minister in British history. For someone who had waited 10 years for his opportunity and who seems naturally cautious, it was a chance too far. He dithered, procrastinated, and allowed Conservatives to steal the spotlight with their own annual conference and a strong television performance by leader David Cameron.

Cameron epitomizes the politics of today’s media. His background is in public relations, his skills are those of presentation (he delivered his conference speech without notes) and understanding today’s 24-hour news cycle. At first, he urged Brown to call the snap vote, although Brown had the upper hand. But when Cameron’s conference appearance produced a bounce in the polls (Conservatives 43 percent, Labor 36, Liberal Democrats 14), he went on offense, taunting Brown and forcing him to back down from a fall vote.

If that weren’t sufficiently embarrassing, Brown tripped over an old British land mine, the European Union. Britain has always been divided on the EU, and still refuses to adopt the euro as its currency. Labor, under Blair but with Brown on board, promised in 2005 to call a national referendum on the proposed EU Constitution. But, rejection by French and Dutch voters made a British vote unnecessary.

This year, however, EU leaders proposed a “treaty” similar to the defeated constitution, and Brown’s opponents and most of the British media pushed him to honor Labor’s 2005 pledge. Cameron, urged on by Rupert Murdoch’s The Sun, the biggest tabloid in the country, clamored for a vote. But, Brown met other EU leaders in mid-October and agreed to the treaty without calling a referendum, which might have rejected the treaty.

Brown’s decision found little media or public support, brought grumbling in his own party, and left him looking indecisive and defensive. Compared to the nimble Tony Blair, Brown looked dogged, determined but dull, marshaling complex arguments while his critics were trashing his image.

The ascent of the Scottish National Party to control of Scotland’s semi-independent government in May brought its separatist crusade to the fore, and forced Brown to emphasize his “Britishness” over his “Scottishness.” If Scotland were to secede, Labor would lose its most reliable voter base, including Brown’s own constituency in Fife. Separation, unlikely now, would advance if Tories return to power in Parliament.

Speaking to the Labor conference, he used the terms “British” or “Britain” 74 times. Now he’s in a wedge between his Scottish heritage and voters and Conservative anti-Scot “Little Englanders” to the south, with plenty of parochialism on both sides.

Hoping to benefit from the pile-on, Liberal Democrats, Britain’s perpetual third party, drove into retirement its respected 66-year-old leader, Menzies Campbell (another Scot), who unfortunately looked his age on television. The search for his replacement features two young men who look a lot like David Cameron and a lot unlike Gordon Brown.

Watching this develop, I felt for this dour Scot, so in need of charisma to combat the creations of 21st-century media. We’ve exported sound-bite politics to the world, something I’m not sure it needed. Brown may eventually prevail, but there’s sure to be a young Blair-Cameron waiting in the wings.Floyd J. McKay, a journalism professor emeritus at Western Washington University, is a regular contributor to Times editorial pages. E-mail him at floydmckay@yahoo.com

Editor’s note: The Travel Troubleshooter is a new Seattle Times online feature by syndicated columnist Christopher Elliott.

Question: I know this is very last minute, but any assistance you can give would be of great help. My mother is booked on the Norwegian Cruise Line’s Pride of Hawaii. She’s scheduled to fly from Philadelphia to Honolulu with her sister and niece tomorrow.

Today we found out that her sister and niece will be flying on an entirely different airline. My mother is on United Airlines and her sister and caretaker are on Delta Air Lines.

My mother is 74 years old and has glaucoma and other medical problems, which require her to travel with someone. Although she has a separate room from her sister, the booking arrangements were done together so they could travel together.

My mother is extremely upset. She’s in tears and literally has gotten sick over this news. I have tried to talk with Norwegian, but they told me to deal with my travel agency. When I called my agency, they told me there is nothing they could do to help. Is there anything you can do?

Lawrence Dean Parrish, Sewell, N.J.

Answer: If your travel agent booked your cruise and air together, then your mother, aunt and cousin should have been on the same flight.

When your agent made the reservation, a “travel with” flag that notifies the airline you’re traveling together should have been raised in the reservations system. That doesn’t necessarily guarantee you’ll be offered the same itinerary when a flight changes, but it’s the only way to let your airline and cruise line know that the reservations are linked.

Without the flag, it’s impossible to tell that you’re traveling together. So when a flight schedule changes, your entire itinerary can come unraveled.

I checked with NCL, and it appears the flag wasn’t on your reservation. The cruise line turned you over to your travel agent, whose responsibility it was to make the notation. But your agent appears to have been either unwilling or unable to help fix your mother’s flights.

I think hiring a travel agent for this cruise was a great idea. You didn’t want to try to book this important vacation by yourself. I just finished mediating a heartbreaking case involving someone who self-booked a complex itinerary and was basically left stranded at the airport after one of his flights arrived late. A competent agent wouldn’t have let that happen.

There are a lot of terrific travel agents, but none of them are perfect. When mistakes are made, you should expect the agent, who took a sizable commission from this cruise booking, to step up and do whatever it takes to make things right. Otherwise, why bother hiring a professional?

I’m a little puzzled by your mother’s choice of vacation. If she has serious health problems, why would she want to fly nearly 5,000 miles and then get on a cruise ship? She might have been just as happy - and perhaps happier - to take a cruise from Philadelphia. NCL offers one to Bermuda that might have been perfect.

I would consider having a little chat with your travel agent. What happened to her might have been an honest misunderstanding, or you might be working with the wrong agent. I think it’s important to figure that out before buying your next cruise.

After I contacted NCL, it did its best to change your mother’s flight. It managed to fix her return trip, but unfortunately, she still had to fly to the islands on her own.

Christopher Elliott is the ombudsman for National Geographic Traveler magazine. E-mail him at celliott@ngs.org

The nation’s largest urban car-sharing company, Cambridge, Mass.-based Zipcar, is absorbing Seattle-based Flexcar in a move that could hasten the spread of a business whose rapid growth relies on lifestyle marketing as much as its promise to save people money.

Executives said Tuesday the two will combine by week’s end to create a company three times the size of Flexcar, with more than 5,000 vehicles and 180,000 subscribers in 48 cities. Terms of the merger were not disclosed.

The merged company will keep the Zipcar name and headquarters.

Zipcar’s chief executive, former Seattle-based Boeing engineer Scott Griffith, will be chairman and CEO. Flexcar CEO Mark Norman becomes president and chief operating officer.

The two companies have “pioneered a very interesting big idea,” said Griffith. “This deal accelerates that big idea into the mainstream.”

The idea is that people who only occasionally need a car pay a membership fee to have access to cars positioned at fixed locations, typically around downtown or a university campus.

Cars can be reserved online in advance and are dropped off at the pickup location after use.

Members typically may use mass transit for work commutes, yet have access to a car when needed without the investment in buying, owning and maintaining their own vehicle.

Flexcar users in Seattle pay an annual $35 membership fee, then have access to cars at a rate of $10 an hour.

Griffith said surveys of its members indicate they save about $5,000 per year by using Flexcar rather than owning a vehicle.

The companies also market themselves as environmentally responsible, by making mass transit a viable option most of the time and reducing unnecessary car trips. Flexcar has 89 hybrid vehicles in its 350-car Seattle fleet.

“More and more people are interested in a sustainable lifestyle and also a hassle-free lifestyle,” Griffith said. “We really see it as a lifestyle choice for urban dwellers.”

Flexcar’s Norman said the business model for both companies - each private and founded in 1999 - has already proved profitable in their more established markets.

But overall corporate profitability has been pushed out, he said, because both have “invested aggressively in growth,” producing “double- and triple-digit” increases in revenue and membership.

“New markets … take a little while to get ramped up and profitable,” Norman said. He would not disclose the firms’ revenues.

Griffith said Zipcar has grown more than 100 percent for the last three years running. He estimates the potential membership in North America at between 1.5 million and 2 million, compared with a total car-sharing membership base of about 200,000 today.

Flexcar - which started in Seattle and has more than 20,000 members here - has been controlled since 2005 by Revolution, an investment firm owned by ex-AOL Chairman Steve Case.

Some jobs may be lost in Seattle as the headquarters moves to the Boston area.

“As with any merger, there will be some impacts to the staff,” said Flexcar spokesman John Williams. “Flexcar will be communicating those changes directly with its employees. Seattle … will be a significant focus for the company going forward.”

Flexcar is strongest on the West Coast. Zipcar operates mostly in the East, as well as in London, Vancouver, B.C., and Toronto.

In two overlapping markets, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., the combined fleets will offer more cars and more locations to members.

“When we acquired Flexcar in 2005, our goal was to bring car sharing to more people in more places,” Case said in a statement. “The Zipcar merger will accelerate this effort.”

The merged company will use the Zipcar technology, which provides smartcards for unlocking the cars, as well as mobile access to the reservation system via cellphones and BlackBerrys.

Once the companies’ systems are integrated, members who travel to other cities with the service will have seamless access to the combined network of vehicles. Griffith said the integration will be complete by the middle of next year.

Griffith said Zipcar likely won’t spend huge amounts on a rebranding campaign in Flexcar cities like Seattle.

Instead it will rely on word of mouth for continued growth, as well as targeted contracts with universities and big companies to provide service to students and employees on campus.

The University of Washington and the Starbucks headquarters in Sodo are already Flexcar sites, and the company is in talks with Microsoft.

Griffith said the merger deal is not subject to federal antitrust review because the value of the acquired company, Flexcar, “falls below the threshold for filing.”

Susan Shaheen, transportation research director with the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, said U-Haul has begun a pilot car-sharing program and that Hertz and Enterprise are looking at options.

“With the entrance of U-Haul and more daily-rental approaches by the rental-car companies, there’s always an opportunity for those organizations to more aggressively enter this space,” said Shaheen.

She considers the merger a strategic alliance in the face of such potential competition from traditional car-rental companies.

But Norman sees such possibilities only as validating the car-sharing concept rather than threatening competition. He sees car sharing as competing head-to-head only with car ownership.

“That’s our competitor: the car that is paid for seven days a week and used for three or four,” said Norman. “That kind of waste is a crying shame for consumers with affordability issues living downtown in our most desirable cities, like Seattle.”

Dominic Gates: 206-464-2963 or dgates@seattletimes.com

KATWE, Uganda - Julius Mutwalhughuma’s job is eating him alive.

Three times a week for the past 20 years, Mutwalhughuma has waded into Uganda’s Lake Katwe in search of rock salt, which he sells to traders from Uganda, Congo and Rwanda.

He keeps at it even though the lake’s highly concentrated, corrosive saltwater has eaten away at his skin, leaving scars and open sores. After a spell in the water, his pockmarked legs sparkle with salt granules.

The scars heal but they itch, and when he scratches, the wounds reopen, said Mutwalhughuma, 64. “It is very painful.”

On a continent where more than 300 million live in extreme poverty, the poorest have little choice about how they make their living - whether in the lake, or toiling deep in gold mines despite the risk of rock falls, or breathing poisonous pesticides on flower farms and rubber plantations.

The chemicals in Lake Katwe are clearly unhealthy, experts say. The government has not acted on requests to study the risks.

“No studies have been done because these people are voiceless,” says Dr. Assay Ndizihiwe, a senior government health official who has worked in Katwe. “These chemicals are clearly corrosive to skin, causing scarring and nerve damage, and it’s very likely they have other effects we don’t yet know about.”

Mutwalhughuma is among 3,000 people who work at Lake Katwe, earning around $2 per 220-pound haul of rock salt. In an average week, each might harvest 15 sacks - meaning about four times the dollar-a-day average earned by 39 percent of Ugandans.

But the physical price is high, and the protection is primitive.

The miners glue paper over open wounds. They wade into the water wearing condoms and with their legs wrapped in tire tubes.

Health experts say these offer little protection.

While the men collect the rock salt, women work knee-deep in man-made pools on the shores. These salt pans, carved into neat squares, produce granular salt harvested once every four days from the bottom of the pools. A day’s labor pays 60 cents.

The women also suffer lesions, and coat themselves in cassava paste, believing - not on the basis of any medical evidence - that the water causes infertility.

“If I work in deep water, it enters my uterus and I feel pain,” says Valeria Masika, Mutwalhughuma’s wife.

Francis Kayanja, chief clinical officer at Katwe’s health center, estimates that at least 10 percent of patients who come there are ill from working in Katwe’s waters.

But there aren’t many alternatives for the 10,000 people living by the lake. The earth yields few crops. Nearby is another lake, less salty, but it has few fish.

Salt has been harvested from Katwe for over 500 years and the methods have not changed.

“The water is poisonous to us, but how can anyone refuse to go down there? What will we eat?” said Harriet Birungi. Aged 30, she has worked in the salt pans for half her life to support her five children. “It’s very tiring work because we are bent all day. The back hurts, the ribs hurt and there are wounds as well.”

Her 13-year-old daughter, on vacation from school, has been working in the salt pan for one week and already has pink circular wounds on her legs.

Fees paid by the salt miners go toward health care and schooling for the lakeside people, but there isn’t enough to buy protective clothing, local officials say.

So for the thousands who rely on the lake for their income, poor health is a fact of life.

“I never knew the risks. I just came to work here because I knew I could make some money,” says Mutwalhughuma. “If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t have come.”

ASSYAN, Iraq — Jebel Semroot is a dusty heap of rocks plowed and grazed by tough farmers and tougher goats. But this hill surrounding the village of Assyan, where Dallas-based Hunt Oil Co. hopes to drill next year, could have hundreds of millions of barrels of oil trapped beneath it.

Chief Executive Ray Hunt flew to Iraq in September to sign an exploration agreement covering Jebel Semroot with Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government.

Trouble is, Jebel Semroot isn’t in Kurdish territory. If Hunt Oil drills in these rocks, the company will be helping the Kurds absorb lands in Nineveh province that were historically Kurdish but are still claimed by Iraq’s Arab Sunnis.

The deal has already drawn a warning from a group of Sunni clerics who sympathize with insurgents battling U.S. and Iraqi forces.

“Those involved in such contracts will pay the price sooner or later,” warned the Association of Muslim Scholars.

While reining in their ambitions just short of independence, the Kurds are moving to expand their territory, take charge of their oil and insulate themselves in a hostile neighborhood. They are looking to Hunt Oil and other investors to help them get free of the violence and political paralysis of Baghdad. And they want to do it before U.S. troops leave Iraq.

Kurdish leaders are pushing before year’s end to add the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and other disputed regions like northern Nineveh to the three provinces of the Kurdistan Regional Government in the essentially autonomous region.

They lobbied successfully for a U.S. Senate resolution in October that says Iraq’s regions should be self-governing, with Baghdad in charge of little more than foreign policy and national security.

They are wooing foreign businesses with tax holidays and other incentives. They have attracted oil companies from France, Norway, Turkey and Canada with exploration deals worth more than $500 million.

And they’ve granted an oil concession to Hunt Oil, a U.S. company close to the White House, in territory that is not officially theirs.

Kurdish leaders say they realize that independence would fracture Iraq and alarm neighboring countries. They say autonomy, however, could point the way to a “soft partition” of Iraq that would give each of the country’s three main ethnic groups (Kurds, Arab Sunnis and Shiites) enough self-determination to live together without civil war.

Baghdad and the Bush administration prefer a stronger central government. State Department officials say the Hunt deal faces legal uncertainties over whether regional or national oil legislation should prevail — even though a national oil law has yet to be enacted.

The officials also say the deal could undermine the Iraqi government and possibly provoke more violence over the loss of oil-rich territories that Arab Sunnis regard as theirs. Another fear among U.S. analysts is that autonomy among Iraq’s main ethnic and religious groups would lead to an oil-rich Shiite state in the south that would become a satellite of Iran.

Many, including officials with other oil companies in Iraq, find it hard to believe that President Bush and Ray Hunt, a longtime supporter, did not talk about this deal before it was signed, or that the Kurdistan Regional Government chose to award a concession to the U.S. company without paying much attention to its political connections with the White House.

Hunt is a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.

Bush said at a news conference that the Hunt Oil deal in Iraq was a complete surprise. Hunt said he has not talked about it with Bush or anyone else in the U.S. government, either before it was signed Sept. 8 or since.

Hunt said he could not discuss the work of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, adding that the information used by the company in deciding to explore for oil in Iraq was “100 percent in the public domain.”

Companies helping the Kurds look for oil will now play an important role in Kurdish foreign policy. They could win the Kurds allies in getting their oil out to world markets. They could also gain protection for the Kurds from neighbors like Turkey angered by Kurdish guerrillas and Kurdish steps toward economic and political independence.

“If people want Iraq to stay united, this is the way to go,” said Falah Bashir, director of foreign relations with the Kurdistan Regional Government. “We need an opportunity to open up to the outside world, not to have all the power in Baghdad.”

Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani has called the Hunt Oil contract “illegal” and said any oil found in such deals could not be exported. He has championed a dominant role in the development of Iraq’s oil reserves for the national oil company, with foreign companies kept on the periphery.

Iraq has more oil than all but two or three other countries in the world. The three provinces that make up the Kurdistan Regional Government, however, have only about 1 percent of the country’s proven reserves. If the Kurds can add the super-giant Kirkuk field and other prospective areas like Jebel Semroot, Kurdistan could start to look like Libya, Nigeria or even Russia.

Other companies drilling for oil in Kurdish provinces have already found healthy fields. DNO, a Norwegian company, has developed a field called Tawke in far northern Iraq near the borders of Turkey and Syria that Ashti Hawrami, Kurdistan’s minister of natural resources, estimates could produce 50,000 barrels a day next year.

A larger field called Taq Taq — jointly owned by Genel Enerji of Turkey and Addax Petroleum International of Canada — contains 2 billion barrels of high-quality oil and might produce as much as 330,000 barrels a day by the end of 2008.

The Taq Taq field was initially discovered when Saddam Hussein was in power. As his forces retreated from the region under the U.S. no-fly zone, they seeded the area with land mines to keep the Kurds from developing it.

The Taq Taq and Tawke fields are both within the three Kurdish provinces that constitute the Kurdish Regional Government.

The 800-square-kilometer Hunt Oil exploration block is another matter.

Saddam kicked the Kurdish farmers and herders of Assyan off Jebel Semroot in the 1970s and 1980s as part of his Arabization campaign.

When Saddam’s forces retreated to the south, Assyan’s former residents moved back. Jebel Semroot was on the Green Line separating Kurdish and Iraqi forces, and parts of the hill are still covered in landmines, Assyan residents say.

It’s not the first time that Hunt Oil has faced competing sovereignty claims in the Middle East. The company discovered oil in Yemen in 1985 after signing an exploration contract with the government of Yemen. But then Ray Hunt received a letter from Saudi Arabia claiming that the discovery had been made on land controlled by Saudi Arabia. Hunt Oil ultimately prevailed and the discovery was acknowledged to be in Yemen.

Hunt said he went to Baghdad on two or three occasions during Saddam’s rule to look into exploration deals there. All of Hunt’s visits to Iraq occurred during the time that Iraq was at war with Iran and when U.S. policy tilted toward Iraq to keep Iran from winning. Hunt said the discussions abruptly stopped when Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990.

The Kurds have waited years for a new federal oil law. Hawrami sees a power play under way by the federal Oil Ministry, which has tried to monopolize Iraq’s oil industry for the Iraqi National Oil Company and exclude foreign oil companies from production-sharing agreements.

As drafts of the agreed compromise legislation changed under the Oil Ministry’s influence, the Kurds began writing their own oil legislation, which was approved by the Kurdistan National Assembly in August.

Hawrami said the Kurdish law recognizes the revenue-sharing arrangement between Kurdistan and Baghdad, which gives 17 percent of national oil revenues to Kurdistan and the rest to Baghdad to be divided as other Iraqi politicians see fit.

Getting the oil from Kurdistan to world markets won’t be easy. Two pipelines connect the giant Kirkuk field with Turkey’s large Ceyhan oil terminal on the Mediterranean Sea. The lines have the capacity to export 1.6 million barrels of oil a day, but hundreds of sabotage attacks by Iraqi insurgents have stopped flows for most of the past four years.

WEXFORD, Pa. - It’s the deal of a lifetime.

Bob and Ricki Husick of Pittsburgh are offering anyone who buys their home a full refund when they die.

The Husicks have been trying to sell their suburban home for almost a year, but have failed to do so in the current shaky market.

Some area homeowners have lowered prices, offered free trips and tried a variety of other gimmicks, but the Husicks came up with their own unique incentive.

The couple have no heirs and built the house in 1993. They want $399,900 for the four-bedroom, 3 1/2-bath home, which is located about 20 miles north of Pittsburgh.

Under the Husicks’ offer, the buyer would get the sale price back when they die.

Wait, there’s more: If the buyer agrees to care for the couple in old age, he could also inherit their retirement home in Arizona.

“Why not go for the works? So if we’re worth $2.5 million, you get it all,” said Husick, 55.

WASHINGTON - The State Department promised Blackwater USA bodyguards immunity from prosecution in its investigation of last month’s deadly shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians, three senior law-enforcement officials say.

The immunity deal has delayed a criminal inquiry into the Sept. 16 killings and could undermine any effort to prosecute security contractors for their role in the incident that has infuriated the Iraqi government.

“Once you give immunity, you can’t take it away,” said a senior law-enforcement official familiar with the investigation.

It’s not clear why investigators would make such a move, or who authorized doing so.

State Department officials declined to confirm or deny that immunity had been granted. One official - who refused to be quoted by name - said: “If, in fact, such a decision was made, it was done without any input or authorization from any senior State Department official in Washington.”

Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd and FBI spokesman Rich Kolko also declined to comment.

FBI agents in Baghdad have been trying to collect evidence in the Sept. 16 embassy convoy shooting without using statements from Blackwater employees who were given immunity.

The senior law-enforcement officials, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said all the Blackwater bodyguards involved in the incident - both in the vehicle convoy and in at least two helicopters above - were given the legal protection as investigators from the Bureau of Diplomatic Security sought to find out what happened. The bureau is an arm of the State Department.

Government officials who spoke to The New York Times - also on condition of anonymity - said the investigators offered the immunity grants even though they did not have the authority to do so, the newspaper reported on its Web site. Prosecutors at the Justice Department, who do have such authority, had no advance knowledge of the arrangement, those officials added.

Iraq is demanding the right to launch its own prosecution of the Blackwater bodyguards.

The company has said its convoy was under attack before it opened fire in west Baghdad’s Nisoor Square, killing 17 Iraqis. A follow-up investigation by the Iraqi government, however, concluded that Blackwater’s men were unprovoked. No witnesses have been found to contradict that finding.

An initial incident report by U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in Iraq, also indicated “no enemy activity” was involved. The report says Blackwater guards were traveling against the flow of traffic through a traffic circle when they “engaged five civilian vehicles with small-arms fire” at a distance of 50 meters.

The FBI took over the case early this month, officials said, after prosecutors in the Justice Department’s criminal division realized they could not bring charges against Blackwater guards based on their statements to the Diplomatic Security investigators.

Officials said the Blackwater bodyguards spoke only after receiving so-called “Garrity” protections, requiring that their statements only be used internally - and not for criminal prosecutions.

Garrity protections generally are given to police or other public law-enforcement officers, and were extended to the Blackwater guards because they were working on behalf of the U.S. government, one official said. Experts said it’s rare for them to be given to all or even most witnesses.

“You have to be careful,” said Michael Horowitz, a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan and senior Justice Department official. “You have to understand early on who your serious subjects are in the investigation, and avoid giving these people the protections.”

The FBI has re-interviewed some of the Blackwater employees, and one official said Monday that at least several of them have declined to answer questions, citing their constitutional right to avoid self-incrimination. Any new incriminating statements that the guards give to the FBI could be used to bring criminal charges.

If prosecutors do bring charges, they will have to prove that any evidence they include was uncovered without using the guards’ statements to State Department investigators. They “have to show we got the information independently,” one official said.

Bureau of Diplomatic Security chief Richard Griffin last week announced his resignation, effective Thursday. Senior State Department officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, have said his departure was directly related to his oversight of Blackwater contractors.

Last week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ordered a series of measures to boost government oversight of the private guards who protect American diplomats in Iraq. They include increased monitoring and explicit rules on when and how they can use deadly force.

Blackwater’s contract with the State Department expires in May and there are questions whether it will remain as the primary contractor for diplomatic bodyguards. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said his Cabinet is drafting legislation that would force the State Department to replace Blackwater with another security company.

Congress also is expected to investigate the shootings, but a House watchdog committee said it has so far held off, based on a Justice Department request that lawmakers wait until the FBI concludes its inquiry.

Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this story.

A Kirkland man who was killed during a Halloween party near Mill Creek last weekend was trying to break up a fight when he was fatally shot, according to Snohomish County sheriff’s deputies.

Christopher Chandler, 18, was driving away from the Mill Creek-area house party in the 3500 block of 164th Street Southeast early Sunday when he saw several people fighting, according to Snohomish County sheriff’s deputies.

According to Chandler’s aunt, Mary Chandler, the Kirkland man stopped his car and was coming to the aid of a friend who was involved in the fight.

Chandler was confronted at gunpoint by an Ellensburg man who was attending the party, according to the sheriff’s office report. Chandler and the man began to fight, the report said. As the Ellensburg man fell to the ground he fired a gunshot that struck Chandler, according to the sheriff’s office. Deputies found the Kirkland man dead on the sidewalk.

Sheriff’s Office Chief David Bales said detectives are unsure whether the two men knew each other or what sparked the fight.

“There were 30 to 40 witnesses; I don’t know how many actual statements we have gotten,” Bales said. “Whenever you have that many witnesses to an event stories are going to vary.”

The 22-year-old Ellensburg man was arrested outside the house party. Sheriff’s investigators said he had minor injuries on his face and what appeared to be blood stains on his T-shirt, the report said. Deputies found a semi-automatic handgun on the living room couch and live ammunition nearby, the report said.

The suspect was booked into the Snohomish County Jail for investigation of second-degree murder. Bail was set Monday at $500,000. The Seattle Times generally does not name suspects until they have been charged with a crime.

The suspect is a sophomore at Central Washington University and doesn’t have a felony record.

Chandler had been attending Lake Washington Technical College and earning his high school equivalency certificate. His family said he wanted someday to become an electrical engineer.

“He was just a good kid,” said Mary Chandler, of Bothell. “He would go over to grandma’s house and take out her garbage, mop her floor and help her do whatever needed to be done.”

Chandler had worked as a dining room server at Madison House Retirement Community in Kirkland since March 2006. “He was just very charming with the residents. He was very attentive to their needs and considerate,” said Diane Umayam, general manager at Madison House. “We will miss him immensely.”

Seattle Times news researcher Miyoko Wolf contributed to this report.

Jennifer Sullivan: 206-464-8294 or jensullivan@seattletimes.com