Hussain al-Shahristani, deputy prime minister and oil minister of Iraq, will deliver the next IISS Oberoi Lecture in Mumbai on August 14.
Hussain al-Shahristani will speak on ?Recent Trends in the Global Energy Economy? and Iraq?s readiness to sell more oil to India. External affairs minister Salman Khurshid had called on al-Shahristani in Baghdad last month to explore this possibility.
Al-Shahristani, who has been deputy chairman of Iraqi National Assembly and head of the Iraqi National Academy of Sciences, spent more than a decade (1979-1991) as a political prisoner in the infamous Abu Ghraib prison under Saddam Hussein’s regime due to his refusal to help build an atomic weapon. He escaped during a bombing raid on Baghdad during the First Gulf War and fled to Iran, where he served as head of the Gulf War Victims Organisation from 1991 to 1995.
Al-Shahristani will be in Mumbai as a guest of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).
