bilateral treaty on behalf of a state. Galbraith also led the UNTAET/East Timor negotiating team during eighteen months of negotiations with Indonesia aimed at normalizing relations and resolving issues arising from the end of the Indonesian occupation. As a Cabinet member, he wrote the regulations that created East Timor's National Parks and Endangered Species Law. Involvement in Iraq's constitutional process From 2003 to 2005, Iraq was involved in a number of negotiations to draft an interim and then a permanent constitution. In that context, Galbraith advised both the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the two main Kurdish parties of Iraq, particularly with a view to encouraging the emergence of a strongly decentralized state. Galbraith later wrote that he had urged Kurdish leaders to take a stronger position in negotiations, suggesting that "'The Constitution should state that the Constitution of Kurdistan, and laws made pursuant to the Constitution, is the supreme law of Kurdistan.'" Galbraith later wrote that his ideas on federalism "eventually became the basis of Kurdistan's proposals for an Iraq constitution". Galbraith favors the independence – legal or de facto – of the northern region of Iraq known as Iraqi Kurdistan. Galbraith argues that Iraq has broken into three parts (Kurd, Shiite Arab, and Sunni Arab), that there is no possibility of uniting the country, and that the U.S.'s "main error" in Iraq has been its attempt to maintain Iraq as a single entity. He has advocated for a three-part "partition" of Iraq to reflect this situation, writing, "Let's face it: partition is a better outcome than a Sunni-Shiite civil war." Outside of Kurdistan, which favors its own independence, these ideas are considered offensive to the nationalist feelings of many Iraqis. Oil controversy After leaving the U.S. government in 2003, Galbraith set up a consulting firm that provided negotiating and other services to governmental and corporate clients. In 2009, an investigation by the Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv found that Galbraith had been given a large financial stake in DNO, a Norwegian oil company engaged in exploring oil reserves in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, in the spring of 2004. As a result of the provisions Galbraith had helped the Kurds win in constitutional negotiations, which gave the Kurds control over Kurdish oil revenues, Galbraith's stake in DNO had increased greatly in value. At the time of the negotiations, Galbraith had described himself as