WASHINGTON - A U.S. citizen was kidnapped in Iraq on Monday along with three Romanian journalists, the U.S. State Department has said.
"We can confirm that an American citizen was taken along with the three Romanian journalists kidnapped in Iraq on Monday," said State Department spokesman Steve Pike, declining to provide further information.
The three Romanians were shown in a video broadcast by Arabic satellite television Al Jazeera on Wednesday with guns pointed at their heads as they appealed for their freedom.
A fourth person, whom Romanian media described as their translator, was also shown but it was not known if this was the U.S. citizen.
Pike said he could not provide more information because the State Department did not have the U.S. citizen's authorization to do so.
"We call for the immediate and safe recovery of all hostages in Iraq, including the American citizen and the three Romanian journalists taken on Monday," Pike said.
Three Romanian journalists have been kidnapped in Baghdad, the government said Tuesday in a development that could test the resolve of President Traian Basescu, whose administration recently dispatched an extra 100 troops to Iraq.
The journalists had finished interviewing Iraq's interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi hours earlier when one of them sent an ominous text message back to her newsroom: "Help, this is not a joke, we've been kidnapped."
The three were abducted Monday night near their Baghdad hotel, officials said. They were identified as reporter Marie Jeanne Ion, 32, and cameraman Sorin Dumitru Miscoci, 30, from Bucharest-based television station Prima TV, and Romania Libera reporter Ovidiu Ohanesian, 37.
An Iraqi-American businessman who acted as their guide and translator was also kidnapped, the Realitatea TV station reported. The station identified him as Mohammed Monaf and said he had studied in Romania.
One of his business partners in Romania, Ommar Hayssam, told Realitatea TV that he received two calls from the kidnappers Tuesday morning. "There was a voice speaking in Iraqi dialect ... he asked if I know Mohammed," he said. "They say to pay ... and threatened that if we come with the army they will cut their throats." He declined to specify the amount of money demanded by the kidnappers.
The four were abducted from a street next to the hotel, which is not in the city's heavily fortified Green Zone, a hotel reception desk staffer told the AP by telephone. He said the abduction occurred at about 8:30 p.m. Monday (1730GMT) and that Romanian Embassy representatives told hotel staff the journalists' driver reported the three had been kidnapped.
The hotel, where other foreign journalists also stay, is in Baghdad's upscale Jadriya neighborhood and is surrounded by a concrete barrier, the staffer said.
The journalists had not been traveling with President Basescu, who made a surprise visit to Iraq on Sunday. Romania has 800 troops there.
In Washington, US State Department said the United States shares the concern of the Romanian people about the abduction of three Romanian journalists in Iraq, adding that US diplomats in Bucharest were in close touch with Romanian authorities.
THREE Romanian journalists have gone missing in Iraq and authorities believe they may have been kidnapped.
The journalists, who went missing yesterday, are reporter Marie Jeanne Ion and cameraman Sorin Dumitru Miscoci from Bucharest-based television station Prima TV and daily Romania Libera reporter Ovidiu Ohanesian.
They went missing shortly after an interview with interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, the newspaper’s director Petre Mihai Bacanu said.
Romania’s President Traian Basescu, who was in Iraq and Afghanistan for two days visiting Romanian troops, said upon returning to Bucharest today that his government was doing all it could to find the journalists. Basescu said Romania had sought the help of US-led coalition authorities in Iraq.
Romanian Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu said it was unclear what happened to the trio, and that no one has contacted Romanian authorities demanding a ransom.
Romania has about 800 troops in Iraq and about 500 in Afghanistan.
The suspected kidnapping came as wrangling continued in Iraq’s new parliament with politicians yet to pick a speaker.
A meeting late yesterday between Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni representatives failed to come up with a name for the Sunni Arab candidate that legislators promised would be announced during today’s session.
Today was relatively quiet in Baghdad, where officials had warned residents to prepare for stepped up insurgent attacks. During the first National Assembly meeting, on March 16, militants lobbed mortar rounds at the heavily fortified Green Zone in the city’s centre, where politicians held their meeting.
The Shiite-led United Iraqi Alliance and the Kurdish coalition, which came first and second in the landmark, January 30 elections, have reached out to the Sunnis and to members of interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s coalition, hoping to cobble together an inclusive national unity government.
Masked Iraqi police guard four suspected kidnappers arrested at a Baghdad police station.
A militant group in Iraq has said it had shot dead a senior Interior Ministry official kidnapped last month, with a video of the purported killing posted on the Internet on Sunday.
The video allegedly shows a man, who identified himself as Colonel Riyadh Katei Aliwi, sitting on a chair with his hands bound with two masked men standing by him with guns.
"I worked at the Interior Ministry and cooperated with American forces by giving them names and addresses of former army officers," the man said.
The man identified himself as Colonel Ryad Kateh Olyway.
A ministry card shown on the video identified him as a liaison officer with the occupying U.S. forces.
On the tape, he also said there was widespread torture of prisoners, including women, at the hands of the occupation forces.
However, there was no way to independently authenticate the video.
U.S. army commanders decided not to prosecute 17 GI's implicated in the death of detainees.
Despite Army investigators recommendations, U.S. army commanders have decided not to prosecute 17 U.S. soldiers implicated in the deaths of three prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2003 and 2004, according to a new accounting released Friday by the Army.
According to the Army Criminal Investigation Command's accounting, investigators had recommended that all 17 soldiers be charged in the cases which included charges of murder, conspiracy and negligent homicide.
None of the 17 will face any prosecution but one did receive a 'letter of reprimand' and another was discharged after the investigations.
In one of the three cases in which no charges are to be filed, the commanders determined the death to be "a result of a series of lawful applications of force." In the second, the commanders decided not to prosecute due to "lack of evidence" and in the third case it was determined the soldier involved had not been well informed of the rules of engagement.
A spokesman for the Army Criminal Investigation Command, Chris Grey, said in a statement: "We take each and every death very seriously and are committed and sworn to investigating each case with the utmost professionalism and thoroughness. We are equally determined to get to the truth wherever the evidence may lead us and regardless of how long it takes."
However, human rights groups and others have criticized the military for not pursuing prosecution more aggressively.
The accounting was the most detailed the military has yet made public of the deaths of prisoners in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Of the 28 deaths investigated, 13 occurred in American detention centers in Iraq and Afghanistan and 15 occurred at the point where prisoners were captured. Only one occurred in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, which until now has been believed of being the site with the most extensive abuses by American military personnel.
The 28 deaths include two cases involving members of the Navy Seals, currently under investigation by the Navy.
According to a Marine spokesman, another case involving a prisoner who was in the custody of the Marine Corps; his death resulted in the conviction of two marines on charges including assault and dereliction of duty.
Not included in the 28 are three other deaths of prisoners involving marines but under investigation by the Navy.
With the disposition of the three cases involving the 17 soldiers not prosecuted, the Army now has 21 soldiers listed as subjects for prosecution on criminal charges including, among others, murder, negligent homicide and assault.
Of those 21 soldiers, at least 3 have been convicted in general courts-martial, and at least 3 others are awaiting trial, the Army accounting showed.
The Army said one of the three deaths for which soldiers would not be prosecuted was that of a former Iraqi lieutenant colonel determined by investigators to have died of "blunt force injuries and asphyxia" at an American Forward Operating Base in Al Asad, Iraq, in January 2004.
In that case, Army investigators had recommended that 11 soldiers from the Fifth Special Forces Group and the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment face charges. The decision not to prosecute in that case, as well as one other, was made by the Army Special Forces Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the Army said.
The decision not to prosecute came even as a senior Army legal official acknowledged that the Iraqi colonel at one point had been lifted to his feet by a baton held to his throat, an action that had caused a throat injury which contributed to his death.
The former Iraqi colonel was not identified but was named Jameel in other reports.
The Army accounting said the Special Forces Command had determined that the use of force had been lawful simply because it was "in response to repeated aggression and misconduct by the detainee."
According to the senior Army legal official the prisoner's resistance towards the U.S. soldiers caused them to gag him and lift him to his feet with the baton, - the actions which contributed to the death.
While the case which commanders deemed to lack evidence involved the shooting death of a prisoner in Afghanistan in August 2002, the Army said.
The case not prosecuted because the soldier involved was allegedly "not well informed on the rules of engagement" resulted in the death of the Iraqi prisoner in September 2003 at an American detention center.
The Army said it has now closed its investigations into 16 of the deaths, and referred five of them to the Navy, the Justice Department or foreign governments for possible prosecution.
BAGHDAD — Attacks apparently aimed at Iraqis perceived as cooperating with the United States killed a general and at least 18 other persons, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Friday.
At least 24 persons were wounded, including two American soldiers.
Maj. Gen. Suleiman Mohammed, who commanded an Iraqi National Guard division in the southern city of Basra, was assassinated Friday in Baghdad as he and his two sons were driving to a funeral, a source in the Iraqi government said. The assailants, firing from another car, also killed one of the general's sons and wounded the other.
On Thursday, suicide bombings killed at least 10 Iraqi police officers in the cities of Ramadi and Iskandariyah. Also, five women employed as cleaners at a U.S. Army base near Baghdad were gunned down as they drove home from work.
The killings in Ramadi, about 60 miles west of Baghdad, appeared to signal sharp sectarian tensions in the area where the population is almost entirely Sunni Muslim, and the Iraqi government has sent in national security forces to keep order and hunt down insurgents.
The forces are often Kurdish or Shiite Muslims from southern Iraq, who are resented by the independent and deeply tribal residents.
The war has exacted a heavy toll on the Iraqi capital
Baghdad, whose name means the Garden of God, has fallen from grace.
Known for centuries as one of the most beautiful cities in the world, its landscape has been marred by concrete blast walls, barbed wire, steel barricades, sandbags and crumbling buildings pockmarked by bullet holes or ransacked by explosions.
Things have gotten so bad that the Iraqi capital has dropped to the bottom of a quality of life survey of 215 cities, conducted by the London-based Mercer Human Resource Consulting.
"We used to be under sanctions and the economic conditions were dire, but never was the city so ugly," said Fadhila Dawoud, a teacher who used to take her students on picnics along the banks of the Tigris. Now they hold picnics in the school courtyard.
Glorious past
Once dubbed the City of Peace, Baghdad was founded in the eighth century by Caliph Abu Jafar al-Mansur as the capital for his rising Muslim Abbasid empire. The city soon became the heart of medieval Muslim civilisation – a centre of arts, culture and architecture.
Areas of the city were destroyed by US bombing in March 2003
Forming half-circles on the two sides of the Tigris, its suburbs, parks, gardens, mosques and marble mansions earned it the reputation as the richest and most beautiful city in the world.
Since then, Baghdad has survived the 13th-century mayhem inflicted on it by the Mongols, the 16th-century marginalisation by the Ottomans and two decades of war and sanctions under ousted ruler Saddam Hussein.
Saddam himself didn't help with beautification - most of the apartment complexes, government buildings and palaces built under his orders would not have won any architecture prizes. And then there were the dozen of statues and oversized portraits of the Iraqi leader that decorated those buildings.
City of barricades
After the US-led invasion in March 2003, the city of 5 million became one large military barricade: Humvees and tanks roaming the streets, helicopters rattling above, checkpoints and soldiers everywhere.
"We used to be under sanctions and the economic conditions were dire, but never was the city so ugly"
Fadhila Dawoud A teacher
An armed resistance to the US-led forces compounded the scars on the city's face, undermining its ailing infrastructure and tattering the remaining grace.
Beautiful date palm groves that lined the 16km-long airport road - a visitor's first impression of Baghdad - had to be removed to prevent armed men from hiding in what has become one of the city's most dangerous battlefields.
The rampant lawlessness has also encouraged people to take over buildings previously occupied by government offices and construct squatter settlements.
Tainted walls
Even democracy has taken its toll on Baghdad. Posters and banners of candidates running in the landmark January elections - a collage of mismatching colors - are still plastered everywhere, tainting roundabouts and walls two months after the vote.
Baghdad endured 13th century invasions and decades of war
Huge black banners of religious invocations and photos of Shia saints are randomly scattered around the city.
Alaa Kadhim, a 25-year-old janitor who's lived all his life in the capital, said, "It looks so different today - the streets, the buildings, everything."
"I lived all my life here, but it's like someone has taken the feeling of 'home' away," Kadhim said, complaining about the ubiquitous blast walls.
Mayor Alaa al-Tamimi has made it his mission to bring back the city's former glory.
After taking office last year, al-Tamimi relentlessly nagged coalition officials to remove the security barriers and open the numerous blocked roads, said his spokesman, Amir al-Hassoun.
The city also has many beautification and reconstruction plans awaiting funds. But al-Hassoun said the interim Iraqi government has given the city just US$85 million of the US$1 billion it requested - enough to begin tackling major infrastructure problems only.
City access denied
The security situation has also denied residents access to many parts of their city, including the heavily fortified Green Zone that houses US and Iraqi government offices.
Part of the city housing US and Iraqi offices has been fenced off
A virtual fortress, the 10-square-kilometre area is encircled and crisscrossed by 4-metre-high barricades. Its gates are guarded by US Bradley fighting vehicles aimed at passing traffic.
The US military said it realizes the city has suffered but that the measures were necessary.
"Any soldier of Task Force Baghdad would concede the point that concrete blocks, blast walls and barbed wire are ugly security tools that detract from the beauty of any city," said Lt. Col. Cliff Kent, a US Army spokesman.
But Kadhim, the janitor, said he's hopeful Baghdad will reclaim its beauty.
"Maybe when a new government is formed and things are more stable, these walls will fall, and Baghdad would be free," he said.
About 30 to 40 fighters were seen Wednesday at the lakeside training camp attacked by US and Iraqi forces a day before and claimed they had never left, an AFP correspondent who visited the site said.
The correspondent, who travelled with other journalists to the camp at Lake Tharthar, 200km north of Baghdad, said he saw 30 to 40 fighters there.
The remains of three burnt vehicles were seen on a dusty road leading to the camp in the village of Ain al-Hilwa. A few mud huts were partly destroyed and a few big craters gouged the ground.
One of the fighters, who called himself Muhammad Amer and claimed to belong to the Secret Islamic Army, said they had never left the base.
He denied that scores of his fighters had been killed and said only 11 of his comrades perished in airstrikes on the site.
Fled by boat
Iraqi commanders said 85 suspected anti-US fighters were killed in an assault by Iraqi troops and US aircraft on the camp Tuesday, adding that no one was captured and others had fled by boat.
Iraqi fighters routinely target US Humvee armed patrols
Asked about the presence of rebels at the camp late Wednesday, a member of the Iraqi police commandos that took part in the operation said Iraqi and US troops withdrew from the area at about 6.30pm (1530 GMT) on Tuesday.
"The commandos killed 35 and US air raids killed 50. But no one was captured and many escaped by boat," General Adnan Thabit, a senior advisor to the interior ministry, earlier told AFP by phone from Samarra.
"During the fight, 30 boats left."
A statement from the outgoing government, which confirmed the number of fighters killed, said one Algerian was captured.
Local hospitals told AFP they had received no casualties from the battle.
US air support
A US military spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Goldenberger, confirmed the operation and said Apache attack and Kiowa Warrior reconnaissance helicopters backed the commandos.
He said what started as an Iraqi mission quickly turned into a joint one after fighters opened fire on the some 240 members of the interior ministry's 1st Commando Battalion approaching the camp.
"More important than the number of insurgent casualties is the fact that we have disabled their capabilities and denied them a safe haven," he said.
Mosul attacks
Further north, a car bomb in Mosul hit a US military convoy, wounding two US and two Iraqi soldiers, the military said.
Civilians are caught in gun battles between US forces and fighters
An 11-year-old girl was killed when a mortar round struck a school in Amariya, west of the capital, said medical sources. Another girl was wounded.
And five bodies, all shot in the head except for the corpse of a female university student who also had her mouth cut open with a knife, were found on farmland near Suwaira, 50km south of the capital, said police Lieutenant Colonel Khalil Obaid.
Video footage
Meanwhile, the Islamic Army in Iraq group released several videotapes depicting what the said were resistance attacks against US military and intelligence targets.
In the first video, a Russian-made Katyusha rocket is fired at the Rashid hotel, hitting the top floor. Audio accompanying the footage says the floor was frequented by US intelligence officers.
In another video, a US Humvee is struck by an improvised explosive device (IED) and destroyed.
U.S. using anti-terror war to control world oil reserves
Shebarshin maintains the U.S. is trying to gain control of the world's oil fields.
In an interview with a Russian paper, the former chief of the Soviet Foreign Intelligence Service Leonid Shebarshin said the United States is trying to establish a monopolizing control of the world's richest oil reserves using the pretext of it fighting "international terrorism".
Shebarshin who now heads the Russian National Economic Security Service consulting company, said that by using the anti-terrorist cause as a cover, the United States has occupied Afghanistan, Iraq and will soon move to impose their self-called "democratic order" on the Greater Middle East.
"The U.S. has usurped the right to attack any part of the globe on the pretext of fighting the terrorist threat," Shebarshin maintains.
Referring to a recent meeting between himself and an unnamed al-Qaeda expert at the Rand Corporation, a nonprofit research organization in the U.S., Shebarshin said: "We have agreed that [al-Qaeda] is not a group but a notion."
"The fight against that all-mighty ubiquitous myth deliberately linked to Islam is of great advantage for the Americans as it targets the oil-rich Muslim regions," Shebarshin emphasized.
With military bases in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, Shebarshin said, the United States has already established control over the Caspian region - one of the world's largest oil reservoirs.
U.S. military prevents Italians from examining hostage car
The freed Italian hostage Giuliana Sgrena in a picture taken upon her arrival in Rome.
The U.S. military command in Iraq has blocked two Italian policemen from examining the car in which an Italian intelligence agent was shot to death in Baghdad, a newspaper said Wednesday.
According to the Italian daily the Corriere della Sera the policemen were about to leave when the Italian Embassy in Baghdad received an order from the U.S. command to abort the mission for security concerns.
The embassy in Baghdad reportedly alerted Rome authorities, who called off the trip.
The car, a Toyota Corolla, is reportedly still in American hands, at Baghdad airport where it was originally rented.
The Italian Foreign Ministry in Rome declined to comment on the report, while officials at the Italian Embassy in Baghdad could not immediately be reached.
The U.S. military in Baghdad also had no immediate comment to make.
Italian authorities have continuously stated that examining the car is vital to assessing what happened on March 4, when American troops opened fire on the car carrying secret service agent Nicola Calipari, another intelligence officer and journalist Giuliana Sgrena, who had just been released after a month of captivity in Iraq.
Calipari died on the spot, while the other two were wounded.
According to the paper, prosecutors investigating the shooting have received photographs of the car but want to analyze bullet holes and other elements.
Calipari's killing outraged Italians and prompted Premier Silvio Berlusconi to demand that Washington provide an explanation. Though the Italian government acquiesced that the shooting was an accident it disputes some key elements of the U.S. account.
The American military stated that the vehicle was speeding and refused to stop, and though a U.S. patrol tried to warn the driver with hand and arm signals and by flashing white lights and firing shots in front of the car and into the car's engine block.
However, Berlusconi said the car was traveling slowly at night and stopped immediately when a light was flashed at it, shortly before U.S. troops fired on the car. Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini said the fire appeared to have hit the right side of the car.
Furthermore, the freed hostage Sgrena denied any warning signals were given by the U.S. military.
Washington has ordered an investigation into the shooting, to be led by a U.S. brigadier general with the participation of Italian officials.
The findings of the joint commission are expected to be release by mid-April.
An Iraqi woman and children walk past U.S. Army soldiers in a Bradley fighting vehicle in Baghdad
"On this day two years ago, we launched Operation Iraqi Freedom to disarm a brutal regime, free its people, and defend the world from a grave danger," Bush said.
After 2 years, the Iraqi people have not seen the freedom that Bush has been taking credit for. The U.S. mission "Operation Iraqi Freedom" should have been called "Operation Iraqi Occupation" as Bush has still not set a timetable for the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. How is the U.S. occupation any different or any better than Saddam's regime? Bush has stated time and again that the U.S. has freed Iraq from a brutal regime.
From all accounts, from journalists from around the World and from U.S. troops that have returned to the U.S. after their tour of duty or from being wounded in battles in Iraq, the U.S. is inflicting the same brutality on the Iraqi people.
Where is the freedom that Bush promised the Iraqi people? The U.S. continues to occupy Iraq. The U.S. continues to impose curfews throughout Iraq and anyone caught violating the curfew is shot on sight.
There are still no essential services in Iraq; no running water, no electricity. The Iraqi people are harassed day and night by the U.S.
The Iraqi people cannot travel freely as everywhere they turn there are U.S. checkpoints. Ordinary citizens are detained illegally. The ruling government is just an extension of the U.S. martial law and authority.
The Iraqi people are unable to bury their dead because the U.S. troops refuse to allow relatives to enter a city or town to collect their dead. Any Iraqi who demands the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and end the occupation is labeled an insurgent or a insurgent sympathizer, and thus detained without charge or counsel. The wounded are denied immediate medical aid.
If George W. Bush thinks he is the great man and leader he makes himself out to be, then why after 2 years are the Iraqi people still not free? He preaches he has brought freedom to Iraq while his country continues occupying and controling the country.
And instead of asking for billion to help rebuild Iraq, he asked for billions more for military operations in Iraq.
"Defend the world from a grave danger, Bush said." Where is there any truth in that statement? Polls done even in the U.S. have found that the majority of people think that the war in Iraq has done more harm then good.
The World is no longer safe because of Bush's actions. The American President has just created more enemies. Instead of pursuing peace through peaceful means, he has chosen to destroy any hope of peace through death and destruction.
Since the beginning of the invasion of Iraq, 1,524 US soldiers have died (as of March 22, 2005), and 11,220 US soldiers have been wounded in action (as of February 26, 2005).1 Iraqi casualties are even larger. A study published in The Lancet last November estimated at least "100000 excess deaths" in Iraq since March 20, 2003.2
Who is killing Iraqis? The White House would have us believe, through the "Good News" propaganda planted in the media by the Pentagon and the State Department,3 that the US military is only protecting Iraqis and reconstructing Iraq. Nothing is further from the truth. According to the Iraqi Ministry of Health's statistics, "operations by U.S. and multinational forces and Iraqi police are killing twice as many Iraqis -- most of them civilians -- as attacks by insurgents."4 The Lancet study confirms the ministry's findings: "Violent deaths were widespread . . . and were mainly attributed to coalition forces. Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children."5
The Iraqi elections in January, through which Washington hoped to divide and conquer Shiites and Sunnis and to gain a fresh start to present itself as the selfless protector of an elected Iraqi government, have not changed the reality of unequal power between the occupier and the occupied. Many refused to participate in the undemocratic "demonstration elections" organized by the occupier, and the Shiites who did vote for the United Iraqi Alliance, in the hope that the UIA would fulfill its electoral promise of "[a] timetable for the withdrawal of the multinational forces from Iraq,"6 were disappointed. George W. Bush reiterated his rejection of a timetable for US exit: "Our troops will come home when Iraq is capable of defending herself."7 The Shiite notables and clerics who head the UIA, including Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, could not defy Bush's intransigence without risking Washington's wrath, which had already reduced Falluja to utter ruins, making an example of it to demonstrate the costs of resistance to Iraqis.
Essentially, the linchpin of the White House's program remains the same as before the Iraqi elections: to win over a select few Iraqis who would cut lucrative deals with Western oil companies and remake Iraq in Washington’s neoliberal image8; and, taking a page from the failed "Vietnamization," to build up Iraqi security forces to protect the aforementioned deals. That is a vain hope. Only "[f]ewer than 30 percent of the 136,000 Iraqi security forces" are capable of counter-insurgency, and Iraqi Army units have "absentee rates of up to 40 percent at any given time," according to General Richard Myers and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.9 Buried deep in Bush's supplemental budget request is a direr diagnosis: "All but one of these 90 battalions, however, are lightly equipped and armed, and have very limited mobility and sustainment capabilities."10
Meanwhile, the "coalition of the willing" has shrunken further. Italy, joining 14 other countries that have already pulled out from Iraq and two that have set down their exit plans, announced that it will withdraw its troops from Iraq by September.11
Washington is unable to cajole or coerce Iraqis or others to fight for its self-serving goals. Therefore, it has and will be US soldiers who bear the burden of fighting the deadly war and US workers who shoulder the costs of financing it. The costs of the Iraqi War are $157.8 billion and counting -- the money that could have been spent, for instance, to insure 94.5 million children for one year or provide four-year scholarships at public universities for 7.7 million students.12 On March 16, 2005, the House approved $81.4 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which threatens to bring emergency war spending since March 2003 to a whopping $300 billion. That's a sum that the United States can ill afford, when its economy is made more fragile than ever by the widening budget and trade deficits as well as the housing bubble that masks mounting personal debts (made worse by the bankruptcy "reform" that transforms courts into collection agencies), liable to trigger a run on the dollar any time.13
How do we resist the ruinous war in a way that makes the difference? Washington can't fight any war without troops. Support the soldiers who refuse to serve and working-class youths who say no to military recruitment. Here are examples of working-class refusal. Reservists of the 343rd Quartermaster Company defied orders to go on a "suicide mission" delivering fuel without armor last October.14 Then, eight soldiers filed a federal lawsuit on December 6, 2004 challenging the "stop-loss" policy, i.e. the backdoor draft.15 The Army National Guard fell "30 percent below recruiting goals" at the end of last year,16 and recruitment is "just 75 percent of the target for the first quarter of fiscal 2005'"17 Black volunteers for the Army have fallen 41 % (from 22.7% to 13.9%) since 200018 -- a severe blow to the Army that depends upon Black men and women to supply nearly a quarter of its active-duty troops. Seattle Central Community College students threw out military recruiters from campus.19 Military Families Speak Out, Veterans for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, the American Friends Service Committee, and others began a campaign to question the use of the National Guard in Iraq -- the campaign that already succeeded in having 50 town meetings in Vermont pass resolutions to study its impact and urge Bush to bring the troops home.20 Among the largest anti-war rallies on March 19, 2005, the second anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, was one organized by veterans and military families in Fayetteville, North Carolina, near Ft. Bragg.
Keep in mind that the anti-war movement today has many strengths that the movement against the Vietnam War did not enjoy. According to MFSO, their "membership currently includes over 2,000 military families, with new families joining daily." That is a historically unprecedented success. IVAW was established in August 2004,21 whereas Vietnam Veterans Against the War was not founded until 1967. In other words, Iraq veterans, even though they were all volunteers rather than draftees, managed to organize an anti-war veterans' group faster than Vietnam Veterans, because they had the benefit of a strong foundation built by VfP, VVAW, and other activist veterans' organizations. We also possess another priceless legacy of the movement against the Vietnam War: the power elite's fear of political costs of the draft. The power elite are afraid of backlashes against the draft inside and outside the military,22 so they have hesitated to reinstate it, but they have no recent experience of using a volunteer military in a brutal counter-insurgency war, and it is not clear if they really can for long. The stop-loss policy and other administrative changes -- signs that true volunteers alone do not suffice for a deadly and protracted colonial war -- turned many volunteers into reluctant volunteers, which should fuel the growth of MFSO, IVAW, and like organizations and decrease military recruitment further.
Last not the least, the Iraq War cannot be separated from Washington's larger goal of maintaining its spheres of influence from Asia to Africa, Europe to Latin America to the Middle East, to make the world safe for domination of multinational corporations. To take the most obvious example, the invasion of Iraq and pressures on Syria and Iran are both motivated by the same goal of supporting the Israeli power elite, who are in turn expected to use the strongest military in the Middle East at their disposal as deterrence to Arab aspirations.23 By the same token, Israeli refusers, now numbering 1,396,24 and American refusers (among whom are Camilo Mejia, Jeremy Hinzman, Brandon Hughey, Abdul R. Henderson, and Kevin Benderman)25 can grow stronger and more numerous in solidarity with each other. No troops, no wars -- in Iraq and Israel/Palestine. The struggle to end the Iraq War, one link in Washington's imperial chain of power projection, is tied up with struggles to break other links of the chain. The more we understand where the Iraq War fits in Washington's empire, the better chance we have of making allies to attack its base from many different directions.
Ukrainian delegation to visit Iraq for troop pull-out talks
KIEV, March 22 -- A Ukrainian delegation consisting ofofficials from the defense and foreign ministries will visit Iraq in late March for discussions on the withdrawal of Ukraine's troops from Iraq, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said Tuesday.
Petro Poroshenko, secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, said that the delegation will meet with officials of the Iraqi interim government and the US-led coalitionforces in Iraq.
He said that the talks will decide a final date for the withdrawal of Ukraine's remaining troops in Iraq.
Ukraine may pull out its forces in October, but may also put back the action to December when Iraq is set to hold legislative elections.
Last week, the first group of 137 soldiers returned home.
Ukraine plans to cut its military presence in Iraq, now at 1,300, to some 850 in May.
Eighteen Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Ukraine joined the US-led coalition in August 2003.
[Middle East News] AMMAN, Jordan, March 22 : Jordanian newspapers focused Tuesday on the easing of tensions between Jordan and Iraq after Amman decided to return its charge d'affaires to Baghdad.
Local press said King Abdullah took the initiative to return the envoy in a gesture aimed at reaffirming Amman's support of the Iraqi government.
The daily al-Rai commented that Jordan had always been supportive of Iraq, especially Iraqi leaders who are currently in power and were hosted by Amman in the past.
Al-Dustour newspaper said, "The Jordanian policy toward Iraq is clear and based on fact and cannot be tarnished by unfounded accusations."The newspaper said that Jordan had always rejected the partitioning of Iraq and any attempt to undermine historic bilateral relations.
Tension had been building between the neighbors after a Jordanian national, identified as Raed Banna, carried out a suicide bomb attack in Hulla, south of Baghdad, two weeks ago, killing 130 Iraqis and wounding dozens of others.
The attack evoked public outrage, especially among Shiites, who demonstrated outside the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad, burning and trampling the Jordanian flag.
The Jordanian government condemned the attack and recalled its charge d'affaires last week for consultations, and Iraq also summoned its envoy to Amman.
Iraq Freedom Fighter attacks kill USA invader across Iraq
Baghdad — Iraq Freedom Fighter attacks across Iraq on Monday left seven U.S. troops dead.
While what happen now between Jordan and Iraq is a setup been held by the USA invader to make the country ruin and make both country Jordan and Iraq fight each other, i say kill all invader!!!
AMMAN - Jordan's King Abdullah ordered on Monday the return of Jordan's top diplomat to Iraq after both countries recalled their envoys over reports that a Jordanian was behind the deadliest suicide bombing in postwar Iraq.
Jordanian Foreign Minister Hani al-Mulki told Reuters the Jordanian charges d'affaires was due back at the heavily guarded Baghdad embassy on Wednesday while the Iraqi ambassador was expected to return to Amman within a week.
"An order was issued by the king because the recall of the charges d'affaires was seen as a withdrawal when the intention was only a recall for consultations," government spokeswoman Asma Khader told Reuters. "We wanted to confirm that this was not a matter of withdrawal of envoys."
Iraqi protesters have burned Jordanian flags and broken into the heavily guarded compound at least twice since a suicide bombing killing 125 people south of Baghdad on Feb. 28, angered by reports that a Jordanian man was behind the blast and his family had hailed him as a martyr.
Protesters held banners reading "no to terrorism" and called on Arabs to speak out against praise of suicide bombers.
Mulki said he met his Iraqi counterpart Hoshiyar Zebari on Monday in Algiers, where an Arab Summit is being held, and received assurances that the kingdom's embassy and staff would be protected.
Jordan called the bloodiest attack in postwar Iraq a "terrorist act" and the man's family denied he was behind it.
Jordanian Prime Minister Faisal al-Fayez condemned in a statement "those who take religion as a pretext for committing crimes that have nothing to do with Islam."
But Jordan also condemned the attacks on its "state symbols," although Khader said the government believed they did not reflect the feelings of most Iraqis.
"Jordan has always embraced Iraqis of all backgrounds, Sunnis, Shi'ites ... we also took all measures to support Iraq's efforts to regain its sovereignty and security," she said.
At least two suicide bombings have targeted the Jordanian embassy since the end of the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
Iraqi police arrive at their station with a suspected kidnapper under arrest.
A media report revelas that American intelligence and military police officers in Iraq are routinely freeing dangerous criminals in return for a promise to spy on anti-occupation fighters.
According to the Independent on Sunday (IoS) documents show that in one case police rescued a doctor after a gun battle with his kidnappers and arrested two of the kidnap gang, who made full confessions. But the U.S. military police took over custody of the two men and let them go.
At the police station where the men were being held, it was recorded that they'd been handed over to an American military police lieutenant in order to be transferred to the American run Camp Cuervo detention centre.
However, an American military spokesman told the IoS that there was no record of the two prisoners in their database.
"The Americans are allowing the breakdown of Iraqi society because they are only interested in fighting the 'insurgency'," said a senior Iraqi police officer.
"We are dealing with an epidemic of kidnapping, extortion and violent crime, but even though we know the Americans monitor calls on mobiles and satellite phones, which are often used in ransom negotiations, they will not pass on any criminal intelligence to us. They only want to use the information against 'insurgents'."
An Iraqi government source further confirmed that criminal suspects were often released if they agreed to pass on information on "insurgents", despite the dangers such an act poses on them.
The Iraqi middle class has been heavily targeted by kidnappers since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Many doctors, a favoured target, and businessmen have fled to Syria, Jordan and Egypt. The police admit that they have been unable to do anything to stop the wave of abductions.
Dr Thamir Mohammed Ali Hasafa al-Kaisey, a 60-year-old GP, was seized by a gang of 11 kidnappers as he drove home from his clinic in Baghdad in the early evening of December 23rd.
"I was 50 metres from my house when men with guns in a Jeep Cherokee stopped me and beat me with their fists," Dr Hasafa later told police. "They put me in their car with my face on the ground and tied me up with my own jacket."
But the doctor had an extraordinary stroke of luck. His captors ran into a police checkpoint, and shooting broke out. Even though his leg was broken in the beating, the doctor was able to crawl out of the back of the car.
The case was a rare breakthrough for the police. In their confessions the two suspects - one a serving police lieutenant - highlighted how the gangs work and the increasingly high number of kidnappings they carry out.
Mohammed Najim Abdullah al-Dhouri, the police lieutenant, and Adnan Ashur Ali al-Jabouri are both members of powerful tribes from which Saddam drew many of his inner circle of security men and army officers.
Adnan Ashur told the investigating judge that the leaders of the gang were Eyhab, nicknamed Abu Fahad, who ran a mobile phone shop, and his brother, Hisham.
According to Ashur, Eyhab was a criminal sentenced to 40 years in jail by the old regime but that he'd apparently been freed during a general amnesty by Saddam at the end of 2002.
All the gang members were armed with pistols. They had safe houses in which to keep kidnap victims. Both suspects said they had taken part in numerous other kidnappings in the previous few months, with their victims paying up to $60,000 (£31,000) each.
In the case of Dr. Hasafa, the gang has been informed of his 'worth' as a kidnap target by a guard hired by householders to protect the street where he lived.
The Iraqi police were jubilant that they finally had detailed information on how a kidnap gang operated. The two captured men were willing to provide the names and addresses of other gang members, and the success was lauded by Iraqi television and the local press.
But to the bitter disappointment of the police on December 30th a convoy of U.S. military police arrived at al-Khansa police station, where Najim and Ashur were being held. The Iraqi police officer at the station recorded: "They have requested the custody of the two assailants."
The Iraqi police dropped the case against the rest of the gang.
At least four Iraqi police were killed and 19 soldiers wounded when gunmen attacked a police station and rammed a truck bomb into a barracks entrance in the Iraqi city of Baquba.
Sunday's double attack provoked a gunfight between anti-US fighters and Iraqi forces in the town, northeast of Baghdad, in which at least four of the attackers were killed, said a police source.
Gunmen attacked the Abbara station on the northern side of the city with small arms at about 7pm GMT after a bomber blew up his truck at the entrance to an army barracks about a 1km away.
The police source said there were 14 soldiers and three civilians among the wounded.
Attacks against Iraq's budding security forces are frequent in Baquba, home to a mixture of Sunnis and Shias.
Police chief killed
Meanwhile, the director of the police anti-corruption department in Mosul was assassinated by a bomber on Sunday, and gunmen later opened fire on his funeral procession, killing two mourners.
"This will be the fate of those who stand by the polytheists"
Al-Qaida statement after the assassination of a Mosul poilce chief The US military said the bomber detonated explosives strapped to his body in the building where Brigadier Walid Kashmula worked. Both were killed and one person was wounded.
Al-Qaida's wing in Iraq, led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, said it had assassinated "the apostate Walid Kashmula who is the top American agent" in the area.
"This will be the fate of those who stand by the polytheists," the al-Qaida Organisation for Holy War in Iraq said in a statement posted on an website.
In the afternoon, anti-US fighters fired on Kashmula's funeral procession, killing two people and wounding at least 14, some seriously, hospital officials said.
Dozens of cars were in the procession in western Mosul, following the vehicle carrying his body to the grave.
Protesters raised the Iraqi flag over the Jordanian embassy
Iraq has recalled its ambassador to Jordan in a tit-for-tat move following Jordan's earlier decision to pull its envoy out of Baghdad.
Jordan withdrew its charge d'affaires Damai Haddad saying that anti-Jordanian protests outside its Baghdad embassy had made it unsafe for him to remain.
Shia protesters say that Jordan had a role in a suicide bombing last month.
Now Iraq has pulled its envoy out of Amman for consultations, saying relations were "in crisis mode".
Protests were held outside the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad on Friday, and an Iraqi flag was raised over the building, while Jordanian flags were burnt.
Hillah suspicions
Shia groups are angry after reports that the family of a Jordanian, Raed Mansour al-Banna, held celebrations after he carried out a suicide bombing which killed 125 people in Hillah, south of Baghdad, on 28 February.
Nearly all the victims of that attack were Shia police and army recruits.
Baghdad protesters burn the Jordanian flag The Jordanian flag was burnt during protests
However, al-Banna's family have now denied that he carried out the Hillah attack, saying only that he was responsible for a suicide attack somewhere in Iraq.
"Iraqis are feeling very bitter over what happened," Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told the Associated Press.
"We decided, as the Iraqi government, to recall the Iraqi ambassador from Amman to discuss this."
For their part, the Jordanians have said their envoy will not return to Baghdad until his security can be assured.
"We are hoping that the Iraqi police will devise a plan to protect the embassy, " said Foreign Minister Hani al-Mulqi.
"In the meanwhile, we have asked the charge d'affaires to come back because he was living in the embassy," he said, adding that other embassy officials living elsewhere in Baghdad would remain in the Iraqi capital for the time being.
BAGHDAD - An al Qaeda-linked suicide bomber assassinated the top anti-corruption police officer in the northern city of Mosul on Sunday, and U.S. troops said they killed 24 insurgents in a battle on the outskirts of Baghdad.
The suicide bomber, wearing an explosive vest, walked into the offices of the Mosul police anti-corruption department and blew himself up, killing department head Brigadier Walid Kashmoula, the U.S. military said. Another Iraqi was wounded.
Al Qaeda's wing in Iraq, led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, said it had killed "the apostate Walid Kashmoula who is the top American agent" in the area.
"This will be the fate of those who stand by the polytheists," al Qaeda Organization for Holy War in Iraq said in a statement posted on an Islamist Web site.
During Kashmoula's funeral on Sunday afternoon, gunmen fired on the procession following his coffin, killing two people and wounding at least 14 others, police said.
The United States says Zarqawi is its top foe in Iraq, and is offering $25 million for information leading to his death or capture. Iraqi ministers say the net is closing on Zarqawi, but his organization insists it is winning the battle to topple the U.S.-backed government and drive foreign troops out of Iraq.
DIPLOMATIC ROW
Jordan's state security court sentenced Zarqawi in absentia on Sunday to 15 years in jail for plotting to attack the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad. Alleged accomplice Miqdad al-Dabbas, captured by the U.S. military in February 2004, was sentenced to three years in prison.
Court documents said Dabbas monitored the embassy and passed on information about the compound's security to Zarqawi.
Dabbas was captured before any attack took place, but the Jordanian embassy was targeted by a suicide bomber in late 2004. It was also bombed in 2003.
Despite the sentencing of Zarqawi, a diplomatic row has erupted between Iraq and Jordan over accusations that Amman is not doing enough to prevent insurgent attacks in Iraq.
The dispute began after a Jordanian newspaper reported that a suicide bomber who killed 125 Iraqis last month in the deadliest single attack since Saddam Hussein's overthrow was a Jordanian. It said the man's family had hailed him as a martyr after learning he had been killed mounting the attack in Hilla.
The Jordanian government and the man's family have since denied he was behind the suicide bombing, but thousands of Iraqis have taken to the streets over the last week to denounce Jordan. Protesters have broken into the Jordanian embassy twice, tearing down the country's flag.
On Sunday, Jordan announced it was recalling its senior envoy in Baghdad for consultations on his safety. The Iraqi government later said it was also recalling its ambassador in Amman because of worsening relations with Jordan.
"Relations have worsened and we need to consult with the ambassador," an Iraqi Foreign Ministry official said.
Jordanian Foreign Minister Hani al-Mulki said the Jordanian charge d'affaires was being recalled for safety reasons.
"The embassy is not closed, we called our diplomat for consultations, if he says it is safe, then he will go back," Mulki told Reuters. "If the Iraqi police cannot protect our embassy from protesters, then we will wait until they can. We will not endanger our staff."
In a fierce battle on the outskirts of Baghdad, U.S. troops repelled an attack and killed 24 insurgents, the American military said. A military statement said seven insurgents and six soldiers were wounded in the battle.
Near the northern oil city of Kirkuk, a roadside bomb killed a U.S. soldier and wounded three, the military said.
BAGHDAD - A U.S. soldier was killed and three wounded when a roadside bomb exploded beside their patrol near the Iraqi city of Kirkuk Sunday, the army said.
Since the U.S.-led invasion two years ago, at least 1,514 U.S. military and Pentagon personnel have lost their lives in Iraq.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Insurgents targeted Iraqi security forces and government buildings with gunfire, suicide bomb attacks and mortar rounds Sunday, leaving at least five people dead - including a top anti-corruption official - as the conflict moved into its third year since the U.S.-led invasion.
In neighboring Jordan, a court convicted Iraq's most-wanted terrorist, Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, for plotting to attack the Jordanian embassy here, sentencing him in absentia to 15 years imprisonment.
In Iraq's north, a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a government compound in Mosul, killing himself and Walid Kashmoula, the head of the Iraqi police anti-corruption department, officials said. Three others were injured.
In Baghdad, residents said saboteurs blew up a municipal building in a western neighborhood, reducing the two-story building to rubble. No injuries were reported.
A Humvee was overturned on the highway to the airport. Witnesses said it was hit by a roadside bomb, but U.S. military officials were not immediately available to comment. U.S. troops sealed off the area.
Insurgents kept up their deadly campaign against Iraq's fledgling security force, which is struggling to build its ranks and fight the insurgency and lawlessness that has gripped the country in the two years since the U.S.-led, March 19, 2003, invasion.
Assailants leapt from their vehicle and unleashed gunfire on a policeman walking to work in Samarra, killing the man, said Maj. Sadoun Ahmed, a police official in the Sunni Triangle town 60 miles north of Baghdad.
Police who went to collect the man's body also came under attack, sparking a gunfight that left three police injured along with a trio of attackers, who were arrested, police Lt. Qassim Mohammed said.
In the southern city of Basra, attackers targeted a police patrol with a roadside bomb, killing one civilian and injuring a policeman, police Col. Karim al-Zeidi said.
Insurgents lobbed mortar fire into a neighborhood just outside the walls of an Iraqi army base in the town of Mahmoudiyah, south of Baghdad, killing one civilian and injuring two others, said Ikbal Sabir, an official at the Yarmouk Hospital where the bodies were taken.
The attacks followed a similar string of violence on Saturday, the second anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Militants killed five police officers as the insurgency pressed on with its tactic of targeting Iraqi security forces, Shiites and Kurds and focusing less on American troops.
Also in Mosul, authorities announced they broke up a five-member insurgent cell, arresting two Saudi Arabia citizens and seizing a weapons cache in a Friday raid by Iraqi army commandos.
The cell was planning assassinations of officials in the northern city, an Iraqi army officer said Sunday on condition of anonymity, citing fears of insurgent reprisals against himself and his family.
In Jordan, a military court sentenced al-Zarqawi to 15 years in jail and a detained associate to three years behind bars Sunday for planning an attack on the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad, the offices of the Jordanian military attache in Baghdad, and unspecified American targets in Iraq.
The court was told that the two Jordanians met in Iraq in November 2003 to plan an attack on the embassy following an August bombing on the same building that killed 18 people. Al-Zarqawi has also been accused of carrying out the August bombing.
The United States has slapped a $25 million bounty on Al-Zarqawi, who has pledged loyalty to Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaida organization and is now considered the terror outfit's point man in Iraq.
The top U.S. general in Iraq, Army Gen. George Casey, said recently that the level of violence against U.S. troops had dropped significantly since the Jan. 30 elections.
That appeared to be the result of a tactical shift by insurgents - made up mostly of Sunni Arabs dominant under ousted dictator Saddam Hussein - to focus violence on majority Shiites and Kurds, two groups persecuted under Saddam's rule.
Around the world, tens of thousands of anti-war protesters marked the war's two-year anniversary with demonstrations. The largest turnout was among residents of America's closest ally in the war - Britain, where 45,000 marched to the U.S. Embassy.
In America, U.S. President George W. Bush saluted the more than 1,500 U.S. troops who have died in the conflict.
"I know that nothing can end the pain of the families who have lost loved ones in this struggle, but they can know that their sacrifice has added to America's security and the freedom of the world," Bush said in a weekly radio address.
A bomb attack in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul has caused a number of casualties, police say.
The bomb went off at the headquarters of the police anti-corruption department in the city, they said.
Unconfirmed reports say the head of the unit, Brig Walid Kashmoula, was among those killed.
Mosul is a mainly Sunni Muslim city with a powerful insurgent presence.
The latest blast came 10 days after a suicide bomb attack on Shia Muslim funeral mourners in the city killed at least 50 people and wounded another 80.
On Saturday, protesters around the world marked the second anniversary of the start of the US-led war in Iraq.
In a radio address, US President George W Bush defended the war, saying it took place "to disarm a brutal regime, free its people, and defend the world".
Anti-War Activists March in New York, San Francisco to Mark Second Anniversary of Iraq Invasion
Mar. 19, 2005 - Anti-war activists marched in the streets of New York and other American cities on Saturday, stopping traffic and lying down alongside flag-draped cardboard coffins to mark the second anniversary of the war in Iraq.
Some of the demonstrators were arrested in New York as they demanded that U.S. troops be brought home.
"This country was founded by acts of civil disobedience," said David McReynolds, 75, of New York, as he marched along 42nd Street. "We have an obligation to make our resistance public and to say as clearly as we can that the war is illegal."
Organizers encouraged civility in San Francisco, where protests just after the war began were among the most vocal and angry in the country, with thousands of arrests and frequent conflicts between police and demonstrators.
"We are telling people to bring their families, their mothers, their children. We're taking the security and the integrity of these demonstrations very seriously," said Bill Hackwell, a spokesman for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, the main march coordinator.
About 350 people in New York listened to anti-war speeches at the United Nations, then marched along 42nd Street across Manhattan to Times Square, where police penned them in on a sidewalk.
A small contingent of protesters then knelt in front of a military recruiting station and lay down on Broadway next to the flag-draped coffins. Traffic was stopped for about five minutes before police moved in and arrested 27 protesters.
"It's such a small act in light of over 100,000 Iraqis dead and 1,500 American soldiers dead," Anna Brown, 40, of Jersey City, N.J., said before she was arrested.
Besides the Times Square event, there were rallies in Harlem, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. At least nine people were arrested at the other sites, according to an unofficial police count.
Veronica Momjian, 24, carried a handmade "Give Peace a Chance" sign in the Manhattan demonstration.
"I'm here to chastise the government for putting us in the middle of a bloody and disgusting war," she said. "Things are looking worse and there's no foreseeable end to this."
Militants have killed four policemen, pressing ahead with a violent insurgency that increasingly targets Iraqi security services, Shi'ites and Kurds - while focusing less on the US forces that invaded their country two years ago.
Iraq's newly elected Shi'ite and Kurdish leaders marked the March 19, 2003, start of the war with a deal to form a government by the end of the month, when they reconvene the National Assembly elected nearly two months ago.
At the same time, tens of thousands of anti-war protesters held demonstrations around the globe, with the biggest groups gathering in Britain and Turkey.
A suicide attacker trying to kill US troops in Ramadi prematurely detonated his car bomb, killing only himself, Iraqi police and the US military said. Ramadi is an insurgent stronghold 110km west of Baghdad. US and Iraqi forces had clashed in the town on Friday but no casualties were reported.
The failure by American troops to discover weapons of mass destruction largely discredited Bush's original reason for going to war. He has since tried to justify the invasion by arguing that it liberated Iraq from Saddam Hussein's tyranny and gave the Middle East a model for democracy.
Iraqis elected the 275-member National Assembly on January 30 and convened their first democratic legislature in recent memory on March 16. But the Shi'ites and Kurds who emerged as Iraq's new power brokers have so far failed to elect a president, parliament speaker or form a government.
The insurgency, made up mostly of Sunni Arabs who dominated under Saddam, has targeted Iraq's new democracy. Militants have focused many of their attacks on the two groups once persecuted by Saddam - the majority Shi'ites and Kurds.
The top US general in Iraq, Army Gen George Casey, said recently that the level of violence against US troops has dropped significantly since the elections.
Jordanian-born terrorist mastermind Abu Misab al-Zarqawi and his al-Qaeda in Iraq group have said they hope their actions - a relentless wave of bombings, kidnappings and beheadings - will lead to a sectarian war.
Shi'ites make up about 60 per cent of Iraq's 26 million people, while Sunni Arabs make up about 20 per cent of the population. Kurds, who are Sunni but mostly secular, make up 15 to 20 per cent, while smaller ethnic communities make up the rest.
Sunni Arabs mostly stayed away from the elections, either because they feared reprisals or because they chose to boycott them.
"The terrorists have one policy. They want to prevent the formation of a democratic government and want to draw the people of Iraq into a sectarian war," said Ali al-Faisal, a member of the clergy-backed United Iraqi Alliance.
The Shi'ite-dominated alliance and the Kurds have made dealing with the insurgency a top priority of their government.
The Kurdish coalition agreed last week to form a government with Shi'ite politician Ibrahim al-Jaafari as prime minister.
An alliance official said differences had been resolved over a timetable for returning control of Kirkuk to the Kurds after a government is formed.
"We agreed that the normalisation of the situation in Kirkuk will start one month after the formation of the government," alliance negotiator Ali al-Dabagh said.
Both camps are expected to announce the government when the assembly reconvenes later this month.
"In the next session of parliament, Talabani will be named president and he will officially ask Ibrahim al-Jaafari to form the new government," said Azad Jundiyan, a spokesman for Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
He said Kurdish leaders met and endorsed their latest deal with the Shi'ites.
The two groups have also repeatedly tried to reach out to Sunni Arabs, in the hope that their inclusion will help deflate the insurgency.
A number of Sunni groups, including the influential Association of Muslim Scholars, met on Friday but again rejected any participation - despite pleas from some of their leaders.
"By refusing to participate, the Sunnis are losing out on the political process," complained Sharif Ali Bin Al-Hussein, a Sunni, who leads the Constitutional Monarchist Movement.
Tens of thousands of Europeans protest Iraq war on second anniversary of invasion
LONDON Tens of thousands of anti-war protesters demonstrated across Europe on Saturday to mark the second anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, with 45,000 Britons marching from London's Hyde Park past the American Embassy to Trafalgar Square.
British elections expected in May lent an added charge to the largest protest, in London, where Prime Minister Tony Blair's staunch backing of the war has diminished his base of support.
Police said about 45,000 demonstrators participated in a march; organizers put the number at 100,000. Several army veterans were among the crowd.
''I disagreed with (the war) to start with because I was suspicious of the weapons of mass destruction claims,'' said Ray Hewitt, 34, a veteran of the 1991 Gulf War. ''I saw the Iraqi army in 1991 and we destroyed it.''
In Istanbul, Turkey, an estimated 15,000 people some carrying signs reading ''Murderer Bush, get out'' marched in the Kadikoy neighborhood.
Two marchers dressed as U.S. soldiers pretended to rough up a third, dressed as a detainee with a sack on his head in a mimed criticism of U.S. abuse of prisoners.
In the southern Turkish city of Adana, home to a Turkish military base used by American forces, protesters laid a black wreath in front of the U.S. Consulate, the Anatolia news agency reported.
In Poland which commands a multinational security force in Iraq that includes 1,700 Polish troops about 500 protesters marched to the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw, holding banners reading ''Pull out from Iraq now'' and ''Poles back to Poland.''
''We are protesting this war in Iraq because it has no point. Only innocent people are killed, and nothing good results from it,'' said Klaudia Kosicinska, a 17-year-old high school student.
At an anti-war march in the industrial city of Katowice, protesters including one dressed up as a blindfolded Statue of Liberty urged the United States and Britain to leave Iraq.
In Athens, about 3,000 trade unionists, members of peace groups and students, brought the city center to a standstill for about three hours as they marched to the U.S. Embassy.
In Sweden, about 300 protesters filled Sergel Square in downtown Stockholm, chanting: ''USA, out of Iraq!''
The protests were nowhere near as big as those in February 2003, just before the war when millions marched in cities around the world to urge President Bush and his allies not to attack.
''People have become apathetic about this, it's no longer something they walk around thinking about every day,'' said Linn Majuri, 15, a protester in Stockholm.
With international forces still facing violent opposition in Iraq, protesters were divided about what to demand from leaders now. While some wanted a full troop withdrawal, others argued that would leave Iraqis in a worse position than before the invasion.
''We got the Iraqis into this mess, we need to help them out of it,'' said London protester Kit MacLean, 29.
Security was heavy outside the U.S. Embassy in London, where cement barricades and metal fences blocked the building, as they have since Sept. 11. Two former British soldiers placed a cardboard coffin bearing the words ''100,000 dead'' outside the U.S. compound.
With music and banners, marchers in Rome called for the withdrawal of Italian troops from Iraq. ''Iraq to the Iraqis!'' read one banner.
In Oslo, Norway, about 400 people rallied to demand that the 10 Norwegian officers in Baghdad be sent home. Norway has previously withdrawn 150 soldiers from Iraq.
''It's becoming more and more embarrassing that we are in the 'coalition of the willing' when many other countries are withdrawing,'' said Ingrid Fiskaa, head of the peace activism group Fredsinitiativet, which organized the event.
Many at the London protest voiced anger at Blair, who has been Bush's staunchest ally in Iraq despite strong domestic opposition to the war, especially among members of his Labour Party.
Some at the protest said they couldn't support Blair, but didn't know whom else to vote for. The opposition Conservatives strongly backed the war while the third-largest party, the Liberal Democrats, opposed it. Several smaller parties are running anti-war candidates in hopes of loosening Blair's hold on power.
''I think it's outrageous what Blair and Bush think they can get away with,'' said retiree John Salway, 59. ''I'd like to think we can put a dent in their arrogance.''
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Attackers gunned down a police officer heading to work Saturday in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, then bombed a funeral procession carrying his corpse, killing three other policemen and injuring two, officials said.
The attacks came on the second anniversary of the U.S. invasion on March 19, 2003 and are typical of the violence that has become commonplace in Iraq.
The attackers sprayed automatic-weapon fire from a vehicle, killing the policeman as he made his way to the station house early Saturday, police Capt. Ahmed Shinrani said. Hours later, a roadside bomb hit mourners and security forces transporting the corpse for burial.
“This is a criminal act. The mourners were doing a religious duty. I don’t understand how someone could blast a funeral,” wailed Allaa Talaban, wife of one of the officers killed in the blast in Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad.
The Kirkuk attacks came as unidentified assailants in Baghdad killed police Commissioner Ahmed Ali Kadim as he traveled to his office in the Doura neighborhood of the capital, said Falah Al-Mohammadawi, an investigator in the precinct.
Also Saturday, a suicide attacker detonated a car bomb, targeting a U.S. military patrol on a highway three miles northwest of Ramadi, a city 70 miles west of Baghdad in the restive region known as the “Sunni Triangle,” Sgt. Laith Ismael of the Iraqi police said.
The U.S. military said in a statement the car bomb “detonated prematurely, before it could reach the patrol.” The statement made no mention of casualties.
U.S. and Iraqi forces also clashed Friday with gunmen in Ramadi after militants attacked a government building. No casualties were reported.
The Sunni Arab-led insurgency routinely attacks U.S. and other international troops while also targeting local security forces and officials they consider to be the Americans’ collaborators.
"They should kill the coalition soldier and the police"
Iraqis kept up protests Saturday against a Jordanian man they believe carried out a suicide bombing that killed 125 people in Hillah on Feb. 28. “No, no to terrorism,” chanted about 200 people in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.
The Jordanian daily Al-Ghad had reported that the man, Raed Mansour al-Banna, carried out the attack, the single deadliest of the Iraqi insurgency. The paper later issued a correction, however, saying it was not known where in Iraq al-Banna carried out an assault.
Al-Banna’s family has denied his involvement in the Hillah attack, saying he was killed while carrying out a suicide bombing in Mosul.
Saturday’s protest came a day after more than 2,000 Shiite demonstrators marched through Baghdad, raising the Iraqi flag over Jordan’s Embassy and demanding an apology from the Jordanian government.
Iraqi police and special forces gathered outside the embassy but failed to prevent demonstrators from reaching the building. The protesters later dispersed, and no violence was reported. Friday’s protest was the largest in a week of mounting anger.
Demands on Jordan On Wednesday, the leader of the clergy-backed United Iraqi Alliance claimed during Iraq’s first National Assembly meeting that neighboring Jordan wasn’t doing enough to prevent terrorists from slipping into Iraq.
A number of Iraqi politicians, including interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, have demanded explanations from the Jordanian government.
Jordanian government spokeswoman Asma Khader said her country condemned all terrorism and reconfirmed Jordan’s solidarity with the Iraqi people.
“The government condemns strongly any attack against the Iraqi people, in particular the hideous massacre of Hillah which killed scores of innocent people,” Khader said. “We have put intensive measures to track those terrorists and there is security coordination with Iraq to protect the borders of both countries.”
BAGHDAD, Iraq - When U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq two years ago, Adnan al-Eiby was thrilled. He thought that once Saddam Hussein was toppled, Iraq would become a flourishing Western-style democracy.
“But now, I walk down the street and all I see is death — innocent people blown up by terrorists and others shot by the Americans,” said the 32-year-old chauffeur. “I’m fed up with life. We pinned our hopes on the Americans but they let us down.”
Two years after the U.S.-led invasion, Iraqis are split between hope and despair.
Freedom against a backdrop of violence They have experienced the act of casting a vote in the first free and fair elections in Iraq’s modern history. But lawlessness prevails, and Iraq remains mired in acts of ferocity.
Although the United States last June transferred sovereignty to an Iraqi interim government led by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, insurgents have carried on a relentless campaign of suicide bombings, kidnappings and beheadings. Hundreds more have died in such attacks since the Jan. 30 elections that will soon bring a Shiite-led government to power.
Rampant crime, power outages, unemployment at over 50 percent and a fuel crisis in one of the world’s prime oil-exporting countries have added to the despondency.
“What has the interim government done, anyway?” al-Eiby asked, squatting in his one-room apartment in Sadr City, a Shiite Muslim slum in Baghdad, as raw sewage lapped at his doorstep.
Plague of poverty “Many people are struggling to find jobs, and our conditions have become more pathetic than that of the Afghans and the Palestinians,” he complained.
IRAQ Khalid Mohammed / AP Kadim Abeis wails in grief, and clutches the shoe of his dead brother, after gunmen in two cars opened fire on a vehicle carrying his brother Col. Ahmed Abeis in Baghdad on March 10. Al-Eiby specializes in driving people from Baghdad to Basra, a once well-paying occupation now hit hard by looters and insurgents who have turned Iraq’s highways and streets into death traps.
Although he lives in a slum, financial hard times led his landlord to increase his rent from 40,000 dinars ($27) to 100,000 dinars ($70) — a fortune for Sadr City.
Like al-Eiby, Balasim was also hit hard.
When the United States dismantled Iraq’s nuclear program after the invasion, he was given a lowly desk job at the Science and Technology Ministry and his salary was cut from about $200 to $135 a month.
‘Big picture’ provides some solace But he says he only cares “about the big picture.”
“We voted in a free election, we read newspapers that openly criticize government officials, we can say what we want out loud — things that do not happen in other Arab countries with no security issues, things that were the stuff of movies for us,” he said.
FREE VIDEO Launch • Kurdistan booms March 18: Two years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, only one part of the nation is booming: Kurdistan. NBC's Tom Aspell reports.
Nightly News More than 8 million Iraqis voted to elect a 275-National Assembly that is widely considered to be a first step on Iraq’s path to self-rule — and at the same time brought closer the day when Iraqis finally see the Americans leave.
Al-Eiby complained the elections may have given Iraqis a taste of democracy but have “not provided my family with bread and butter, nor do I feel safer now.”
His complaint is felt by hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, who remember more stable times under Saddam. Then, an ordinary Iraqi steering clear of politics could walk the streets without fear. Kidnap and murder were a tool to oppress Saddam’s perceived foes, and abduction for ransom and beheadings were almost unheard of. Now, nobody feels immune.
Surprising optimism But a report issued in September by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, based on wide-ranging interviews and polls, found that Iraqis have remained optimistic, “despite failures in security, services, economic opportunity.”
The report warned that the challenge faced by both Iraqi and American officials was to “harness and capitalize on Iraqis’ optimism” because “there is a real potential it could swing the other way if events in Iraq continue to trend negatively.”
Balasim, for one, was unconcerned.
“It is a matter of time,” he said, “like a sick person who’s recuperating: it just needs more time, and we’ll be better.”
Journalists accuse US soldiers of targeting children
All is quiet in Falluja, or at least that is how it seems, given that the mainstream media has largely forgotten about the Iraqi city. But independent journalists are risking life and limb to bring out a very different story.
The picture they are painting is of US soldiers killing whole families, including children, attacks on hospitals and doctors, the use of napalm-like weapons and sections of the city destroyed.
One of the few reporters who has reached Falluja is American Dahr Jamail of the Inter Press Service. He interviewed a doctor who had filmed the testimony of a 16-year-old girl.
"She stayed for three days with the bodies of her family who were killed in their home. When the soldiers entered she was in her home with her father, mother, 12 year-old brother and two sisters.
She watched the soldiers enter and shoot her mother and father directly, without saying anything. They beat her two sisters, then shot them in the head. After this her brother was enraged and ran at the soldiers while shouting at them, so they shot him dead," Jamail relates.
Disturbing reports
Another report comes from an aid convoy headed up by Dr Salem Ismael. He was in Falluja last month. As well as delivering aid he photographed the dead, including children, and interviewed remaining residents.
Again his story does not tally with the indifference shown by the main media networks.
"The accounts I heard ... will live with me forever. You may think you know what happened in Falluja, but the truth is worse than you could possibly have imagined"
Dr Salem Ismael, aid convoy leader "The accounts I heard ... will live with me forever. You may think you know what happened in Falluja, but the truth is worse than you could possibly have imagined," he says.
He relates the story of Hudda Fawzi Salam Issawi from the Julan district of Falluja: "Five of us, including a 55-year-old neighbour, were trapped together in our house in Falluja when the siege began. On 9 November American marines came to our house.
'My father and the neighbour went to the door to meet them. We were not fighters. We thought we had nothing to fear. I ran into the kitchen to put on my veil, since men were going to enter our house and it would be wrong for them to see me with my hair uncovered.
"This saved my life. As my father and neighbour approached the door, the Americans opened fire on them. They died instantly.
"Me and my 13-year-old brother hid in the kitchen behind the fridge. The soldiers came into the house and caught my older sister. They beat her. Then they shot her. But they did not see me. Soon they left, but not before they had destroyed our furniture and stolen the money from my father's pocket."
Targeting media
Journalist and writer Naomi Klein has also come under attack for insisting that US forces are eliminating those who dare to count casualties.
No less than the US ambassador to the UK David Johnson wrote a letter to British newspaper The Guardian that published Klein's work, demanding evidence, which she then provided.
The first piece of evidence Klein sent to Johnson was that the hospital in Falluja was raided to stop any reporting of casualties, a tactic that was later repeated in Mosul.
"The first major operation by US marines and Iraqi soldiers was to storm Falluja general hospital, arresting doctors and placing the facility under military control.
US troops have reportedly used napalm-like weapons
"The New York Times reported that 'the hospital was selected as an early target because the American military believed that it was the source of rumours about heavy casualties', noting that 'this time around, the American military intends to fight its own information war, countering or squelching what has been one of the insurgents' most potent weapons'.
The Los Angeles Times quoted a doctor as saying that the soldiers 'stole the mobile phones' at the hospital - preventing doctors from communicating with the outside world."
As Dahr Jamail reports from his online diary "doctors are now technically forbidden to talk to the media or allow them to take photos in Iraqi hospitals unless granted permission from the Ministry of Health and its US-adviser".
Napalm-like weapons
Allied to this are various reports of the US using napalm and napalm-like weaponry in Falluja.
US troops are accused of threatening Falluja hospital staff Jamail recounts: "Last November, another Falluja refugee from the Julan area, Abu Sabah, told me: 'They (US military) used these weird bombs that put up smoke like a mushroom cloud. Then small pieces fall from the air with long tails of smoke behind them.'
"He explained that pieces of these bombs exploded into large fires that burned peoples' skin even when water was dumped on their bodies, which is the effect of phosphorous weapons, as well as napalm."
The reports of the use of napalm in civilian areas are widespread, as are many other frightening allegations.
The attacks on the hospitals and medical facilities in Falluja are also in direct contravention of the Geneva Conventions.
But as Richard Perle, a senior adviser to US President George Bush said at the start of the Iraq war: "The greatest triumph of the Iraq war is the destruction of the evil of international law."
The Pentagon has reported a US soldier killed in Baghdad as US forces are attacked elsewhere in Iraq.
A Task Force Baghdad Soldier died from a gunshot wound when his patrol in northeast Baghdad came under small-arms attack at around 3.30pm (1230 GMT) on Friday.
The soldier’s name is being held pending notification of next of kin, the US military said.
Earlier a car bomb blast killed two Iraqi civilians and wounded 15 others, including six US soldiers, in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.
The US military said the soldiers wounded in the explosion on Thursday were all in a stable condition. There was, however, no word on the condition of the Iraqis.
US forces targeted
"The car bomb was driven by a suicide bomber. Two Iraqi citizens were killed. Six US soldiers and nine Iraqi civilians were injured," Sergeant John Franzen said.
Car bomb attacks occur nearly daily throughout Iraq
Mosul, home to 1.5 million people, has been witness to frequent clashes between US-led forces and their armed opponents since November.
Aljazeera learned that two drivers carrying car bombs targeted a US military convoy in the Iraqi city of Haditha west of Baghdad.
Reports said the attacks left casualties among US soldiers but the US army did not comment further.
Italy to start pulling troops out of Iraq in September Announcement comes two weeks after GIs killed
Rome -- Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, one of President Bush's most ardent supporters in Iraq, signaled his intention Tuesday to withdraw Italian troops from the country beginning in September. That would make Italy the latest country to reduce or eliminate its military contingent in the U.S.-led force.
Following the March 4 killing of an Italian intelligence agent by U.S. troops near the Baghdad airport, Berlusconi has come under new public pressure to take a cue from other countries that are withdrawing their troops from Iraq.
Italy, with about 3,000 soldiers in the country, is the fourth-largest contributor of foreign military forces in Iraq after the United States, Britain and South Korea.
More than a dozen countries have pulled back troops over the last year. On Monday, 160 troops from the Netherlands arrived home as part of a phased Dutch withdrawal. On Tuesday, Ukraine welcomed back more than 130 members of its 1,650-person force and has said it would complete a pullout by October. Poland plans to remove a few hundred of its 1,700 soldiers this summer and the rest by early 2006.
Berlusconi's political coalition faces regional elections next month and legislative elections next year. He has suggested he will again head a ticket as candidate for prime minister.
"We will begin to reduce our contingent even before the end of the year, starting in September, in agreement with our allies," Berlusconi said Tuesday during a talk show on state-run television. A withdrawal "will depend on the capability of the Iraqi government to be able to assume responsibility for security," he said.
It was the first time he had set a tentative timetable for a pullout. Berlusconi said he had "spoken about it" with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. He made no mention of notifying President Bush.
The shooting of Italian intelligence agent Nicola Calipari was a deep embarrassment to Berlusconi, who demanded in strong language a full explanation from the U.S. government.
American officials have said that the car Calipari and journalist Giuliana Sgrena were traveling in ignored repeated warnings to stop at a temporary checkpoint near Baghdad International Airport -- an allegation Berlusconi and his top aides repeatedly have denied. Calipari was in Iraq to negotiate the release of Sgrena, who had been kidnapped a month before.
On Tuesday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan advised reporters not to make a cause-and-effect link between Berlusconi's decision and the Baghdad shooting incident. He played down the significance of a possible Italian exit, saying it would be keyed to the ability of Iraqi forces to assume more responsibility and would be done in coordination with allies.
Twenty-one Italian soldiers have died in Iraq -- 19 of them in a suicide bombing in Nasiriya in November 2003. The latest was killed on Tuesday in what the military in Iraq said was an accident on a firing range.
Berlusconi made his comments shortly after Italy's Parliament voted to finance the operation of Italian troops in Iraq through June. In Iraq, an Italian soldier died after shooting himself in the head during target practice Tuesday.
At its peak, U.S. and allied forces numbered about 300,000 troops sent by a total of 38 countries. The contributing states have dropped to 25 and troop strength to about 170,000.
About 150,000 U.S. troops shoulder the bulk of the responsibility and suffer the most casualties. Excluding U.S. forces, there are 22,750 foreign soldiers still in Iraq.
Among the nations that withdrew last year were Spain, which pulled out 1, 300 soldiers; Tonga, 44; New Zealand, 60; Thailand, 423; the Philippines, 51; Honduras, 370; the Dominican Republic, 302; Nicaragua, 115; and Hungary, 300. Norway withdrew 150 troops, but left 16 liaison officers, and Singapore withdrew 160, but later provided a landing ship tank and crew.
A Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Barry Venable, said the reductions are part of the natural process of turning security over to Iraq's government. "The plan is to have the Iraqis fill in everywhere," he said.
The United States also is drawing down its troop levels. After bolstering the U.S. force to about 155,000 during Iraq's recent elections, the Pentagon is bringing some units home and expects to be down to 138,000 soldiers in a few months.
America's top two allies in Iraq -- Britain, with about 8,000 soldiers, and South Korea with 3,600 -- are standing firm. Australia, Albania and Georgia are boosting their presence, and NATO is expanding its training mission in Baghdad. Pulling back
Smoke rose from Green Zone after blasts echoed in the area
Iraq’s new parliament started its opening session on Wednesday after a series of blasts targeted the building where members of the national assembly met.
The assembly’s 275 members, elected during the country’s Jan. 30 national elections, gathered in an auditorium amid tight security in the heavily fortified Green Zone in central Baghdad with U.S. helicopters hovering overhead.
Minutes before the meeting, plumes of black smoke were seen over the assembly area and air raid sirens were heard after a series of explosions, almost certainly from mortars, detonated a few hundred yards away.
The assembly area wasn’t evacuated, and the Convention Center, where parliament met, didn’t appear to have been hit.
One correspondent inside the center said windows shook and the lights flickered as the explosions rocked the area.
The session started with a reading of verses from the Qur’an. Leaders of political factions and interim government officials were expected to give speeches, which will be followed with a swearing-in ceremony for parliament members.
"It is a great day in Iraqi history that its elected representatives meet," said Fuad Masoum, a Kurdish delegate.
To prevent car bomb attacks against Iraq’s new parliament members, authorities tightened security around the heavily guarded Green Zone, which has witnessed several mortar and missile attacks.
Meanwhile, a car bomb explosion near a military checkpoint in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, killed three Iraqi soldiers and injured seven people, a defense ministry official said on Wednesday.
Deadlock
Shiite Muslim officials said yesterday that they failed to reach a final deal on Iraq’s government in their negotiations with the Kurds. Their main points of differences are over the fate of Kurdish fighters and the city of Kirkuk.
Without an agreement, the inauguration of the Transitional National Assembly is ceremonial. The deputies will not select a president and vice-president.
Ali al-Dabagh, a member of the United Iraqi Alliance, which won most of parliament seats in the polls, said Tuesday that Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni Arab politicians will meet after the deputies are sworn in "to finalize things. We need two to three days to announce an agreement."
Shiite negotiations with Sunni Arabs focused on selecting a parliament speaker, and it is still unclear if they would nominate a candidate on Wednesday.
Last week, the United Iraqi Alliance and a Kurdish coalition struck a deal to form a coalition government with Shiite politician Ibrahim al-Jaafari as prime minister. In return, Jalal Talabani will be Iraq's first Kurdish president, though the presidency is a largely ceremonial post.
"The Kurds want to make some amendments on the deal, and we are going to finish soon, Thursday to be exact. We do not want to impose any name from our side regarding the post of the parliament speaker. We want the Sunnis to nominate some people for this post, but until now they have not done this," al-Dabagh said.
TWO MORE U.S. DEATHS: Tuesday, a U.S. soldier was killed and six others wounded when a bomb detonated during a patrol in Baghdad, U.S. military officials said. Several Iraqis and an Iraqi policeman also were wounded.
A U.S. Marine with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force died Monday in Anbar province, military officials reported Tuesday.
TWO NEW ATTACKS: A suicide car bomb exploded in northeastern Baghdad, killing a child and wounding at least four people, including a police officer, police Col. Muhanad Sadoun said. A suspected insurgent armed with a rocket-propelled grenade attacked a truck traveling with a U.S. military convoy in Youssifiyah, 12 miles south of Baghdad. Two people were injured.
LIEUTENANT GETS 45 DAYS: An Army platoon leader was sentenced Tuesday to 45 days in a military prison for his role in forcing two Iraqi civilians into the Tigris River.
Army 1st Lt. Jack Saville also must forfeit $2,000 of his military salary each month for six months, military judge Col. Theodore Dixon ruled. He earns $2,970 a month.
Prosecutors had recommended Saville, who chose a nonjury trial, be discharged from the Army.
Saville, a 25-year-old West Point graduate, pleaded guilty Monday to assault and other crimes for forcing two curfew violators into the river at gunpoint in January 2004 near Samarra. One man allegedly drowned.
The charges carried a maximum 91/2-year sentence, although a plea deal capped the sentence at 15 months; that part of the agreement was kept secret so the judge would not be influenced, officials said.
Left Party of Sweden: USA out of Iraq! Statement by the party board of the Left Party of Sweden, August 21, 2004
The United States' and its allies' war, violating international law, was followed by the occupation of Iraq. The past year, national assets have been sold out to companies from countries that supported the war. The occupation troops haven't created security in the country. Instead, torture, murder and inhuman treatment of prisoners have been disclosed.
Daily we receive reports on civilian women, men and children falling victims of the weapons of the occupying power. USA stands neither for democracy, nor human rights in Iraq. The longer USA, the United Kingdom and their allies stay in Iraq, the more the conflict is aggravated and the greater becomes the risk that fundamentalist, reactionary forces in Iraq are strengthened.
USA tries to legitimise the war afterwards. At the same time it is clear that the Bush regime isn't prepared to contribute to a real hand-over of power. The US foreign policy first and foremost aims at safeguarding its military and political power and the economic interests of its big corporations. In this strategy Iraq is indispensable.
The UN, disgracefully put aside before the war, is now used to legitimise the war and the occupation. This situation calls for a Swedish foreign policy that speak out about the occupation and protests against a world order where the USA seizes the right to disregard international law and human rights.
Under occupation, resistance against the occupation forces is legitimate. This resistance, though, can never include attacks against civilians and international aid organisations. The democratic resistance against the occupation troops should be supported. Full support should be given to the forces that want to create a secular, democratic and federalist Iraq.
Particularly important is that the women's and workers' movements are given the opportunity to play an important role in a future democratic Iraq. This is the only way to reduce the space for reactionary, fundamentalist and anti-democratic forces.
Not to dissociate oneself from the occupation is to legitimise the war afterwards. The Left Party of Sweden demands that the Swedish government condemns the occupation. In our opinion the interim Iraqi government lacks legitimacy, as did the previous ruling council. USA and its allies must leave Iraq. In order to make it possible for the Iraqi people to seize power over their own future, security for the population is essential.
An international presence under a UN mandate and without the participation of the countries that now are parts of the occupying power, can be necessary. In that case, the task is to conduct democratic elections. Sweden shall also work for the UN to clear Iraq from mines and decontaminate depleted uranium and other contaminated materials.
The Iraq War is a Farce [21 September 2004] The Iraq war is a farce. The United States of America led by George W Bush had invaded a sovereign country that was not a threat to America. George W Bush is either a liar or an idiot or both. After watching a pirated DVD copy of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 and The World According to Bush on SABC3 I'm convinced that we are all ignorant and have allowed this farce to continue long enough. I implore everyone to go and watch the funny yet poignant documentary Fahrenheit 9/11. If you didn't catch The Word According to Bush I taped it so pay me a visit and we can watch it together (again). Some of the obvious facts that was omitted and ignored by most people is as follows:
Dubya's grand father Prescott Bush was the secret banker for Adolph Hitler in World War 2 In the 1980s Donald Rumsfeld visited Iraq and recommended that the USA support them against Iran Osama Bin Laden was a CIA trained spy in Afghanistan fighting the Russians The Carlyle Group had Shafik Bin Laden, Osama's half-brother as a major shareholder Prince Bandar, Saudi Arabia ambassador to the USA organised that all Bin Laden's relatives in the USA and other Saudi's be flown back to Saudi Arabia on September 12, 2001 when no other plains were allowed to fly in the USA
There's an endless stream of evidence that Bush and Co planned to get rid of Saddam Hussein before 9/11. Both documentaries mentioned above prove this beyond a shadow of a doubt. So what can we do about this? We must encourage our President, Thabo Mbeki to more outspoken about the USA and Britain withdrawing from Iraq. Saddam cannot be tried by any courts that has anything to do with the USA because the have inherent bias. So send emails to Thabo Mbeki at president@gov.za and tell him to tell the USA to get the hell out of Iraq (and Afghanistan). While you at it email George W Bush president@whitehouse.gov and tell him as well where to shove it. Never before has there been a more arrogant and stupid president in the USA. Bush pales by comparison to leaders like Kennedy and Lincoln.
Oil reserve management needs more transparency, the report says
The reconstruction of post-war Iraq is in danger of becoming "the biggest corruption scandal in history", Transparency International has warned.
The anti-corruption body said urgent steps were needed to ensure that corruption did not become endemic.
Publishing its annual report, TI said there was evidence of "high levels" of corruption in post-war Iraq.
The Iraqi government, coalition forces and foreign donors must be more "aggressive" on corruption, it said.
'Strong measures'
Foreign contractors should be bound by anti-corruption laws while the management of Iraq's oil revenues needed to be much more transparent and accountable, Transparency International said in its Global Corruption Report 2005.
"Strong and immediate measures must be taken to address corruption before the real spending on reconstruction starts," it said.
Iraq has so far failed to learn the lessons of post-war reconstruction in Cambodia, Congo and Afghanistan, TI said, where a combination of weak government, thriving black markets, and a legacy of patronage allowed corruption to flourish.
The US has been a poor role model in how to keep corrupt practices at bay Transparency International
Since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, bribery has taken place at all levels of government while officials within the Coalition Provisional Authority, contractors and ministry staff have admitted to corruption.
According to Transparency International, the former regime's control of the economy left a legacy of corruption which survived its collapse.
'Secret process'
However, the body is critical of the United States' handling of the reconstruction process, arguing that its process for awarding public contracts was secretive and favoured a small number of large firms.
Its comments echo those of the International Advistory and Monitoring Board, a United Nations body, which in December criticised the CPA for awarding contracts to oil services firm Halliburton and other firms without a competitive process.
"In its procurement strategies, the US has been a poor role model in how to keep corrupt practices at bay," the report says.
Attempts to tackle corruption, such as independent auditing of government ministries and new laws to protect whistleblowers, had only had a modest impact.
The diversion of funds from publicly financed projects represents an unacceptable tax on the poor James Wolfensohn, World Bank
Failure to address corruption threatened to push up the cost of rebuilding Iraq and hold back its economic development.
"Corruption doesn't just line the pockets of political and business elites, it leaves ordinary people without essential services and deprives them of access to sanitation and housing," said Peter Eigen, Transparency International's chairman.
Blacklisting
Tougher penalties are needed to stamp out the corruption blighting public procurement, not just in Iraq but worldwide, TI said.
Companies found guilty of bribery should forfeit the relevant contract and should be prevented from bidding for similar work. Tendering processes should be open to public scrutiny and independent oversight.
The World Bank - which since last year has required all companies awarded large-scale projects under its control to sign an anti-bribery agreement - said the report highlighted issues of "deep concern".
"The diversion of funds from publicly financed projects represents an unacceptable tax on the poor," said World Bank president James Wolfensohn.
"In the construction sector, it represents a deplorable opportunity lost for the delivery of essential services and it undermines citizen trust in government."
Six weeks after Iraqis voted, the convening of the National Assembly reveals what they voted for
More than six weeks after Iraq’s election, the people finally get to see their government in action today when the National Assembly meets for the first time, another historic milestone in Iraq's transition to democracy. Besides appointing a government and governing the country over the next year, the Assembly will oversee the drafting of a new Iraqi constitution. How that document will turn out, and whether the new Iraq will take the shape that the U.S. would like, is still very much up in the air, and will depend on how Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis accommodate their differing concerns. A look at some of the issues:
Kurdish power
The big winner on election day was the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), a mostly Shiite list assembled under the auspices of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and led by moderate Islamist parties with historic ties to Iran. The UIA, which has nominated Dr. Ibrahim al-Jaafari as prime minister, won 140 of the 275 seats in the Assembly, giving it the simple majority required to pass legislation, but not the two-thirds required under the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL), the interim constitution bequeathed by former U.S. administrator J. Paul Bremer, to choose a government. That means the Shiites have to negotiate a deal with the parties that will give them the votes required to create a government. And that requirement has made kingmakers of the Kurds — 3 million out of Iraq's 27 million people — and given them an unprecedented opportunity to press their own demands for autonomy.
The Kurdish list, representing the main factions of the independence-minded people of the three northern provinces, won 75 Assembly seats, making it the natural coalition ally for the UIA because between them, the two lists account for 75 percent of the seats, making further alliances unnecessary. The chief rival to the Shiite list, the secular Iraqi list of U.S.-appointed prime minister Iyad Allawi finished a distant third at the polls, winning 40 seats in the Assembly. Allawi had initially hoped to team up with the Kurds and persuade more secular-inclined members of the Shiite list to break away in order to return him to office, but that now appears to be a fantasy. Allawi insists he will accept no job other than the one he currently holds, and is preparing to assume the role of leader of the opposition in the new Assembly — although that may be a bargaining position designed to ensure an important cabinet post in a national-unity oriented government.
The Shiites and Kurds have reportedly achieved the outline of a deal, in which Jaafari will replace Allawi as prime minister, with the presidency going to aging Kurdish guerrilla leader Jalal Talabani. One of the two vice presidencies will go to Adel Abdul-Mahdi, the current finance minister who is also on the Shiite list, while the other will go to an as-yet unnamed Sunni — possibly current interim president Ghazi al-Yawer, although he is also believed to be a top contender for the role of speaker of the Assembly, which will also be reserved for a Sunni in the hope that the community that largely stayed away from the polls must nonetheless be accommodated in the new political arrangements if there is to be any chance of snuffing out the insurgency that continues to kill scores of Iraqis every week.
The sticking point in negotiations between the Shiite and the Kurdish lists has been less over the makeup of the executive branch than over broad guarantees demanded by the Kurds for secularism and adherence to the TAL (which is rejected, in principle, by Sistani, among others) — and more importantly, over Kurdish separatist demands. The Kurds are using the kingmaker status granted them by the TAL to demand not only that they maintain the autonomy they have enjoyed for over a decade under the protection of the Allied “no-fly” zone, but also that their domain be extended to include the fiercely contested oil-rich city of Kirkuk. They want a greater share of oil revenues, and also insist on keeping their ethnic militia — the peshmerga — intact, simply incorporating it under the umbrella of the Iraqi national army but making it the de facto defense force of the Kurdish region, into which no other national army units would be allowed to enter. In essence, the Kurds are naming as their price for cooperation the right to put in place the basic infrastructure of secession in an expanded Kurdish region
Shiites squeezed
The Shiites are reluctant to concede many of these points, which are anathema to a wide range of Arab Iraqis, both Sunni and Shiite, and also to the small Turkoman population of the north. They have tried to persuade the Kurds to let questions such as the status of Kirkuk be resolved in a democratic parliament rather than in back-room talks, but until now the Kurds have driven a hard bargain.
The Bremer constitution was designed to dilute and disperse the power of the majority Shiites, but in the process it considerably amplified the power of the Kurdish minority. That threatens national stability; by parlaying their kingmaker role into a series of autonomy guarantees to be written down even before the new parliament has convened, the risk of breakdown in the system grows. Conceding to Kurdish demands on Kirkuk, for example, will further alienate the Sunni population of northern Iraq. Also, if the peshmerga are maintained on the terms demanded by the Kurdish leaders, it will inevitably be more difficult to persuade other factions to disarm their own militias. The Sunnis may not currently have significant representation in the political process, but a significant segment of the community is represented on the battlefield by the insurgency. If the Kurds and Sunnis continue to bear arms, there may be less incentive for militias attached to various Shiite factions to put down their own weapons — unless they, too, can be incorporated into the national army.
Security concerns
Such security issues may pose some of the trickiest challenges for the new government. Key leaders of the UIA, such as Abdelaziz Hakim of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, have made clear they want to conduct a wholesale purge of the security forces to weed out former Baathists. But in the past year Prime Minister Allawi has quietly reversed the U.S. policy of “de-Baathificiation,” which he viewed as dangerous mistakes. A renewed push to purge former Baathists could create further tensions that would play into the hands of the insurgency.
The future of U.S. troops in Iraq could also become a point of contention, with UIA leaders suggesting that while they don't want them out right away, they want to see a timetable for U.S. withdrawal. Some UIA leaders are also pushing to make Islamic Sharia law the basis of personal-status law in the new Iraq, governing issues such as marriage, divorce and inheritance — a proposal that would leave the legal status of women. But the more Islamist leaders in the UIA may not be able to count on the support of many of their more moderate and secularist colleagues, let alone their coalition partners.
The rules of government
Bremer's rules were designed to force Iraq's sectarian political leaders to work together and find the compromises necessary to build consensus. But they may also have inadvertently built in a basic instability to the system. The Shiites, in particular, will be watching carefully to see that democracy gives their leaders a political dominance equivalent to their demographic dominance. If the Bremer rules are perceived to be holding them back, they'll challenge them. After all, the primary purpose of the new National Assembly is for the Iraqis themselves to design their own rules for the next stage of the political contest.
BOWING to popular pressure, the Italian Government said last night that it would start pulling its more than 3,000 troops out of Iraq in September.
The surprise announcement by Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister, came less than two weeks after US troops shot dead Nicola Calipari, Italy’s top intelligence officer in Iraq, as he escorted a freed Italian hostage to safety.
Italy has 3,200 troops and Carabinieri paramilitary police in al-Nasiriyah, a former insurgent stronghold in the British-controlled southern sector of Iraq. The Italian withdrawal is bound to increase pressure on the British Government to fill the gap.
Britain has had to move 650 troops from the Basra area to take over territory previously controlled by departing Dutch troops. Ukraine and the Netherlands pulled out their troops this week as the coalition began to show signs of unravelling.
Signor Berlusconi said that he had discussed the withdrawal with Tony Blair. “It is public opinion in our countries which expects this decision,” he said.
The Italians, who have a brigade deployed in and around the Shia city of al-Nasiriyah, had been regarded as one of the most committed coalition partners.
Signor Berlusconi has been one of the strongest supporters of President Bush’s Iraq policy, and Italy has the fourth largest military contingent in Iraq.
However, anti-war sentiment was galvanised this month by the death of Signor Calipari, a secret service agent, at the hands of US troops in a friendly fire incident while he was taking an Italian woman hostage to safety.
It was reinforced yesterday by the death of an Italian paratrooper in Iraq who was shot in the head by accident during target practice. He was named as Salvatore Marracino, from Apulia, aged 28.
“We will begin to reduce our contingent in Iraq before the end of the year, in agreement with our allies,” Signor Berlusconi announced on television. “The first reduction will start in September”.
He had previously always stuck to the formula that Italian troops would pull out “when the legitimate Government of Iraq requests it”.
The announcement coincided with a state visit to Britain by President Ciampi, accompanied by Gianfranco Fini, the Foreign Minister. Last week Signor Fini told Parliament that Italy wanted clear answers from the US over the death of Signor Calipari, which led to an outpouring of national grief.
British and American sources tried to play down the impact of the Italian retreat. The White House brushed aside any suggestion that the Italian troop withdrawal was a setback for Washington, and denied that the decision was linked to the shooting of Signor Calipari.
U.S. lost control shortly after invasion – Army report
The U.S. military underestimated the Iraqi resistance
The American military lost its dominance in Iraq three months after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, an army report said.
The report was prepared by Maj. Isaiah Wilson, the official historian of the U.S. Army for the Iraq war.
Wilson also worked as a war planner for the military’s 101st Airborne Division until March 2004, Middle East Newsline reported.
The new report, not yet authorized as official army history, has been presented to several academic conferences.
Wilson said that the army failed to occupy and stabilize Iraq in 2003. As a result, it lost its control in the country by July 2003 and has yet to regain that position.
"In the two to three months of ambiguous transition, U.S. forces slowly lost the momentum and the initiative gained over an off-balanced enemy," the report said.
"The United States, its Army and its coalition of the willing have been playing catch-up ever since." it added.
In November 2003, the army designed a formal plan, called Phase-4, for stability and post-combat operations, Wilson said.
The plan was meant to follow such phases as the preparation for combat and initial operations, but Wilson said that there were no other plans to stabilize the country.
"There was no Phase IV plan," the report said. "While there may have been plans at the national level, and even within various agencies within the war zone, none of these plans operationalized the problem beyond regime collapse. There was no adequate operational plan for stability operations and support operations."
Other military commanders, including former Central Command chief Gen. Tommy Franks, disputed Wilson's report, claiming that the army invaded Iraq with a stabilization plan.
Lack of planning
Wilson’s conclusions revealed the lack of planning by the U.S. army for its operations in Iraq.
Over the past year, the U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his aides have been accused of poor post-war planning based on their initial assessment that military operations in Iraq would be brief and quickly result in a democratic and stable post-Saddam Hussein government.
On the contrary, Wilson said that military planners didn’t understand or accept the prospect that Iraqis would resist the U.S. occupation forces after the fall of the Saddam regime.
Wilson also described the performance of the military in Iraq as mediocre and said that it could easily lose the war.
"U.S. war planners, practitioners and the civilian leadership conceived of the war far too narrowly," the report said.
"This overly simplistic conception of the war led to a cascading undercutting of the war effort: too few troops, too little coordination with civilian and governmental/non-governme ntal agencies and too little allotted time to achieve success."
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A roadside bomb has killed two American contractors in Iraq (news - web sites), the U.S. embassy said on Sunday.
An embassy spokesman said the contractors working for the Blackwater security company were headed for the southern town of Hilla when the bomb exploded as they passed by on Saturday.
A third contractor was wounded in the attack.
Insurgents have frequently targeted foreign contractors as part of a campaign to topple the interim government and drive out U.S. troops.
BAGHDAD (AP) — Guerrillas launched a series of attacks in Iraq on Monday that left 31 people dead and dozens wounded as the country took its first major step toward forming a government whose most crucial task will be dealing with the insurgency.
An injured man rushed to a hospital after insurgents launched a series of apparently coordinated attacks in and around the city of Baqouba Monday.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq purportedly claimed responsibility in an Internet statement for much of the bloodshed — violence in and around Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, where 15 people died.
The Baqouba assaults included a car bomb, three roadside bombs and small arms attacks three checkpoints, one of them just south of Baqouba in Muradiyah, said police Col. Mudhafar al-Jubbori
U.S. Maj. Ed House said a suicide car bombing outside a police station there killed nine people and wounded 17. The dead included the bomber, two police, three soldiers and three civilians.
In another attack near the city, a group of about 20 insurgents in five vehicles attacked an army checkpoint with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, killing five Iraqi soldiers. The troops fought back, killing one of the attackers. Nine people were wounded, House said.
Guerrillas also fired a mortar around near the blue-domed governor's office, causing no casualties, a spokesman for the U.S. 42nd Infantry Division, Maj. Richard Goldenberg.
Another car bomb exploded outside the home of an Iraqi army officer in Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad, killing 12 people and injuring 21 others, said the city's police chief, Ayad Ahmed. Hospital officials said all of the dead were bystanders.
In Baghdad, gunmen killed two police and wounded a third in a drive-by shooting in the eastern slum of Sadr City, said Dr. Abdul Jabar Solan, director of a hospital where the casualties were brought.
Two civilians were also killed when a roadside bomb targeting a joint U.S.-Iraqi military convoy exploded in the west Baghdad neighborhood of Amiriyah. The explosion missed the convoy, damaging two passing cars and wounding four people, including two girls, said 1st Lt. Ali Hussein Hamdani. Another roadside bomb exploded in the southeastern New Baghdad suburb, wounding several people on a bus.
In the latest in a wave of abductions, Jordan's Foreign Ministry spokesman said a Jordanian businessman was kidnapped in Iraq by abductors demanding $250,000 in ransom.
More than 190 foreigners have been abducted in Iraq in the past year. At least 13 remain in the hands of their captors and more than 30 were killed. The rest were freed, some through the payment of ransom, or escaped.
In Bulgaria, Defense Minister Nikolai Svinarov said a Bulgarian soldier killed last week in Iraq was likely shot by friendly fire from troops of the U.S.-led coalition.
A U.S. military spokesman, Tech. Sgt. Patrick Murphy, said the commanding general in the region had appointed a commission to investigate.
Monday's violence came a day after politicians set March 16 for the opening of the country's first democratically elected parliament in modern history as a deal hardened Sunday to name Jalal Talabani, a leader of the minority Kurds, to the presidency. The day marks the anniversary of the 1988 Saddam-ordered chemical attack on the northern Kurdish town of Halabja, which killed 5,000 people.
The more powerful prime minister's job will go to Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a deeply conservative Shiite who leads the Islamic Dawa party. His nomination, which the Kurds have agreed to, has been endorsed by the most powerful Shiite cleric in Iraq — Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
"This was one of our firm demands and we agreed on it previously. The agreement states that Jalal Talabani takes the presidential post and one of the United Iraqi Alliance members takes the prime minister's post," Talabani spokesman Azad Jundiyan told The Associated Press.
He said the clergy-backed United Iraqi Alliance also reached a preliminary agreement with the Kurds on their other conditions — including extending their territories to include Kirkuk.
Jundiyan said they wanted the deal on paper before going though with it, while alliance officials, including Ahmad Chalabi, said those negotiations were not over.
Al-Jaafari and the alliance agreed on Talabani's presidency during a March 3 meeting with Kurdish leaders in northern Irbil. Kurds had long wanted the job for Talabani, the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
The alliance, which won 140 seats in the assembly, needs the 75 seats held by a Kurdish coalition to gain the two-thirds majority needed to elect a president and two vice presidents, the first step toward setting up a government under a prime minister.
Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, who controls 40 seats in the assembly, also has been negotiating to keep his job.
Officials have said the post of speaker probably would go to a Sunni Arab — either interim President Ghazi al-Yawer or interim Minister of Industry Hajim al-Hassani.
A Sunni Arab speaker would go far toward appeasing the minority, which is believed to make up the core of the insurgency and, like the Kurds, represents 15% to 20% of Iraq's estimated 26 million people. But unlike the Kurds, Sunni Arabs largely stayed away from the election to protest the U.S. presence in the country.
Kurdish demands include an autonomous Kurdistan as part of federal Iraq and a share of region's oil revenues. They also want to maintain their peshmerga militia and want a bigger share of the national budget.
Their demand for a federal state, though, would require redrawing the Kurds' current autonomous state borders to include Kurdish areas — oil-rich Kirkuk among them — that were dominated by Saddam loyalists and Sunni Arabs.
Chalabi, whose own party is part of the alliance, said no deal had yet been made with the Kurds — especially concerning Kirkuk.
"There are no obstacles at all, there are friendly negotiations with the Kurds because we have been allies for a long time and have common understandings," Chalabi told the Al-Jazeera television network. "There are two authorized committees, one represents the United Iraqi Alliance and the second represents the Kurds, that are negotiating over these issues in Baghdad."
Injured people are taken away after attacks in Baquba, Iraq
Baquba is frequently the scene of militant attacks Insurgents have killed at least 25 Iraqis in attacks in towns north of Baghdad, reports say.
A suicide car bomber blew himself up in Balad, killing at least 15 people and wounding many others, police said.
In Baquba, five soldiers were killed in an attack on an army checkpoint, and five other people died in a series of other bomb attacks in the town.
Meanwhile attempts are continuing to form Iraq's first democratic government before parliament opens next week.
String of attacks
In Balad, the attacker detonated his vehicle outside the house of an Iraqi army officer, police said.
Several houses were damaged by the blast, they said.
Earlier, at about 0700 (0400 GMT), insurgents launched the first attack on Baquba, in the western al-Muradiyah district.
An army checkpoint came under small arms and mortar fire, killing at least five troops and wounding six, reports said.
Later a series of bomb attacks in the town left at least five people dead.
A car bomb exploded in a street in the al-Mualimeen area. Two policemen were killed, a police spokesman said.
Further roadside bomb attacks killed three people - it was not clear whether they were security forces or civilians - and a mortar was fired into the centre of the town but failed to cause any injuries.
At least 18 people were said to have been wounded in the various incidents in Baquba.
Kurdish president?
Against a backdrop of continuing violence, Iraq said on Sunday that it will hold the first session of its newly elected assembly on 16 March.
Deputy prime minister Barham Salih said that if a government had not been selected by then, discussions would continue within the assembly itself.
As negotiations to form a coalition continued between the main Shia list, which has won a slim majority of seats, and the main Kurdish alliance, Kurds said they expected to get the post of president.
The favourite to take the most powerful post, prime minister, is Ibrahim Jaafari, of the Shia Islamic Daawa Party.
It was reported the position of parliamentary speaker might go to a Sunni.
Italian journalist rejects U.S. account of shooting
ROME (AP) — The Italian journalist wounded by American troops in Iraq after her release by insurgents rejected the U.S. military's account of the shooting and declined Sunday to rule out the possibility she was deliberately targeted. The White House said it was a "horrific accident" and promised a full investigation.
The coffin of Italian information officer Nicola Calipari lies in state inside the Vittoriano Tomb of the Unknown Soldier monument in Rome Sunday. By Isidoro Pitera, AP
Meanwhile, an autopsy performed on the agent who died trying to save Giuliana Sgrena reportedly showed he was struck in the temple by a single round and died instantly as the car carrying Sgrena sped to the Baghdad airport.
Friday's shooting that wounded the 56-year-old journalist and killed Italian intelligence officer Nicola Calipari as they were celebrating her freedom has fueled anti-American sentiment in a country where people are deeply opposed to U.S. policy in Iraq.
But government officials indicated the shootings would not affect the decision by Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi — a strong U.S. ally — to maintain 3,000 troops in Iraq to help secure peace in the country.
"The military mission must carry on because it consolidates democracy and liberty in Iraq," Communications Minister Maurizio Gasparri was quoted as saying by the ANSA news agency. "On the other hand, we must control — but not block — the presence of civilians and journalists, who must observe rules and behavior to reduce the risks."
Sgrena, who works for the communist daily Il Manifesto, did not rule out that she was targeted, saying the United States likely disapproved of Italy's methods to secure her release, although she did not elaborate.
"The fact that the Americans don't want negotiations to free the hostages is known," Sgrena told Sky TG24 television by telephone, her voice hoarse and shaky. "The fact that they do everything to prevent the adoption of this practice to save the lives of people held hostages, everybody knows that. So I don't see why I should rule out that I could have been the target."
Italian officials have not provided details about the negotiations leading to Sgrena's release Friday after a month in captivity, but Agriculture Minister Giovanni Alemanno was quoted as saying it was "very likely" a ransom was paid. U.S. officials object to ransoms, saying it encourages further kidnappings.
White House counselor Dan Bartlett said Sunday the shootings were a "horrific accident" and pointed out that President Bush had called Berlusconi to offer condolences and promise a full investigation.
"As you know, in a situation where there is a live combat zone, particularly this road to the airport, has been a notorious area for car bombs, that people are making split-second decisions, and it's critically important that we get the facts before we make judgments," Bartlett said on CNN's Late Edition.
The U.S. military has said the car Sgrena was riding in was speeding, and Americans used hand and arm signals, flashing white lights and warning shots to get it to stop at the roadblock.
But in an interview with Italian La 7 TV, Sgrena said, "There was no bright light, no signal." She also said the car was traveling at "regular speed."
Sgrena also recalled how Calipari, who led negotiations for her release, died after throwing himself over her when the shooting broke out as they were celebrating her freedom on the way to the airport.
"I remember only fire," she wrote in Il Manifesto, which fiercely opposed the war in Iraq. "At that point a rain of fire and bullets came at us, forever silencing the happy voices from a few minutes earlier."
Sgrena said the driver began shouting that they were Italian, then "Nicola Calipari dove on top of me to protect me and immediately, and I mean immediately, I felt his last breath as he died on me."
Suddenly, she said, she remembered her captors' words, when they warned her "to be careful because the Americans don't want you to return."
Sgrena wrote that her captors warned her as she was about to be released not to signal her presence to anyone, because "the Americans might intervene." She said her captors blindfolded her and drove her to a location where she was turned over to agents and they set off for the airport.
Calipari's body was returned to Italy late Saturday, and Berlusconi and President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi joined Calipari's wife, mother and two children at Rome's Ciampino Airport to receive it.
An autopsy was performed Sunday, and ANSA quoted doctors as saying Calipari was struck in the temple by a single round and died instantly.
The body lay in state at Rome's Vittoriano monument and a state funeral was planned for Monday. Calipari was to be awarded the gold medal of valor for his heroism.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called Italy's defense minister, Antonio Martino, "to express the sorrow of the American administration, and his own personal sorrow for the death of Nicola Calipari," Italy's Defense Ministry said in a statement. The U.S. military has promised an "aggressive" investigation.
Italian military officials said two other agents were wounded, but U.S. officials said it was only one.
Iraqi politician Younadem Kana told Belgian state TV Saturday evening that he had "nonofficial" information that a $1 million ransom was paid for Sgrena's release, the Apcom news agency reported from Brussels. The report could not be confirmed.
Sgrena told Sky TG24 she had no intention of returning to Iraq. Her captors, she said, made it clear that "they do not want witnesses and we are all perceived as possible spies."
Sgrena was abducted Feb. 4 by gunmen who blocked her car outside Baghdad University. She was later shown in a video pleading for her life and demanding that all foreign troops — including Italian forces — leave Iraq.
TTurkish troops have been in Iraq's Kurdish areas since 1992
The Turkish army has deployed 1357 soldiers in northern Iraq to fight Kurdish separatists, Defence Minister Vecdi Gonul has said.
Gonul, in answer to parliamentary questions, said the Turkish troops, deployed since 1992 in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, were there mainly to pursue the Kurdish separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
Turkish officers in the area also act as a liaison with US troops deployed in Kirkuk, Mosul and Tal Afar, the minister added.
An estimated 5000 Kurdish separatists have taken refuge in the mountains of northern Iraq, according to Turkish authorities.
The PKK waged a bloody 15-year war for self-rule in the mainly Kurdish eastern and south-eastern parts of Turkey before announcing a unilateral ceasefire in 1999.
The war is estimated to have killed 36,000 people.
The group called off the truce in June last year, threatening to carry out attacks and warning tourists and investors to stay away from the country.
Since then, there has been a sharp increase in clashes between the rebels and Turkish government troops.
US troops imposed a blockade on Barwana district, west of Haditha
A police chief has been gunned down near his home in south-central Iraq, said the Polish military, which is deployed in the region, while one person was killed and three were wounded in a car bomb in Baquba.
Another car bomb exploded in the northern city of Mosul in the path of a US convoy. There was no immediate word on casualties.
"Today in the morning hours, al-Budair police chief Colonel Ghaib Hadab Zarib was killed," the military said in a statement on Friday.
"His body was found near his house. The unknown attackers shot at him using an AK-rifle."
Al-Budair is 45km east of Diwaniya in south-central Iraq, where Polish forces are deployed.
Car bombs
An Iraqi civilian was killed and three were wounded when a car bomb parked on the street in Baquba, 60km northeast of Baghdad, exploded about 3pm (1200 GMT), a police source said.
In Mosul, a car bomb parked on the side of a freeway was detonated when a US military convoy passed by at about noon (0900 GMT), witnesses said.
"I saw people come and park the car and then they got into an Opel that was waiting and sped away," said Mohammed Jassim Abdullah, a guard at a nearby riverside park.
There was no immediate comment from the US military on any casualties among its forces.
The explosion left a big hole on the road's shoulder, and remains of the vehicle were strewn everywhere, an AFP correspondent at the scene reported.
In Baghdad, a series of explosions that appeared to be a mortar attack rocked the northern side of the city at about midday and the bridge connecting the Sunni Adhamiyah district with Shiite Khadimiyah on the east bank was blocked with rocks.
Appeal for hostages' release
Meanwhile, a French Muslim leader called on Friday for the immediate release of journalists held in Iraq, including a French reporter who pleaded for her life in a video tape released this week.
"We call for the immediate release of Florence Aubenas and Husain Hanun al-Saadi (her Iraqi interpreter)," Muhammad Bishari, vice-president of the French Council for the Muslim Faith (CFCM), said in Amman.
"We tell the Iraqi resistance that they should not be mistaken about who they are fighting. France has always been on the side of human dignity and the right of people to self-determination," he said.
Bishari, who also called for the release of Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena, said he will repeat the appeal later on Friday at a conference on Arab-European dialogue and human rights that he is attending in Jordan.
Florence Aubenas disappeared in Baghdad on 5 January "Abductions are not part of our Arab and Muslim traditions, particularly when the victim is a woman who should be well-treated.
"Arab and Muslim public opinion will never forgive such an irresponsible act," he added.
Aubenas, a reporter for the French daily Liberation, disappeared in Baghdad on 5 January with her Iraqi interpreter. Sgrena, who works for the Italian daily Il Manifesto, went missing in the Iraqi capital on 4 February.
Bishari was among a CFCM delegation that visited Baghdad in September to try to secure the release of French reporters Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, who were freed in December, four months after their abduction.
Shia-Kurdish meetings
In a separate development, Iraq's Shia and Kurds were planning on Friday to intensify their bargaining over the shape of the next government, one month after the country's elections.
The Shia political bloc, the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), with 140 seats in the new 275-member National Assembly, is negotiating with the Kurdish Alliance, whose 77 votes make it the second largest party.
"There are almost daily meetings and they are going to be intensified," said Husain Shahrastani, a senior UIA member and confidant of revered Shia spiritual leader Grand Ayat Allah Ali al-Sistani.
"There is understanding on a number of issues. There is progress." Shahrastani said there was hope for a deal within a few days.
Also on Friday, US troops imposed a blockade around Barwana district, west of Haditha city, which has been under siege by US troops for the past five days after a missile attack targeted government buildings used by US soldiers.
Freed Italian hostage Giuliana Sgrena has been hurt by US troops firing at a car taking her to Baghdad airport soon after her release.
An Italian secret service agent was killed in the shooting at a checkpoint.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi summoned the US ambassador demanding an explanation for what he called "such a serious incident".
The US military in Baghdad confirmed that forces shot at a vehicle and said an investigation had been launched.
"About 2100 [1800 GMT], a patrol in western Baghdad observed the vehicle speeding towards their checkpoint and attempted to warn the driver to stop by hand and arm signals, flashing white lights, and firing warning shots in front of the car," it said in a statement.
"When the driver didn't stop, the soldiers shot into the engine block, which stopped the vehicle, killing one and wounding two others."
'Dumbfounded'
Mr Berlusconi, a staunch supporter of the US-led invasion of Iraq, said there were "disquieting questions" that needed to be answered.
This was a joyful moment... which has been transformed into profound pain
Silvio Berlusconi, Italian Prime Minister
"We are petrified and dumbfounded by this fatality," he said of the death of the agent, named as Nicola Calipari.
Mr Calipari died trying to shield Ms Sgrena with his body when they came under fire, Mr Berlusconi said.
"It is a pity. This was a joyful moment which made all our compatriots happy, which has been transformed into profound pain by the death of a person who behaved so bravely."
Ms Sgrena had a minor operation to extract shrapnel from her shoulder and a second agent was reported injured.
Demands
Earlier, a video was broadcast on the Arabic al-Jazeera satellite network showing an apparently healthy Ms Sgrena thanking her captors for the way they treated her.
A little-known militant group, Islamic Jihad Organisation, had said it kidnapped her and demanded that Italy withdraw its troops from Iraq.
Ms Sgrena's colleagues cheered the initial news of her release
The same group said in September it had killed two Italian aid workers, Simona Torretta and Simona Pari, who were later released by another organisation.
Two weeks ago, Ms Sgrena appeared in a video begging for help and urging foreign troops to leave Iraq.
In the emotional footage, a tense and tearful Ms Sgrena said: "You must end the occupation, it's the only way we can get out of this situation. I'm counting on you."
Shortly after the video appeared, the Italian Senate voted to extend the country's military presence in Iraq.
It has been suggested that the video was released to coincide with the vote.
Italian targets
Many foreigners have been kidnapped by Iraqi militants, usually demanding the withdrawal of foreign troops or companies associated with the US-led invasion of the country.
Some have been killed, while others have been released. Many more Iraqis have been kidnapped, usually for ransom.
Jacqueline Aubenas, a reporter with the French Liberation newspaper, is still being held in Iraq.
Her mother criticised the French government on Wednesday, saying that internal squabbles were hampering attempts to secure her release.
Ms Sgrena is the eighth Italian to have been taken hostage.
An Italian journalist and Red Cross aid worker, Enzo Baldoni, was kidnapped last August and killed by a group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq.
Four Italians were taken hostage in Iraq in April. One of them, civilian security guard Fabrizio Quattrocchi, was later shot dead by his captors, while three were released.
British practices in Iraq reminiscent of colonial times
British soldiers appeared in photographs abusing and torturing Iraqi detainees
Analysts and commentators believe the abuses that occurred at 'Camp Breadbasket', a sanctimonious term if ever there was one, in Iraq are consistent with British colonial rule - brutal, oppressive and racist.
The British Chancellor Gordon Brown was on an African trip in mid-January over debt relief and in an effort to relieve Britain over its colonial history burden.
During one of his speeches he said, "The days of Britain having to apologise for its colonial history are over. We should talk, and rightly so, about British values that are enduring, because they stand for some of the greatest ideas in history: tolerance, liberty, civic duty, that grew in Britain and influenced the rest of the world. Our strong traditions of fair play, of openness, of internationalism, these are great British values."
Less than a week later photographs surfaced detailing British soldiers standing on Iraqis enmeshed in netting, forcing them to simulate sexual positions, feigning punches to the head and parading them on forklift trucks.
Their actions suggested that while Brown was busy unilaterally absolving the inequities of Britain's colonial past, the Iraqis were still dealing with the iniquities of Britain's colonial present.
Tony Blair's government has taken a leaf out of the U.S. government's book on how to deal with such a fallout following the Abu Ghraib prison scandal by dismissing the British soldiers as deviant wrongdoers in what is a 'noble cause'.
But the truth of the matter is that the atrocities committed in 'Camp Breadbasket' were not one offs but consistent with Britain's colonial tradition and invasion of Iraq.
In the trial of the British soldiers, they were made to take full responsibility for policies and practices that are both endemic to the army and systemic to the Iraqi occupation.
Tony Blair described the photographs as "shocking and appalling". He told the House of Commons that "the difference between democracy and tyranny is not that in a democracy bad things don't happen, but that in a democracy when they do happen people are held and brought to account".
But Blair forgot that the difference between "democracy" and "tyranny" are lost on a man suspended from a forklift truck by a foreign occupier.
Indeed, probably the only thing that the Iraqi prisoners, their tormentors and the judge who sentenced them can agree on is that even those immediately responsible have not been brought to account.
Corporal Daniel Kenyon, the most senior officer on trial, said he thought that reporting the abuses would be pointless.
"There was no point in passing anything up the chain of command because it was the chain of command who were, in my eyes, doing wrongdoing, and they were passing Iraqis down to us to do the same thing."
Meanwhile, Ra'id Attiyah Ali told the Independent that even though he worked in the camp and was not a looter, he was none the less beaten on the nose and tied to a pole for an hour and a half.
"I saw the soldiers kicking and beating Iraqis, I saw the guy who was held in a net," he said. "I saw five Iraqis in their underwear holding milk cartons on their head, I saw a soldier urinating on them. There were about eight soldiers."
Twin car bombs kill five outside Iraq’s interior ministry
Iraqi soldiers stand guard after car bombs exploded near Iraq's Interior Ministry in Baghdad
Two car bombs went off near the Iraqi Interior Ministry in the Iraqi capital on Thursday, killing at least five police officers and injuring many others, police and witnesses said.
The two bombs exploded within minutes of each other at about 0730 (0430 GMT).
The attacks apparently targeted a major police checkpoint outside the heavily fortified ministry in central Baghdad.
Iraqi forces opened fire on the cars to prevent them from reaching their target.
"There was a KIA vehicle that tried to enter the checkpoint and at this moment blew up. It was not that effective but made a large amount of smoke so we couldn't see anything," policeman Mohamed Jaafar said.
He added that two minutes later a Jeep Cherokee reached the police checkpoint and opened machinegun fire.
"Police responded... but it was too late because he reached the checkpoint and blew up," Jaafar said.
Witnesses reported that many people were wounded in the attacks.
Also in Baghdad, police found the corpses of three blindfolded men who were shot in the back of the head.
Rebels also attacked a gas pipeline that feeds Iraq's main power station on Thursday. The explosion near Kirkuk forced two out of four turbines at the Baiji power station to shut, engineer Khaled al-Lami said.
Meanwhile, the U.S. army said that a U.S. marine was killed in Babil province, south of Baghdad, bringing the number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq to 1,500, according to an Associated Press count.
In other developments;
• Clashes between U.S. occupation forces and rebels in al-Qaim, 500 km west of Baghdad near the Syrian border, killed three people, including a woman and child, medics said.
• An Iraqi soldier was killed and six others injured in an explosion in Tikrit.
• In Kirkuk, rebels killed two Iraqis working for a construction equipment firm that supplies U.S. contractors, police said.
• In Baqouba, a human bomber blew himself up outside a local police headquarters, killing one civilian and injuring 14 people.
U.S. used banned weapons in Fallujah – Health ministry
An official in Iraq’s health ministry said that the U.S. used banned weapons in Fallujah
Dr. Khalid ash-Shaykhli, an official at Iraq’s health ministry, said that the U.S. military used internationally banned weapons during its deadly offensive in the city of Fallujah.
Dr. ash-Shaykhli was assigned by the ministry to assess the health conditions in Fallujah following the November assault there.
He said that researches, prepared by his medical team, prove that U.S. occupation forces used internationally prohibited substances, including mustard gas, nerve gas, and other burning chemicals in their attacks in the war-torn city.
The health official announced his findings at a news conference in the health ministry building in Baghdad.
The press conference was attended by more than 20 Iraqi and foreign media networks, including the Iraqi ash-Sharqiyah TV network, the Iraqi as-Sabah newspaper, the U.S. Washington Post and the Knight-Ridder service.
Dr. ash-Shaykhli started the conference by reporting the current health conditions of the Fallujah residents. He said that the city is still suffering from the effects of chemical substances and other types of weapons that cause serious diseases over the long term.
Asked whether limited nuclear weapons were also used by U.S. forces in Fallujah, Dr. ash-Shaykhli said; “What I saw during our research in Fallujah leads me to me believe everything that has been said about that battle.
“I absolutely do not exclude their use of nuclear and chemical substances, since all forms of nature were wiped out in that city. I can even say that we found dozens, if not hundreds, of stray dogs, cats, and birds that had perished as a result of those gasses.”
Dr. ash-Shaykhli promised to send the findings of the researches to responsible bodies inside Iraq and abroad.
Fallujah residents said napalm gas was used
During the U.S. offensive, Fallujah residents reported that they saw “melted” bodies in the city, which suggests that U.S. forces used napalm gas, a poisonous cocktail of polystyrene and jet fuel that makes the human body melt.
In November, Labour MPs in the UK demanded Prime Minister Tony Blair to confront the Commons over the use of napalm gas in Fallujah.
Furious critics have also demanded that Blair threatens the U.S. to pullout British forces from Iraq unless the U.S. stops using the world’s deadliest weapon.
The United Nations banned the use of the napalm gas against civilians in 1980 after pictures of a naked wounded girl in Vietnam shocked the world.
The United States, which didn't endorse the convention, is the only nation in the world still using the deadly weapon.
BAGHDAD (AP) — The number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq has topped 1,500, an Associated Press count showed Thursday after the military announced the deaths of three Americans, while car bombs targeting Iraqi security forces killed at least four people in separate attacks.
U.S. Marines carry the casket containing the body of Cpl. John Olson after his funeral Wednesday in Elk Grove Village, Ill.
Two suicide car bombs exploded outside the Interior Ministry in eastern Baghdad Thursday, killing at least two policemen and wounding five others, police Maj. Jabar Hassan said. Officials at nearby al-Kindi hospital said 15 people were injured in the blasts, part of the relentless wave of violence since the Jan. 30 elections.
Another car bomb targeting a police convoy exploded in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of the capital, killing one Iraqi policeman and a civilian, the U.S. military said. Six police and 10 other civilians were also wounded.
Amid the violence, interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi extended the state of emergency, first announced nearly four months ago, for another 30 days until the end of March. The order remains in effect throughout the country, except in northern Kurdish-run areas.
The emergency decree includes a nighttime curfew and gives the government extra powers to make arrests without warrants and launch police and military operations when it deems necessary.
The latest reported American deaths brought the toll to 1,502 since the United States launched the war in Iraq in March 2003, according to the AP count.
The military said two U.S. troops died Wednesday in Baghdad of injuries suffered when a roadside bomb struck their vehicle. Another soldier was killed the same day in Babil province, part of an area known as the "Triangle of Death" because of the frequency of insurgent attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces.
At least 1,140 Americans have died as a result of hostile action, according to the Defense Department. The figures include four military civilians.
Since May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared that major combat operations in Iraq had ended, 1,364 U.S. military members have died, according to the AP count. That includes at least 1,030 deaths resulting from hostile action, the military said.
The tally is based on Pentagon records and AP reporting from Iraq.
The U.S. exit strategy is dependent on handing over responsibility for security to Iraq's fledgling army and police forces. Forming Iraq's first democratically elected coalition government is turning out to be a laborious process.
The car bombers in Baghdad were trailing a police convoy that was trying to enter the Interior Ministry, Hassan said. Iraqi security forces opened fire on the vehicles and disabled them before they could arrive at a main checkpoint, said Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman, an Interior Ministry spokesman.
Iraqi forces also killed one Iraqi man during clashes with gunmen in the northern city of Mosul, army Capt. Sabah Yassin said. Two soldiers were injured.
Also in the north, insurgents blew up a gas pipeline that links Kirkuk to Dibis, about 20 miles away, said Col. Nozad Mohammad, a state oil security official in Kirkuk. Mohammad said the blast would cut gas production, but he could not say by how much.
Talks aimed at forging a new coalition government faltered Wednesday over Kurdish demands for more land and concerns that the dominant Shiite alliance seeks to establish an Islamic state, delaying the planned first meeting of parliament.
Shiite and Kurdish leaders, Iraq's new political powers, failed to reach agreement after two days of negotiations in the northern city of Irbil, with the clergy-backed candidate for prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, leaving with only half the deal he needed.
The Shiite-led United Iraqi Alliance, which has 140 seats in the 275-member National Assembly, hopes to win backing from the 75 seats held by Kurdish political parties so it can muster the required two-thirds majority to insure control of top posts in the new government.
Al-Jaafari indicated after the talks that the alliance was ready to accept a Kurdish demand that one of its leaders, Jalal Talabani, become president. However, he would not commit to other demands, including the expansion of Kurdish autonomous areas south to the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.
Kurdish leaders have demanded constitutional guarantees for their northern regions, including self-rule and reversal of the "Arabization" of Kirkuk and other northern areas. Saddam relocated Iraqi Arabs to the region in a bid to secure the oil fields there.
Politicians had hoped to convene the new parliament by Sunday. But Ali Faisal, of the Shiite Political Council, said the date was now postponed and that a new date had not been set.
"The blocs failed to reach an understanding over the formation of the government," said Faisal, whose council is part of the United Iraqi Alliance.
The Kurds, he added, were "the basis of the problem" in the negotiations.
"The Kurds are wary about al-Jaafari's nomination to head the government. They are concerned that a strict Islamic government might be formed," Faisal said. "Negotiations and dialogue are ongoing."
In another twist, alliance deputy and former Pentagon favorite Ahmad Chalabi was to meet Thursday with Allawi, whose party won 40 seats in the assembly. It was unclear why the meeting between the two rivals was taking place.
Both are secular Shiites opposed to making Iraq an Islamic state. Concerns over a possible theocracy are especially pertinent because the main task of the new assembly will be to write a constitution.
Elsewhere, Saddam Hussein's lead lawyer said Tuesday's shooting deaths of a judge and his lawyer son, both appointed to the Iraqi Special Tribunal to try the former Iraqi leader and his top henchmen, show the country remains too dangerous for such trials. The shootings marked the first time any legal staff working for the court have been killed.
"I can't imagine how the court would begin," Ziad al-Khasawneh told the AP in Tokyo. "The streets are burning, the judges are killed. ... The advocates and the judge, they need a quiet area to read, to study, to discuss. It is impossible to make these things this year, or after this year."
Destroyed vehicle in Baquba following the bomb attack
The Baquba attack was carried out by a suspected suicide bomber
Two car bombs have exploded near the Iraqi interior ministry in Baghdad, killing five people, witnesses say.
The attacks reportedly targeted a main police checkpoint outside the ministry in the east of the Iraqi capital.
In Baquba, north of Baghdad, one civilian was killed and 14 wounded in a car bomb attack on a local police base.
US and Iraqi officials had hoped that the elections in January would undermine the insurgency and help bring an end the attacks.
Meanwhile, a US marine was killed in Iraq on Wednesday, raising to 1,500 the number of US service personnel killed since military operations in Iraq began, according to an Associated Press news agency tally.
At least 1,140 of these deaths occurred during combat.
The latest death occurred in Babil province, south of Baghdad, the US military said.
Powerful blast
The two car bombs in Baghdad went off within minutes of each other at about 0730 (0430 GMT) on Thursday.
Iraqi security forces opened fire on the cars, trying to prevent them from reaching their targets.
The first vehicle reportedly served as a decoy for the second - more powerful - blast.
"There was a vehicle that tried to enter the checkpoint and at this moment blew up. It was not that effective but made a large amount of smoke so we couldn't see anything," policeman Mohamed Jaafar was quoted by the AFP news agency as saying.
He added that two minutes later, a Jeep Cherokee reached the checkpoint and its occupant opened fire with a machine-gun.
"Police responded... but it was too late, because he reached the checkpoint and blew up," the policeman said.
Several people were injured in the blasts, police and witnesses said.
Political efforts
Later, a suspected suicide car bomber carried out an attack on the local headquarters of the National Guard in Baquba.
The town's police chief was among the wounded, Reuters news agency quoted a police official as saying.
On Wednesday, two car bomb attacks in Baghdad targeted an army base and a convoy of Iraqi soldiers, killing at least 13 people.
On Monday, a huge car bomb killed 125 people queuing up for state jobs in Hilla, south of Baghdad. It was the worst single such incident since the regime was toppled in 2003.
Mainly Sunni Muslim insurgents are targeting Iraq's security forces and police in the hope of undermining the interim government.
Shia Muslim leaders who won the recent national election are now trying to draw the minority Sunnis into the political fold in an attempt to defeat the insurgency.
Iraqi Special Tribunal Judge Involved in Saddam Case Reportedly Killed Outside Baghdad Home
Mar. 2, 2005 - A judge and a lawyer working for the special tribunal that will put Saddam Hussein and members of his former regime on trial were shot dead in the Iraqi capital, officials and family members Wednesday.
The killings Tuesday in northern Baghdad's Azamyiah district were the first of any staff working on the Iraqi Special Tribunal, an official of the court told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
The two killed were judge Barwez Mohammed Mahmoud al-Merwani and his son, lawyer Aryan Barwez al-Merwani, the slain judge's son Kikawz Barwez Mohammed al-Merwani said.
The tribunal official confirmed the slayings, but said the judge was not assassinated.
"He was not killed because he was working at the tribunal," the court official said. "It was something personal. I don't have details, but investigations are still going on."
Earlier, police 1st Lt. Oday Kayoun told the AP that Mahmoud and his brother were killed, and that his brother was a lawyer.
On Wednesday, a car bomb exploded outside an Iraqi army base in central Baghdad, killing six soldiers and wounding 25, police said. The blast occurred at a base located at the former Muthanna airport, police officer Salam Hashim Mahmoud said.
The violence came as thousands of mostly black-clad Iraqis protested outside a medical clinic in Hillah, a city 60 miles south of the capital where a suicide car bomber killed 125 people a day earlier.
The protesters, braving the threat of another attack as they waved clenched fists, condemned foreign fighters and chanted "No to terrorism!"
Police prevented people from parking cars in front of the clinic or the hospital, where authorities blocked hospital gates with barbed wire to stave off hundreds of victims' relatives desperate for information on loved ones.
Insurgents, fighting both American forces and the Iraqi government, released a video Tuesday of French journalist Florence Aubenas, 43, kidnapped nearly two months ago. The 43-year-old correspondent for the French daily Liberation appeared alone in front of a maroon-colored background, pleading for help.
The video of the French journalist, who disappeared Jan. 5, was dropped off at the Baghdad offices of an international news agency. There was no indication of when the tape was made.
"Please help me, my health is very bad," she said in English. "Please, it's urgent now. I ask especially Mr. Didier Julia, the French deputy, to help me."
Julia, a lawmaker from French President Jacques Chirac's governing party, led a botched effort to free two French reporters taken hostage in Iraq last year. Those reporters have since been released.
The judges on the special tribunal have not even been identified in public because of concerns for safety, but Mahmoud was apparently the first one to die in Iraq's insurgency. Officials with the Iraqi government and the Iraqi special tribunal couldn't be reached before dawn Wednesday for comment.
Mahmoud's role on the tribunal was unclear, but the law establishing it called for up to 20 investigative judges and up to 20 prosecutors. It also said the tribunal would have one or more trial chambers, each with five judges.
The killings came just one day after five former members of Saddam Hussein's regime including one of his half brothers were referred to trial for crimes against humanity.
The announcement Monday by the tribunal marked the first time that the special court issued referrals, similar to indictments, which are the final step before trials can start.
Saddam was captured in December 2003, and others have been in custody for nearly two years.
U.S. military officials transferred 12 of the top defendants to Iraqi custody in June with the handover of sovereignty. They're being held at an undisclosed location near Baghdad International Airport, west of the capital.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's terror group, which has repeatedly seized foreigners and attacked Americans, purportedly claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing in Hillah. It was not possible to independently verify the claim, which was posted on the Internet.
The group said it targeted recruits for the Iraqi security services, whom it referred to as "apostates," but did not mention those killed in a nearby market. The car bomb went off at a site where police and army recruits were lining up for physicals exams at the medical clinic.
In Hillah, relatives and friends screamed and wailed as they gathered around lists of the dead and wounded that were posted on hospital walls. Relatives who came to identify the dead placed corpses into coffins and loaded them onto pickup trucks to take them away for burial.
Fears that insurgents would target Shiite mourners forced authorities to cancel an elaborate funeral procession for some of the victims of Monday's attack, the deadliest since the insurgency began two years ago.
"I am afraid there might be a suicide bomber among the demonstrating crowd," said 30-year-old Ahmed al-Amiry. "It's very possible."
But anxieties over another attack did not prevent more than 2,000 people from gathering outside the clinic Tuesday, shouting "No to terrorism!" and "No to Baathism and Wahhabism!" and demanding the resignation of interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.
Wahhabism was a clear reference to foreign fighters who are supporters of al-Qaida and adherents of the strict Wahhabi form of Islam, which is the version practiced in Saudi Arabia. The Jordanian-born Zarqawi, the country's most feared terrorist, claims to be affiliated with Osama bin Laden's organization.
The Baath party was the political organization that ran Iraq under Saddam Hussein.
Although Monday's attack was directed at recruits, most of the victims were Shiites. Insurgents have increasingly targeted gatherings of Shiites, who make up 60 percent of Iraq's population, in an apparent effort to start a sectarian war.
The Shiites have refrained from striking back, mostly at the behest of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who wants nothing to impede the Shiites from gaining political power in Iraq.
Nominally disbanded Shiite militias could easily field thousands of tough and effective fighters that could deal a crushing blow to the insurgency. But Shiite leaders will also have to allay the fears of Sunnis, who dominated the Iraqi political system under Saddam and make up 20 percent of the population.
With a slight majority of 140 seats in the 275-member parliament that was elected on Jan. 30, the main Shiite clergy-backed United Iraqi Alliance sent its candidate for prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, north to Irbil to negotiate for the support of the Kurds. The alliance needs Kurdish support to build the two-thirds parliamentary majority to elect a president and nominate the prime minister.
One of the most important challenges for the incoming government will be the ongoing violence and the difficulties in training an Iraqi army capable of taking over from American troops.
The deaths Monday of two U.S. soldiers in a vehicle accident in Beiji, 155 miles north of the capital, reported by the military Tuesday, brought the number of deaths among the U.S. military to at least 1,499 since the beginning of the Iraqi war, according to an Associated Press count.
At least 1,135 died as a result of hostile action, according to the Defense Department. The figures include four military civilians. The AP count is 12 higher than the Defense Department's tally on Monday.
Iraqi residents of the town of Hilla clean up at the scene of a massive car bomb, which killed at least 125 people and injured over 130 more, February 28, 2005. A suicide car bomber drove his car at a line police recruits waiting for eye tests next to a busy market in the single bloodiest episode since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Kidnapped French journalist Florence Aubenas, taken hostage with her driver in Baghdad more than seven weeks ago, made a desperate appeal for help in a video tape released by Iraqi insurgents on Tuesday.
"My name is Florence Aubenas. I'm French. I'm a journalist with Liberation," she said on the undated tape, speaking in broken English and apparently distraught and exhausted.
"My health is very bad. I'm very bad psychologically also," she said, staring at the camera intently. Dressed in a grey sweatshirt and black trousers, she sat with her knees drawn up to her chest in front of a dark red background.
The tape underlined Iraq's desperate security situation a day after a suicide bomber killed 125 people south of Baghdad in the single deadliest attack since Saddam Hussein's fall.
The tape is the first of Aubenas to be released since she and her Iraqi driver Hussein Hanun al-Saadi were seized in Baghdad on Jan. 5, and the first indication that she at least is alive. The driver does not appear in the tape.
Looking frail, Aubenas sounded desperate and appealed for help to a French parliamentarian.
"I ask particularly for the help of the French deputy Didier Julia. Help me Mr. Julia, help me. It's urgent," she said.
Julia, a member of the lower house of parliament from President Jacques Chirac's conservative UMP party, came to Iraq last September on a freelance effort to try to secure the release of two other kidnapped French journalists.
The effort failed and the government denied it had approved his intervention. When the journalists Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot were finally released in December after four months in captivity, they criticized Julia's mission.
The foreign editor of Liberation, Francois Sergent, said: "It is both what we feared and what we hoped for," explaining that he had not seen the video.
"It is a sign that they are alive, of course, but we also feared this because the hostages are being held in conditions that make the pictures terrible to see."
SECURITY CRISIS
Aubenas is one of two female journalists being held. Italian Giuliana Sgrena, a reporter for Rome daily Il Manifesto, was abducted early last month as she conducted interviews in Baghdad. A tape of her pleading for her life was released nearly two weeks ago, but no word has been heard since.
Aubenas, who appeared from the tape to have lost weight while in captivity, was believed to have been snatched from her car shortly after leaving her central Baghdad hotel.
Her plight underscored the security crisis facing Iraq, where a new post-election government that has yet to be formed faces suicide bombings, shootings and kidnappings in an insurgency that shows no signs of easing after nearly two years.
On Monday, a suicide bomber detonated his vehicle near a crowd of people seeking jobs in the southern town of Hilla, killing 125 people and wounded 130.
Police have opened an investigation into the attack in the largely Shi'ite Muslim town, but said no arrests had been made.
Residents of the impoverished town began burying the dead. Wooden coffins were put on top of cars.
"Is this jihad (holy war)?" asked one angry man, referring to Arab Muslim militants fighting in Iraq. "This is not holy war. This is the work of infidels."
A man stood weeping at the morgue. An infant who was killed in the blast lay on the floor. "He was hit in the back of the neck by shrapnel," said a man.
Iraqi and U.S. officials had hoped the Jan. 30 elections, which witnessed a big turnout in most of Iraq, would help lead to an easing of the violence that has become routine.
But insurgents have kept up attacks while politicians horse trade over who will fill the top government jobs. Officials say Sunni insurgents are trying to ignite a civil war with attacks like the one in Hilla.
INVESTIGATION
Aubenas is at least the third French journalist to be kidnapped in Iraq, where more than 130 foreigners have been seized over the past 18 months. Hundreds of Iraqis have also been kidnapped for ransom over the same period.
In Paris, parliamentarian Julia told Reuters he was checking with the head of a parliamentary commission to see whether he could respond to Aubenas' plea for help. Since an investigation is under way into his intervention over Malbrunot and Chesnot it was not clear whether he would be allowed to do so.
"The government has known for a month where she is. If the ministers are incapable of doing anything, what do you want me to do?" he said by telephone. He gave no explanation of what he meant by saying the government knew where Aubenas was.
French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said in London: "We need to check this cassette very carefully. We will take all the measures that we consider useful. We will spare no effort."
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