Freed Iraq hostage Kember back in Britain Yahoo! NEWS
Freed Christian peace campaigner Norman Kember urged people to think about the suffering of ordinary Iraqis as he flew home to Britain on Saturday after being held hostage in Iraq for four months. "There is a real sense in which you are interviewing the wrong person," the 74-year-old retired professor of medical ethics told reporters at London's Heathrow Airport. "It is the ordinary people of Iraq that you should be talking to -- the people who have suffered so much over many years and still await the stable and just society that they deserve." Kember was rescued by special forces along with Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) colleagues Harmeet Sooden and Jim Loney -- both Canadians -- from an unguarded house in a Sunni insurgent area to the west of Baghdad on Thursday. They were found manacled but unhurt. "I now need to reflect on my experience -- was I foolhardy or rational? -- and also to enjoy freedom in peace and quiet," Kember said. Kember's wife has described her husband's decision to go to Baghdad as "silly," but said she accepted the need he felt to be active in his pacifism before he got too old. A fourth hostage, American Tom Fox, was found shot dead two weeks ago. Looking tired and frail, but speaking in a firm voice, Kember thanked the soldiers who had rescued him. "I do not believe that a lasting peace is achieved by armed force, but I pay tribute to their courage and thank those who played a part in my release," he said in a statement. British Army chief Michael Jackson had criticized Kember for apparently failing to thank the soldiers who freed him and his colleagues. Sitting next to his wife Pat, 72, Kember said he was not ready to talk about his time in captivity. Sooden, 32, and Loney, 41, headed to Baghdad airport on Saturday to begin their journey home, a colleague said. A lifelong committed Christian, Kember had protested against the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and had gone to Baghdad to spread his message of peace. CPT emerged in 1989 out of the Mennonite Central Committee, the Quaker Friends Society and the Church of Brethren to send teams of Christians trained in techniques of non-violent action to conflicts around the world. It has had a presence in Iraq since 2001.
By Jeremy Lovell

March 26, 2006
Bound, Blindfolded and Dead: The Face of Atrocity in Baghdad
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 25 — Mohannad al-Azawi had just finished sprinkling food in his bird cages at his pet shop in southern Baghdad, when three carloads of gunmen pulled up.

In front of a crowd, he was grabbed by his shirt and driven off.

Mr. Azawi was among the few Sunni Arabs on the block, and, according to witnesses, when a Shiite friend tried to intervene, a gunman stuck a pistol to his head and said, "You want us to blow your brains out, too?"

Mr. Azawi's body was found the next morning at a sewage treatment plant. A slight man who raised nightingales, he had been hogtied, drilled with power tools and shot.

In the last month, hundreds of men have been kidnapped, tortured and executed in Baghdad. As Iraqi and American leaders struggle to avert a civil war, the bodies keep piling up. The city's homicide rate has tripled from 11 to 33 a day, military officials said. The period from March 7 to March 21 was typically brutal: at least 191 bodies, many mutilated, surfaced in garbage bins, drainage ditches, minibuses and pickup trucks.

There were the four Duleimi brothers, Khalid, Tarek, Taleb and Salaam, seized from their home in front of their wives. And Achmed Abdulsalam, last seen at a checkpoint in his freshly painted BMW and found dead under a bridge two days later. And Mushtak al-Nidawi, a law student nicknamed Titanic for his Leonardo DiCaprio good looks, whose body was returned to his family with his skull chopped in half.

What frightens Iraqis most about these gangland-style killings is the impunity. According to reports filed by family members and more than a dozen interviews, many men were taken in daylight, in public, with witnesses all around. Few cases, if any, have been investigated.

Part of the reason may be that most victims are Sunnis, and there is growing suspicion that they were killed by Shiite death squads backed by government forces in a cycle of sectarian revenge. That allegation has been circulating in Baghdad for months, and as more Sunnis turn up dead, more people are inclined to believe it.

"This is sectarian cleansing," said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of Parliament, who has maintained a degree of neutrality between Shiites and Sunnis.

Mr. Othman said there were atrocities on each side. "But what is different is when Shiites get killed by suicide bombs, everyone comes together to fight the Sunni terrorists," he said. "When Shiites kill Sunnis, there is no response, because much of this killing is done by militias connected to the government."

The imbalance of killing, and the suspicion the government may be involved, is deepening the Shiite-Sunni divide, just as American officials are urging Sunni and Shiite leaders to form an inclusive government, hoping that such a show of unity will prevent a full-scale civil war.

The pressure is increasing on Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite, but few expect him to crack down, partly because he needs the support of the Shiite militias to stay in power.

Haidar al-Ibadi, Mr. Jaafari's spokesman, acknowledged that "some of the police forces have been infiltrated." But he said "outsiders," rather than Iraqis, were to blame.

Now many Sunnis, who used to be the most anti-American community in Iraq, are asking for American help.

"If the Americans leave, we are finished," said Hassan al-Azawi, whose brother was taken from the pet shop.

He thought for a moment more.

"We may be finished already."

The human rights office of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a mostly Sunni group, has cataloged more than 540 cases of Sunni men and a few of Sunni women who were kidnapped and killed since Feb. 22, when a Shiite shrine in Samarra was destroyed, unleashing a wave of sectarian fury.

As the case of Mr. Azawi shows, some were easy targets.

Mr. Azawi was the youngest of five brothers. He was 27 and lived with his parents. He loved birds since he was a boy. Nightingales were his favorite. Then canaries, pigeons and doves.

During Saddam Hussein's reign, he was drafted into the army, but he deserted.

"He was crazy about birds," said a Shiite neighbor, Ibrahim Muhammad.

A few years ago, Mr. Azawi opened a small pet shop in Dawra, a rough-and-tumble, mostly Shiite neighborhood in southern Baghdad.

Friends said that Mr. Azawi was not interested in politics or religion. He never went to the Sunni mosque, though his brothers did. He did not pay attention to news or watch television. That characteristic might have cost him his life.

On Feb. 22, the Askariya Shrine in Samarra was attacked at 7 a.m. But Mr. Azawi did not know what had happened until 4 p.m., his friends said. He was in his own little world, tending his birds, when a Shiite shopkeeper broke the news and told him to close. He stayed in his house for three days after that. His friends said he was terrified.

The day of the shrine attack, Shiite mobs began rampaging through Baghdad, burning Sunni mosques and slaughtering Sunni residents. Some Sunnis struck back and killed Shiites. The mayhem claimed hundreds of lives and exposed tensions that until then had been bubbling just beneath the surface.

Two Shiite militias, the Badr Organization, which once trained in Iran, and the Mahdi Army, the foot soldiers of a young, firebrand Shiite cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, were blamed for much of the bloodshed. Mr. Sadr's men often wear all-black uniforms, and many of the relatives of kidnapped people said men in black uniforms had taken them. Many people also said the men in black arrived with the police.

Around 9 on the night of the shrine bombing, a mob of black-clad men surrounded the Duleimi brothers, family members said.

The brothers lived in New Baghdad, a working-class neighborhood that is mostly Shiite. They were all gardeners and religious men who prayed five times a day. They had relatives in Falluja, in the heart of Sunni territory.

Where a family hails from in Iraq often reveals whether it is Sunni or Shiite. Nowadays, because of the sectarian friction, people are increasingly aware of the slight regional differences in accent, dress and name. Some first names, like Omar for Sunnis, or Haidar for Shiites, are clear giveaways. Others, like Khalid, are not. Tribal names can also be a sign.

A cousin of the Duleimi brothers, who identified himself as Khalaf, said the four men were taken at gunpoint from the small house they shared. The next day, their bodies turned up in a drainage ditch near Sadr City, a stronghold of the Mahdi Army. All their fingers and toes had been sawed off.

That same day Mushtak al-Nidawi, 20, was kidnapped. According to an aunt, Aliah al-Bakr, he was chatting on his cellphone outside his home in Bayah when a squad of Mahdi militiamen marched up the street, shouting, "We're coming after you, Sunnis!"

Ms. Bakr said they snatched Mr. Nidawi while his mother stood at the door. His body surfaced on the streets seven days later, his skin a map of bruises, his handsome face burned by acid, his fingernails pulled out.

"I told his mother he was shot," Ms. Bakr said.

Sheik Kamal al-Araji, a spokesman for Mr. Sadr, said "the Mahdi Army does not commit such crimes."

He also said the militiamen would soon change their uniforms so they would no longer be confused with thugs.

The question of who exactly is behind these collective assassinations has become a delicate political issue. So has the disparity in the killings.

Many Sunni politicians, including secular ones like Methal al-Alusi, accuse the Shiite-led government of backing a campaign to wipe out Sunnis. Many Shiite leaders, including Prime Minister Jaafari, blame "foreign terrorists," without being more specific. It seems that Shiite militias, unable to strike back against the presumably Sunni suicide bombers who kill Shiite civilians, are now victimizing Sunni civilians. There is no evidence that the Sunnis who have been kidnapped and killed are connected to terrorists.

Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador, is now saying that militias are Iraq's No. 1 security threat. But he has been careful to paint the problem in broad strokes, implying both sides are at fault.

There are a few Shiite victims, like Mohammed Jabbar Hussein, who lived in a mostly Sunni area west of Baghdad. He disappeared on Feb. 26 and was found four days later, shot in the head.

But the militias under the greatest suspicion, and the ones with the strongest ties to the government, are Shiite. Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a spokesman for the American military, said Shiite militias have played a role in the killings and "the government of Iraq has to take action."

Then there is the question of prosecution. While countless Sunni insurgents have been arrested and tried on murder charges, very few Shiite militiamen have been apprehended.

Thamir al-Janabi, who is in charge of the Interior Ministry's criminal investigation department, declined to comment. So did several other Interior Ministry officials.

A new round of revenge attacks began March 12, around 6 p.m., when a string of car bombs exploded in Sadr City, killing nearly 50 civilians. Most security officials, Shiite and Sunni, blamed Sunni terrorists.

An hour and a half later, half a dozen gunmen arrived at Mr. Azawi's pet shop.

Wisam Saad Nawaf was playing pool across the street. He said that a man wearing a ski mask arrived with the gunmen, who were not wearing masks, and that when they grabbed Mr. Azawi, the masked man nodded. "He must have been an informant from the neighborhood," Mr. Nawaf explained.

Mr. Azawi got into a car. The gunmen closed the doors. The next morning Mr. Azawi's body was found at the sewage plant. Autopsy photos showed how badly he had been abused. His skin was covered with purple welts. His legs and face had drill holes in them. Both shoulders had been broken.

His brother Hassan carries the autopsy photos with him, along with a pistol. "I cannot live without vengeance," he said.

Hassan said there were a few Shiites at his brother's funeral, which he took as a grim speck of hope.

One week later, on March 20, the body of Mr. Abdulsalam, another Sunni, was found under a bridge. Mr. Abdulsalam, 21, worked with his father in a real estate office. His family said he was last seen in his BMW, stopped at a Mahdi Army checkpoint.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections XML Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map Back to Top

March 26, 2006
PARLIAMENT
Plan Is Floated to Open Choice of Premier to Iraqi Parliament
By EDWARD WONG
BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 25 — Iraqi politicians say they are considering asking the main Shiite political bloc to allow a vote by the entire Parliament on a candidate for prime minister. In the proposed plan, the Parliament would choose among three candidates, including Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the current prime minister, the politicians say.

The Shiite bloc, which has 130 of 275 seats in the Parliament, has already nominated Mr. Jaafari to be the next prime minister. Political negotiations to form a new government have been deadlocked over the past month on the issue — the main Kurdish, Sunni Arab and secular blocs in Parliament are all opposing Mr. Jaafari, for various reasons.

Under the Constitution that Iraqi voters approved last fall, the bloc with the most seats in Parliament gets first shot at nominating a prime minister. The document has no explicit passages allowing the entire Parliament to decide on a nominee.

The idea of having Parliament vote for one of three Shiite candidates is being floated among the blocs opposing Mr. Jaafari's candidacy. Some leaders of those blocs would prefer that the Shiites nominate Adel Abdul Mahdi, another prominent Shiite politician. Early last month, the Shiites held a secret ballot among themselves to choose the nominee, and Mr. Mahdi lost to Mr. Jaafari by one vote.

Politicians supporting a parliamentary vote to nominate the prime minister say the plan has yet to be formally presented to the Shiite bloc.

The vote would be a way for the Shiite bloc, the United Iraqi Alliance, to back down from their support of Mr. Jaafari in light of the intense opposition and still save face, said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish legislator.

"We don't want to embarrass the United Iraqi Alliance," he said in a telephone interview.

Mr. Jaafari has been widely criticized for failing to quell the insurgency, letting Shiite death squads run rampant and doing little to improve reconstruction.

So far, the various parties in the Shiite bloc have publicly stood by Mr. Jaafari. The question is whether there is dissent among them behind closed doors, and whether the Shiite alliance will crack.

Haider al-Ubady, an adviser to Mr. Jaafari and a member of the Shiite bloc, said the proposed vote "is not being discussed at all inside the alliance." He said there was no legal mechanism that allowed for the Parliament as a whole to elect the nominee for prime minister.

The talks over government formation continued Saturday afternoon at the riverside villa of President Jalal Talabani. Before the negotiations, Mr. Talabani met briefly with the United States ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, and a delegation of visiting American politicians including Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin.

"We expressed our concern and urgency concerning the issue of forming a government of unity," Senator McCain said at a news conference.

A bomb in a traffic police booth exploded in the morning, killing at least four civilians in a minibus and wounding two others, an Interior Ministry official said. Friday night, American forces found the bodies of six people who had been garroted, and the Iraqi police on Saturday found a body that had been tortured and shot, the official said. At least 240 bodies of people shot dead have been found in nearly three weeks. A 4 p.m., a mortar struck a residential area of Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, killing at least four people and wounding at least 13.

Ali Adeeb contributed reporting for this article.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections XML Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map Back to Top

US piles pressure on Iraq for unity government Yahoo! NEWS
Iraqi politicians were to meet to discuss the formation of a national unity government amid mounting US pressure for no more procrastination over three months after elections. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani was preparing to host another round of talks with the country's Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish parties at his residence Sunday afternoon in Baghdad's upscale Jadiriyah neighborhood. Iraq's politicians are under heavy pressure to form a coalition government with the country witnessing a major spike in sectarian violence since a Shiite shrine north of Baghdad was dynamited on February 22. "It is critical that the newly elected leaders of Iraq do their part by forming a government of national unity with a good program and competent ministers as soon as possible," said US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad on Sunday. Khalilzad has repeatedly stated that ministries, especially those related to security, should not be allocated on the basis of sectarian or ethnic identities, but rather on the skill of the candidate. Over the past week, there have been numerous statements from US officials, including President George W. Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as well as visiting congressional officials that a government needs to be formed soon. The Arab League echoed the calls, calling in a draft statement for their upcoming summit in Khartoum, for a "a quick formation of a national unity government in Iraq which would help in achieving security and stability, preserve the unity of Iraq and its people". As the talks dragged on, a 13-year-old schoolboy was killed walking to school Sunday when a bomb exploded on his path in the southern town of Basra, police said. Basra, which is under control of British forces, is predominantly Shiite and generally sees less violence than Baghdad and the north of the country. But crime is rampant and local Shiite militias, suspected of links to Iran, seem to move with impunity in Iraq's second largest city. Baghdad's Yarmouk hospital reported receiving two corpses Sunday, one of a policeman killed in a firefight in the wealthy neighborhood of Mansour and the of a civilian gunned down in the Jihad neighborhood. A cleric, from the influential Sunni group, the Muslim Scholars Association, was arrested Saturday night near Samarra, north of Baghdad, by US and Iraqi forces, his son Abdel Rahman told AFP. But the US military had no confirmation of his arrest. Two mortars fell near the home of firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr in the holy city of Najaf, south of Baghdad, wounding three, said an official from his office. Two guards were wounded and a passing child was also injured, added the official. In a statement read by one of his assistants, Sadr called on his followers to be "vigilant", adding that the "forces of occupation want to embroil Iraqis in a war and endless crises." Talabani hinted Saturday a new government would soon be at hand to rein in the lawlessness and chaos. "My optimism is great and it is founded on real facts that I cannot reveal," Talabani told reporters after talks with US Senator John McCain in Baghdad. For his part, McCain expressed the urgency of forming a new government. "We need very badly to form this unity government as soon as possible," he said. "We read the polls; we know the American people are frustrated." McCain said that in discussions with Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, he was told most of the cabinet positions have already been apportioned save for particularly sensitive positions such as that of interior minister. One of the sticking points of negotiations is the newly crated National Security Council made up of members of all the major parties and expected to deal with questions of security. The Shiites want the body to be solely advisory in nature, while the other groups see it as a way of diluting Shiite dominance of the new government. Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said it was "entirely probable" the United States would make a "significant" drawdown of US troops in Iraq within a year. "I think it's entirely probable that we will see a significant drawdown of American forces over the next year," she said, speaking on NBC television's "Meet the Press" program.

March 26, 2006
Iraqi Cleric Al-Sadr Unharmed by Mortar
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:39 a.m. ET

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- A mortar round slammed to earth near Muqtada al-Sadr's home Sunday in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, but the popular anti-American cleric was not hurt, an aide said.

A child and at least one guard were wounded in the attack, which hit some 165 feet from al-Sadr's home, according to police and al-Sadr aide Sheik Sahib al-Amiri. The aide said al-Sadr was home but was not injured.

Iraqi troops sealed the area and the cleric's Mahdi Army militia surrounded the home after the attack, al-Amiri said. Al-Sadr lives near the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf, about 90 miles south of Baghdad.

Shortly after the attack, the cleric issued a statement calling for calm.

''I call upon all brothers to stay calm, and I call upon Iraqi army to protect the pilgrims as the Nawasib (militants) are aiming to attack Shiites everyday,'' he said ahead of Wednesday's commemoration marking the death of the Prophet Muhammad.

Najaf police chief called the assault a ''cowardly attack'' by those still loyal to Saddam Hussein aimed at dividing the Iraqi people.

''But this will not happen,'' Maj. Gen. Abbas Mi'adal told reporters near al-Sadr's home. ''We are ready to confront any terrorist schemes and protect the pilgrims.''

At least 10 Iraqis were killed in violence elsewhere, including a 13-year-old boy killed by a bomb as he walked to school in the southern city of Basra. Police also found 11 handcuffed and bullet-riddled bodies dumped in Baghdad and two in the city of Baqouba.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, meanwhile, said the U.S. could withdraw a significant number of troops from Iraq this year if Iraqi forces are able to assume greater control of the country's security.

''I think it's entirely probable that we will see a significant drawdown of American forces over the next year. ... It's all dependent on events on the ground,'' the chief American diplomat said Sunday, echoing military commanders.

Just this past week, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld declined to predict when U.S. forces would be out of Iraq. President Bush has said that decision would be up to a future U.S. president and a future Iraqi government.

Rice, on NBC's ''Meet the Press,'' noted that Gen. George Casey, the top commander in Iraq, ''has talked about a significant reduction of American forces over the next year. And that significant reduction is because Iraqi forces are taking and holding territory now.''

There were conflicting reports about Sunday's attack in Najaf, which came a day after the cleric's Mahdi Army militia forces battled with Sunni insurgents near Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of the capital. Seven people -- most civilians killed in their homes by mortar fire -- died in the gunbattle and several others were wounded.

Al-Sadr's aide said two mortar rounds fell near the home Sunday, wounding two guards and the child, while the police chief said it was just one mortar round that wounded one guard and the child.

Al-Sadr, who routinely blames the United States for the violence that has beset the country, said American troops were trying to drag Iraqis into ''sectarian wars.''

''I call upon my brothers not to be trapped by the Westerners' plots,'' he said.

Al-Sadr is a major force among Shiites, especially in Baghdad's Sadr City slum. His powerful militia is accused of carrying out sectarian revenge killings against Sunnis after the Feb. 22 bombing of an important Shiite shrine in Samarra.

The cleric, who was on a regional tour when the Samarra attack on the shrine took place, cut short his visit and came back ''in order for the country not to be pulled to street battles. I wanted to salvage the Iraqi people from these problems.''

Al-Sadr has close ties to Iran. His militia launched two uprisings against U.S. troops in 2004.

The bomb that killed the teenage boy was placed in front of his school in Basra, near the Iranian border southeast of Baghdad. It went off in the morning as children were arriving for classes, police said. The school week begins Sunday and runs through Thursday in Iraq, where Friday is the day of prayer for Muslims.

The attack was the latest in a startling increase of violence targeting regular Iraqi citizens.

A bomb also exploded in front of a house in central Baghdad, killing one woman and wounding two of her sisters and a man next door. And a truck driver was gunned down in west Baghdad, police said.

Drive-by shooters killed three teenagers and wounded another standing outside a house in south Baghdad's Dora district, police said.

Meanwhile, Iraq's national security ministry issued a statement warning citizens of the mostly Sunni neighborhood of Yarmouk that insurgents were placing explosives in boxes of candy.

In other violence Saturday, according to police:

-- Security guards for the Iraqi finance minister were attacked while driving in western Baghdad before they had picked up the minister. One guard was killed, and a bystander was wounded.

-- Gunmen killed a policeman and his cousin as they walked north of Baqouba.

-- A farmer was killed in Buhriz.

-- Security guards for the Baqouba mayor were wounded in a bomb attack on their way to pick up the mayor.

-- Baghdad police Lt. Col. Ahmed Fadhil was being treated for multiple gunshot wounds after being attacked on his way to work.



Copyright 2006 The Associated Press Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections XML Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map Back to Top

March 26, 2006
U.N. Envoy Asks Arabs to Help End Deadlock
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:25 a.m. ET

KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) -- A top U.N. envoy urged Iraq's Arab neighbors on Sunday to work together to end the country's political deadlock, while Iraqi and other Arab leaders squabbled over the role of Iran.

''Neighboring countries and the region are responsible for sending a clear message to the Iraqi people that they are supporting the political process in Iraq,'' Ashraf Qazi, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special envoy in Iraq, told Arab foreign ministers.

The ministers were in Sudan's capital to prepare for a summit of Arab leaders Monday and Tuesday that aims to tackle a string of major issues, including violence in Iraq and the Palestinians' formation of a new government led by the Islamic militant Hamas movement.

Qazi said he hoped the summit would prove a turning point in supporting the political process in Iraq, saying Arab leaders ''should send a strong message to the Iraqis that their brethren stand beside them and respect the diversity of the Iraqi people.''

Instead, however, the Arab countries' fears of an increasing Iranian role in Iraq appeared to dominate the Arab League gathering.

On Saturday, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari criticized Arab governments for doing little to help his country and said they should offer debt relief and reopen diplomatic missions in Baghdad. He warned that the Arabs' lack of action was leaving a void that Iran might fill.

Iraq's Shiite Muslim leaders have frequently expressed bitterness over the weak support shown for the country's new leadership. They suggest other Arab nations, with Sunni Muslim majorities, are biased toward Iraq's Sunni minority, which was in power during Saddam Hussein's rule.

Several Arab diplomats, who agreed Sunday to discuss the meeting only if granted anonymity, said Zebari squabbled on Saturday with the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates over proposed talks between the United States and Iran on how to stabilize Iraq.

Zebari would confirm only that some Arab officials expressed concerns over the influence of predominantly Shiite Iran in Iraq and complained about the planned Iranian-U.S. talks.

The other Arab diplomats said the Saudi and Emirates ministers complained that Arabs were being left in the dark about the talks. One diplomat who attended the sessions said Arab leaders wanted to know the dialogue's objectives and whether Arab interests would be ignored.

A draft resolution on Iraq to be adopted at the summit ''emphasizes the Arab role in the future of Iraq.''

It also calls for support for a reconciliation conference that the Arab League is trying to put together involving Iraq's Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish leaders in June. There has been no confirmation the conference will take place.

Zebari said Arab complaints about being ignored are unfounded. ''We told them time and again that they should be present in Iraq and never abandon it,'' he told The Associated Press.

The Arab worries over Iran's influence come at a time when Iraqi politicians are snarled in efforts to form a unity government with representatives from Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish groups more than three months after the Dec. 15 parliamentary elections.

President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, is working with Sunni and secular parties to try to prevent a second term for Shiite Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari. That has deepened the political stalemate, which has been strained by the recent surge in sectarian violence.



Copyright 2006 The Associated Press Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections XML Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map Back to Top

Iraqi Cleric Al-Sadr Unharmed by Mortar Yahoo! NEWS
A mortar round slammed to earth near Muqtada al-Sadr's home Sunday in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, but the popular anti-American cleric was not hurt, an aide said. Also Sunday, the Iraqi army said it had dispatched troops to investigate a report that 30 beheaded corpses were found in a village north of Baghdad. Brig. Saman Talabani, commander of the Iraqi Army 2nd Battalion, said the bodies were reported by residents in Mullah Eid, a village near the town of Buhriz, a former Saddam Hussein stronghold about 35 miles north of Baghdad. A child and at least one guard were wounded in the Najaf attack, which hit some 165 feet from al-Sadr's home, according to police and al-Sadr aide Sheik Sahib al-Amiri. The aide said al-Sadr was home but was not injured. Iraqi troops sealed the area and the cleric's Mahdi Army militia surrounded the home after the attack, al-Amiri said. Al-Sadr lives near the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf, about 90 miles south of Baghdad. Shortly after the attack, the cleric issued a statement calling for calm. "I call upon all brothers to stay calm, and I call upon Iraqi army to protect the pilgrims as the Nawasib (militants) are aiming to attack Shiites everyday," he said ahead of Wednesday's commemoration marking the death of the Prophet Muhammad. Najaf police chief called the assault a "cowardly attack" by those still loyal to Saddam Hussein aimed at dividing the Iraqi people. "But this will not happen," Maj. Gen. Abbas Mi'adal told reporters near al-Sadr's home. "We are ready to confront any terrorist schemes and protect the pilgrims." At least 10 Iraqis were killed in violence elsewhere, including a 13-year-old boy killed by a bomb as he walked to school in the southern city of Basra. Police also found 11 handcuffed and bullet-riddled bodies dumped in Baghdad and two in the city of Baqouba. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, meanwhile, said the U.S. could withdraw a significant number of troops from Iraq this year if Iraqi forces are able to assume greater control of the country's security. "I think it's entirely probable that we will see a significant drawdown of American forces over the next year. ... It's all dependent on events on the ground," the chief American diplomat said Sunday, echoing military commanders. Just this past week, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld declined to predict when U.S. forces would be out of Iraq. President Bush has said that decision would be up to a future U.S. president and a future Iraqi government. Rice, on NBC's "Meet the Press," noted that Gen. George Casey, the top commander in Iraq, "has talked about a significant reduction of American forces over the next year. And that significant reduction is because Iraqi forces are taking and holding territory now." There were conflicting reports about Sunday's attack in Najaf, which came a day after the cleric's Mahdi Army militia forces battled with Sunni insurgents near Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of the capital. Seven people — most civilians killed in their homes by mortar fire — died in the gunbattle and several others were wounded. Al-Sadr's aide said two mortar rounds fell near the home Sunday, wounding two guards and the child, while the police chief said it was just one mortar round that wounded one guard and the child. Al-Sadr, who routinely blames the United States for the violence that has beset the country, said American troops were trying to drag Iraqis into "sectarian wars." "I call upon my brothers not to be trapped by the Westerners' plots," he said. Al-Sadr is a major force among Shiites, especially in Baghdad's Sadr City slum. His powerful militia is accused of carrying out sectarian revenge killings against Sunnis after the Feb. 22 bombing of an important Shiite shrine in Samarra. The cleric, who was on a regional tour when the Samarra attack on the shrine took place, cut short his visit and came back "in order for the country not to be pulled to street battles. I wanted to salvage the Iraqi people from these problems." Al-Sadr has close ties to Iran. His militia launched two uprisings against U.S. troops in 2004. The bomb that killed the teenage boy was placed in front of his school in Basra, near the Iranian border southeast of Baghdad. It went off in the morning as children were arriving for classes, police said. The school week begins Sunday and runs through Thursday in Iraq, where Friday is the day of prayer for Muslims. The attack was the latest in a startling increase of violence targeting regular Iraqi citizens. A bomb also exploded in front of a house in central Baghdad, killing one woman and wounding two of her sisters and a man next door. And a truck driver was gunned down in west Baghdad, police said. Drive-by shooters killed three teenagers and wounded another standing outside a house in south Baghdad's Dora district, police said. Meanwhile, Iraq's national security ministry issued a statement warning citizens of the mostly Sunni neighborhood of Yarmouk that insurgents were placing explosives in boxes of candy. In other violence Saturday, according to police:

• Security guards for the Iraqi finance minister were attacked while driving in western Baghdad before they had picked up the minister. One guard was killed, and a bystander was wounded.
• Gunmen killed a policeman and his cousin as they walked north of Baqouba.
• A farmer was killed in Buhriz.
• Security guards for the Baqouba mayor were wounded in a bomb attack on their way to pick up the mayor.
• Baghdad police Lt. Col. Ahmed Fadhil was being treated for multiple gunshot wounds after being attacked on his way to work.

By SINAN SALAHEDDIN, Associated Press Writer

Iraq Shi'ites accuse US troops Yahoo! NEWS
Politicians from Iraq's Shi'ite majority accused U.S. troops of massacring 20 worshippers at a Baghdad mosque on Sunday but police and residents said many died in clashes between Shi'ite militia fighters and Americans. U.S. military spokesmen declined comment on the accusations but issued a statement describing a raid by Iraqi special forces, with U.S. advisers, on a building that was not a mosque in roughly the same area. It said 16 insurgents were killed. Police said U.S. forces clashed with the Mehdi Army militia of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, killing 20 fighters. With Baghdad under night curfew it was impossible to pin down what happened. But unusually strident anti-U.S. coverage on government-run state television showed a fierce confrontation between the ruling Shi'ite Islamists and the U.S. administration. A spokesman for Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said the premier was "deeply concerned" and had called the U.S. commander in Iraq, General George Casey, who said there would be a full inquiry. Also on Sunday, U.S. forces arrested 41 officials from the Shi'ite-controlled Interior Ministry and freed 17 foreigners from a secret jail, government, political and U.S. sources said. Northeast of Baghdad, Iraqi troops found 30 bodies, many of them beheaded, on a village street. And in the same area around Baquba, police arrested one of their own majors, the brother of the regional police chief, over Shi'ite death squad killings. The events came as Washington raises pressure on the Shi'ites to bring minority Sunnis into government -- it is even planning landmark talks with hostile Shi'ite Iran to break the impasse. Many fear a failure of the plan could plunge Iraq into civil war. Iraqiya state television carried lengthy footage of the bloodied corpses of men in civilian clothes, in a room where no weapons were visible, calling them victims of U.S. gunfire. "American forces raid and burn Mustafa mosque. A number of citizens martyred inside," it said in an on-screen headline.

JAAFARI ALLY
One dead man had a membership card from Jaafari's Dawa party. Jaafari ally Jawad al-Maliki condemned a U.S. "policy of aggression." Leading aides to Sadr denounced the U.S. troops. Sadr aide Hazim al-Araji later said: "We are calling for calm ... "We do not want to be dragged to a third war." Though supposedly disbanded in 2004 after two uprisings were crushed by U.S. forces, the Mehdi Army remains a significant force, along with other pro-government militias which Sunnis accuse of running death squads against them. Since 2004, Sadr, with apparent Iranian backing has become a virtual kingmaker within the dominant Shi'ite Alliance bloc -- he crucially is backing Jaafari to remain prime minister despite opposition from Sunnis, Kurds and some Alliance rivals. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, at the heart of urgent U.S. efforts to forge a unity government, said on Saturday the militias must be brought to heel and accused them of killing more people over the last few weeks than Sunni rebel bombings. Reprisal attacks after the destruction of a Shi'ite shrine a month ago killed hundreds, though Sadr and other Shi'ite leaders called publicly for restraint among their armed followers.

CONFUSED ACCOUNTS
Residents in the Shaab district of northeastern Baghdad said they saw and heard heavy clashes between U.S. troops and gunmen they believed were from the Mehdi Army, close to the Sadr-linked Mustafa mosque. U.S. helicopters were overhead they said. Police sources said they understood that U.S. troops had raided an area around the mosque and got into a gun battle with the Mehdi Army that left about 20 militiamen dead. Sadr aides said troops killed unarmed people: "The American forces went into Mustafa mosque at prayers and killed more than 20 worshippers," Araji said. "They tied them up and shot them." Transport Minister Salem al-Maliki, from Sadr's group, said: "This was part of an escalation programme to drag Sadr's group into another battle or to obstruct the political process." After declining requests to respond to the allegations, the U.S. military issued a statement saying Iraqi special forces, along with U.S. advisers, killed 16 "insurgents" in Aadhamiya, next to Shaab, and detained 15. The statement denied any mosque was entered and said a foreign, non-Western hostage was freed. After the statement was issued, U.S. spokesmen declined to elaborate or say if the raid was close to the Mustafa mosque. There was also mystery over the details of the raid on the Interior Ministry facility, which one political source described as an Education Ministry warehouse in central Baghdad. A U.S. source confirmed American and Iraqi forces seized 41 Interior Ministry personnel and free 17 foreigners at a secret jail complex. There was no detail on their identities. Many foreign Muslims are accused of being Sunni al Qaeda sympathisers. Nor were the identities of those arrested clear. Shi'ite militias are accused of infiltrating the Interior Ministry. In November, U.S. troops freed 173 prisoners, some of them tortured, from a secret Interior Ministry facility in Baghdad.
By Michael Georgy and Alastair Macdonald

US says will question Russia on Iraq documents Yahoo! NEWS
The United States will ask Russia whether it had authorized its ambassador in Baghdad to give intelligence on U.S. military movements to Iraq at the start of the U.S.-led invasion, U.S. officials said on Sunday. But the top White House security adviser rejected a suggestion that Washington should boycott a planned economic summit of the G8 nations in St. Petersburg this summer if the report of the intelligence-sharing is true. A Pentagon report last week said a captured April 2, 2003, document from the Iraqi minister of foreign affairs to President Saddam Hussein stated that the Russian ambassador had funneled intelligence on U.S. plans to the Iraqi government. Another Iraqi document, dated March 24, 2003, referred to Russian "sources" inside the U.S. military's Central Command headquarters in Qatar, according to the report. "We're going to take a good, hard look at the documentation and understand a little bit better what's there, and then we'll raise it," U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on CNN's "Late Edition" program. "Any implication that there were those from a foreign government who may have been passing information to the Iraqis prior to the invasion would be, of course, very worrying," she said. Russia has dismissed the Pentagon report as "groundless accusations," according to the Interfax news agency quoting Foreign Intelligence Service spokesman Boris Labusov. Asked whether the Russians were lying when they said it was nonsense, White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley said: "We don't know yet. We know there's a document, we know that got into the hands of the Iraqis. We know that it dealt with war plans that we had." He said there were still unanswered questions about how the Russians got the information out of U.S. Central Command and whether the Russian ambassador was authorized to pass it on to the Iraqi government. "So there are further questions that we need to raise, but it's a serious matter and we'll be talking to the Russians about it," Hadley said on CBS television's "Face The Nation." Russian President Vladimir Putin had opposed the invasion of Iraq, with which Moscow had long-standing economic ties. Sen. Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, said on "Face The Nation" that if it turns out to be true, the United States should review its relationship with Russia and whether to attend the G8 summit in St. Petersburg this summer. But Hadley said the setting in St. Petersburg would put international focus on issues of democracy in Russia, so "at this point we think there's a lot of value in going forward with the G8." He added: "It's going to challenge Russia, it's going to challenge President Putin to make clear and answer some of the concerns that the international community has raised."
By Tabassum Zakaria

Some Marines Declining Extra Body Armor Yahoo! NEWS
Extra body armor — the lack of which caused a political storm in the United States — has flooded in to Iraq, but many Marines here promptly stuck it in lockers or under bunks. Too heavy and cumbersome, many say. Marines already carry loads as heavy as 70 pounds when they patrol the dangerous streets in towns and villages in restive Anbar province. The new armor plates, while only about five pounds per set, are not worth carrying for the additional safety they are said to provide, some say. "We have to climb over walls and go through windows," said Sgt. Justin Shank of Greencastle, Pa. "I understand the more armor, the safer you are. But it makes you slower. People don't understand that this is combat and people are going to die." Staff Sgt. Thomas Bain of Buffalo, N.Y., shared concerns about the extra pounds. "Before you know it, they're going to get us injured because we're hauling too much weight and don't have enough mobility to maneuver in a fight from house to house," said Bain, who is assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment. "I think we're starting to go overboard on the armor." Since the insurgency erupted in Iraq, the Pentagon has been criticized for supplying insufficient armor for Humvees and too few bulletproof vests. In one remarkable incident, soldiers publicly confronted Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld about the problem on live television. Hometown groups across the United States have since raised money to send extra armor to troops, and the Pentagon, under congressional pressure, launched a program last October to reimburse troops who had purchased armor with their own money. Soldiers and their parents spent hundreds, sometimes thousand of dollars, on armor until the Pentagon began issuing the new protective gear. In Bain's platoon of about 35 men, Marines said only three or four wore the plates after commanders distributed them last month and told them that use was optional. Top military officials, including Secretary of the Army Francis Harvey, acknowledge the concerns over weight and mobility but have urged that the new gear be mandatory. "That's going to add weight, of course," said Harvey. "You've read where certain soldiers aren't happy about that. But we think it's in their best interest to do this." Marines have shown a special aversion to the new plates because they tend to patrol on foot, sometimes conducting two patrols each day that last several hours. They feel the extra weight. In Euphrates River cities from Ramadi and Romanna, lance corporals to captains have complained about the added weight and lack of mobility. But some commanders have refused to listen. In the former insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, for example, commanders require use of the plates. End of story. The Marine Corps has said a total of 28,000 sets of the plates, officially called small-arms protective inserts, or side SAPIs, will be in combat zones by April. The Army has said it is hoping to have 230,000 sets of plates in the field this year. Last year, a study by the Armed Forces Medical Examiner said dozens of Marines killed by wounds to the torso might have survived had the larger plates been in use. "I'm sure people who ... lost kidneys would have loved to have had them on," said 2nd Lt. William Oren, a native of Southlake, Texas, who wears the plates. "More armor isn't the answer to all our problems. But I'll recommend them because it's more protection." Some Marines have chosen to wear the plates, particularly those in more vulnerable jobs such as Humvees turret gunners or those who frequently travel on roads plagued by roadside bombs. But many Marines — particularly those who conduct foot patrols also carrying weapons, extra ammunition, medical equipment, night vision goggles, food and water — say the extra armor is not worth it, especially when the weather becomes unbearably hot. "When you already have 60, 70 pounds on and you add 10 pounds when you go patrolling through the city or chasing after bad guys, that extra 10 pounds is going to make a difference. You're going to feel it," said Lance Cpl. David Partridge from Bangor, Maine. Many Marines, however, believe the politics of the issue eventually will make the plates mandatory. "The reason they issued (the plates), I think, is to make people back home feel better," said Lance Cpl. Philip Tootle of Reidsville, Ga. "I'm not wishing they wouldn't have issued them. I'm just wishing that they wouldn't make them mandatory."
By ANTONIO CASTANEDA, Associated Press Writer

- Russia Denies It Told Saddam About US Invasion Moves
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Russia_Den...sion_Moves.html

Moscow (AFP) Mar 27, 2006 - Russia's SVR foreign intelligence service Saturday denied a Pentagon report that Moscow gave Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein intelligence from inside the US military command on US troop movements after the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

- US Will Query Russia On Reports Of Help To Iraq
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/US_Will_Qu...lp_To_Iraq.html

- Northern Iraq Operation Nets 40 Insurgents Including Al-Qaeda Members
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Northern_I...da_Members.html

- US Troop Drawdown In Iraq Entirely Probable Says Rice
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/US_Troop_D..._Says_Rice.html

- Rumsfeld Will Not Resign Wants More Support For War Instead
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Rumsfeld_W...ar_Instead.html

March 27, 2006
Military
Shiite Fighters Clash With G.I.'s and Iraqi Forces
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 26 — American and Iraqi government forces clashed with Shiite militiamen in Baghdad on Sunday night in the most serious confrontation in months, and Iraqi security officials said 17 people had been killed in a mosque, including its 80-year-old imam.

The American military, clearly worried about exacerbating a combustible situation that many Iraqis are already describing as civil war, denied that American forces had entered the mosque. But it said in a statement that 16 insurgents had been killed and 15 captured in a nearby combat operation against a terrorist cell.

The differing versions of what happened seemed to raise a broader question about who is in control of Iraq's security at a time when Iraqi politicians still have not formed a unified government, sectarian tensions are higher than ever and mutilated bodies keep surfacing on the streets. On Sunday, Iraqi authorities found 10 bodies in Baghdad and said they were investigating a report that 30 men were beheaded near Baquba.

American officials are now saying that Shiite militias are the No. 1 problem in Iraq, more dangerous than the Sunni-led insurgents who for nearly the past three years have been branded the gravest security threat.

Shiite militias have been accused of running death squads that kidnap and brutalize Sunni men, and on Sunday the American militay said the cell its forces raided had kidnapped Iraq civilians.

But the deadly clash could reopen an old wound. The Iraqis who were killed had apparently worked for Moktada al-Sadr, a young radical Shiite cleric with ties to Iran who has led several bloody rebellions against American forces.

Mr. Sadr has recently become much more politically aggressive and he is considered a pivotal force in the maneuvering over the delayed formation of a new government.

Earlier on Sunday, a mortar shell nearly hit Mr. Sadr's home in the southern holy city of Najaf. Immediately he accused the Americans of trying to kill him.

American officials have been more overt in the past week than ever in blaming Mr. Sadr's militia for a wave of sectarian bloodshed that seems to have no end.

On Sunday night, American and Iraqi Army forces surrounded a mosque in northeast Baghdad used by Mr. Sadr's troops as a headquarters, Iraqi officials said. Helicopters buzzed overhead as a fleet of heavily armed Humvees sealed off the exits, witnesses said, and when soldiers tried to enter the mosque, shooting erupted, and a heavy-caliber gun battle raged for the next hour.

The Interior Ministry said 17 people had been killed, including the mosque's 80-year-old imam and other civilians.

Sheik Yousif al-Nasiri, an aide to Mr. Sadr, said that 25 people had been killed and that American troops had shot the mosque guards and then burst inside and killed civilians.

American officials provided few details about the raid on Sunday night.

A short news release said that Iraqi Special Forces soldiers, advised by American Special Forces personnel, conducted a raid to "disrupt a terrorist cell" and that "no mosques were entered or damaged during this operation."

The release also said no American soldiers had been hurt in the raid, and one prisoner being held by the gunman had been freed.

Lt. Col. Jonathan Withington, an Army spokesman, said he could not comment on any reports of civilian casualties, including the imam.

Iraqi television showed what appeared to be a prayer room filled with more than a dozen bodies. Several looked well beyond military age. Some had identification cards on their chests, with jagged bullet holes drilled through the plastic.

Just one day earlier, Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador, urged Iraqi leaders to crack down on militias.

"More Iraqis are dying from the militia violence than from the terrorists," he said. "The militias need to be under control."

But few expect the Shiite prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, to do anything soon.

He is embroiled in negotiations over who will serve in the next government, and despite continuous American prodding, little progress has been made. To a large extent, Mr. Jaafari needs the support of Shiite militia members in Parliament to keep his job.

Both Shiites and Sunnis have militias. But the Shiite militias are much bigger, much better organized and, most critically, much better connected to the Iraqi security forces.

Shiites make up a majority in Iraq, and two rounds of elections have tightened their grip on power, including over the police and commando forces.

Tensions between Shiites and Sunnis have been steadily building, but an attack on a Shiite shrine in Samarra on Feb. 22 unleashed a new level of sectarian fury.

Shiite mobs rampaged through Baghdad, burning Sunni mosques and killing Sunni civilians. Some Sunnis fought back, but there was an imbalance in the killing, and many people said Mr. Sadr's men were responsible for much of the mayhem.

The situation eventually calmed, at least on the surface. Then the bodies starting turning up. The Interior Ministry says the bodies of at least 200 men, many handcuffed and tortured, have been found. Others put the number much higher.

The widespread suspicion is that Shiite militias are running death squads and focusing on Sunni Arab civilians in a wave of sectarian revenge.

Witnesses have said that they have seen Shiite militiamen and officers in the Shiite-controlled police force abduct Sunni men, often in daylight and in public. Their bodies surface days later, many tortured — eyes gouged, toes cut, faces splashed with acid. Few, if any, cases are investigated.

The growing belief is that Shiite militias are trying to get even for the Shiite civilians who have been killed by the thousands and have borne the burnt of terrorist attacks in Iraq. Sunni terrorists are thought to be responsible, and now it seems that Sunni civilians are paying the price.

"It's hard sometimes to sort out who's killing who," said Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, an American military spokesman. "But there's no doubt there's a significant Shiite impact on all this."

Mr. Sadr has complicated the picture in two ways. His militia, called the Mahdi Army, has shown an almost messianic zeal to fight American forces, including a long and costly battle in Najaf in the summer of 2004.

Now, his militia is being blamed at least in part for the new problem, the death squads.

Mr. Sadr's top aides deny any connection to the killings, but lower-level Mahdi Army commanders have boasted of vigilante justice.

Two weeks ago, Mahdi Army militiamen hanged four men, whom they called terrorists, from lampposts in Baghdad.

Mr. Sadr has been quick to lash out at the Americans, whom he calls occupiers. After the mortar attack near his home on Sunday, he said in a statement that American forces " either overlook these attacks or they do it themselves."

The mortar wounded a child and a guard.

Other mortar attacks and bombings across Iraq killed at least three people, including two children.

The most gruesome report of violence for the day came from officials in Baquba, who said Sunday evening that 30 men had been beheaded and dumped near a highway.

Interior Ministry officials said a driver had discovered the bodies heaped in a pile next to the highway that links Baghdad to Baquba, a volatile city northeast of Baghdad that has been racked by sectarian and insurgent violence.

Iraqi Army troops waited for American support before venturing into the insurgent-controlled area to retrieve them.

"It's too dangerous for us to go in there alone," said Tassin Tawfik, an Iraqi Army commander.

Later, Baquba officials said they were unable to find the bodies, but would continue the search at daybreak.

In Baghdad, Iraqi officials said that American forces raided a small, secret jail and found several foreign prisoners, possibly people suspected of being terrorists. The soldiers detained the jail guards, though it is not clear for how long, and American officials did not provide any information about the incident. The Associated Press quoted Interior Ministry officials as saying that the prison was legitimate and that the detainees had not been abused.

American-led forces have been turning over more and more security responsibility to the Iraqis, but there are still substantial doubts that Iraqi forces are up to the job. American commanders have sent more troops into Baghdad in the past few weeks and increased their patrols.

Also on Sunday, a Kurdish writer was sentenced to a year and a half in jail for criticizing Kurdish leaders. The writer, Kamal Sayid Qadir, who also uses the name Kamal Karim, had published stories on a Kurdish Web site accusing one of the most powerful men in Kurdistan, Masoud Barzani, of corruption.

Mr. Qadir was originally sentenced to 30 years for defaming Mr. Barzani, but he was retried. A judge on Sunday said he was giving him a lenient sentence because Mr. Qadir was a college professor.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections XML Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map Back to Top

March 27, 2006
Wave of Violence Kills at Least 69 Iraqis
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:10 a.m. ET

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Police found 30 more victims of the sectarian slaughter ravaging Iraq -- most of them beheaded -- dumped on a village road north of Baghdad on Sunday. At least 16 other Iraqis were killed in a U.S.-backed raid in a Shiite neighborhood of the capital.

Accounts of the raid varied. Aides to the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and Iraqi police both said it took place at a mosque, with police claiming 22 bystanders died and al-Sadr's aides saying 18 innocent men were killed.

The Americans said Iraqi special forces backed by U.S. troops killed 16 ''insurgents'' in a raid on a community meeting hall after gunmen opened fire on approaching troops.

''No mosques were entered or damaged during this operation,'' the military said. It said a non-Western hostage was freed, but no name or nationality was provided.

Associated Press videotape showed a tangle of dead male bodies with gunshot wounds on the floor of what was said by the cameraman to be the imam's living quarters, attached to mosque itself.

The tape showed 5.56 mm shell casings scattered about the floor. U.S. forces use that caliber ammunition. A grieving man in white Arab robes stepped among the bodies strewn across the blood-smeared floor.

A total of at least 69 people were reported killed Sunday in one of the bloodiest days in weeks. Most of the dead appeared to be victims the shadowy Sunni-Shiite score-settling that has torn at the fabric of Iraq since Feb. 22 when a Shiite shrine was blown apart in Samarra, north of Baghdad.

Much of the recent killing is seen as the work of Shiite militias or death squads that have infiltrated or are tolerated by Iraqi police under the control of the Shiite-dominated Interior Ministry.

Many of the victims have been found dumped, mainly in Baghdad, with their hands tied, showing signs of torture and shot in the head.

In an apparent effort to clamp down on police wrongdoing, American troops raided an Interior Ministry building and briefly detained about 10 Iraqi policemen after discovering 17 Sudanese prisoners in the facility, Iraqi authorities reported.

The report was reminiscent of a similar U.S. raid last November that found detainees apparently tortured. That discovery set off a round of international demands for investigations and reform of Iraqi police practices to ensure observance of human rights.

In this case the Americans quickly determined the Sudanese were held legitimately and had not been abused, said Maj. Gen. Ali Ghalib, a deputy interior minister.

The U.S. military command here had no immediate comment.

The raid in Baghdad came a day after U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad spoke out on the need to cap the sectarian, militia-inspired killing, saying ''More Iraqis are dying today from the militia violence than from the terrorists.'' He did not say which militias he meant nor did he define who the terrorists were.

The two major militia forces in the country are Shiite organizations -- the Mahdi Army of al-Sadr and the Badr Brigades, the armed wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Both have ties with Iran.

Hours before the raid in Baghdad near Sadr City, al-Sadr personally was the apparent target of a mortar attack at his home in the holy city of Najaf, 90 miles south of Baghdad.

At least one mortar round struck within yards of al-Sadr's home, wounding a guard and a passing child, said Sheik Sahib al-Amiri, an aide to the cleric.

Shortly after the attack, al-Sadr issued a statement calling for calm.

''I call upon all brothers to stay calm and I call upon the Iraqi army to protect the pilgrims as the Nawasib (militants) are aiming to attack Shiites every day,'' he said, referring to Wednesday's commemoration marking the death of the Prophet Muhammad.

Following the raid, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite, expressed concern and telephoned Iraqi military leaders and U.S. Gen. George Casey to ''discuss the situation,'' said spokesman Abdul Rezzaq Al-Kadhimi.

He said the prime minister promised government compensation for families of those killed in the raid and called for Iraqis to be patient until an investigation was completed.

Police Lt. Hassan Hmoud, who put the death toll at 22, said some of the casualties were at the Islamic Dawa Party-Iraq Organization office near the mosque. The incident started when U.S. forces came under fire from the direction of the mosque and the party office, he said. The party is a separate organization from the one headed by al-Jaafari.

Shiite legislator and party spokesman, Khudayer al-Khuzai, said 15 members of the party were holding a ''cultural meeting'' in an office near the Shiite mosque. ''They have nothing to do with the acts of violence,'' he said.

Al-Khuzai claimed that after coming under attack, U.S. forces raided the party office, ''tortured'' the men, dragged them out and ''executed'' them. He said it was not clear who attacked the U.S. troops.

The main Shiite political bloc, the United Iraqi Alliance, would demand a quick investigation ''because the Iraqi blood is not cheap,'' al-Khuzai said.

Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a U.S. military spokesman, denied that the troops targeted a party office.

''The building was not a party headquarters but a community meeting room, and there was substantial intelligence on this building showing that that was not, in fact, what it was used for,'' he said.

In the north of the country, meanwhile, the Kurdish writer Kamal Karim was handed an 18-month sentence for articles on a Kurdish Web site that accused Masoud Barazani, one of the region's top leaders, of corruption.



Copyright 2006 The Associated Press Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections XML Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map Back to Top

Rice Says Cuts in U.S. Forces in Iraq Are 'Entirely Possible' The New York Times
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said today that significant reductions in American forces in Iraq in the coming year were "entirely possible," apparently seeking to offset any impression that they might not come for years. She also said that Washington would ask Moscow about a Pentagon report that Russians had shared elements of the American invasion plan with officials in Baghdad. "We take very seriously any suggestion that a foreign government may have passed information to the Iraqis prior to the American invasion that might have put our troops in danger," Ms. Rice said on Fox News, while adding that she could not confirm the report. Ms. Rice also welcomed reports that an Afghan man, facing a death sentence for converting to Christianity, was likely to be spared. Ms. Rice's prediction on troop strength in Iraq underscored the message from American military and political leaders that a drawdown there was likely if the country remained on track toward democracy and if Iraqi security forces made further progress toward autonomy. But Ms. Rice's comments, made on three Sunday morning television news programs, may also have been intended to offset the less-upbeat impression left last week when President Bush told a questioner that the decision for complete withdrawal would be up to "future presidents," meaning not before January 2009. Ms. Rice said on the NBC News program "Meet the Press" that If Iraqi troops and police are able to take command of larger swaths of territory, "I think it's entirely probable that we will see a significant drawdown of American forces over the next year." She did not specify whether she meant the calendar year or the coming 12 months. Ms. Rice referred to earlier comments by Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top American commander in Iraq, who told Congress last fall that reducing American troop levels would begin "taking away an element that fuels the insurgency." In January, an Iraqi member of a joint American-Iraqi committee of which General Casey is a member said troop levels could reach 100,000 by year's end, down from the current 130,000. And on March 19, General Casey said on CNN, "We've already begun a gradual reduction in the coalition presence here." He added, "With an assumption that the political process continues on the track that it's on and we continue to have the success that we're having with the development of the Iraqi security forces, I would expect that process of gradual coalition reductions to continue through 2006 and 2007." Ms. Rice also said Washington would investigate a report that Russians might have leaked portions of the American invasion plan to Iraq and would ask Moscow for an explanation. The information came from Iraqi documents captured by American forces after the invasion. Those documents, Pentagon officials said Friday, indicated that information obtained by a Russian source from the United States Central Command had been passed to Baghdad. While some of the information proved accurate — including that American ground forces coming from Kuwait would pass through the Karbala area — a key fact was wrong. The incursion from Kuwait was not a diversionary force but the main focus of the attack. A Pentagon report on the matter did not explicitly address the possible of disinformation, but said that "such external sources of information were only one of the fog-generators obscuring the minds of Iraq's senior leadership." Ms. Rice appeared to imply that the Kremlin might not have known of any leak to Baghdad. "Let's see what's there and let's talk with the Russian government," she said on "Fox News Sunday." "I would not jump to the conclusion that this — if, indeed, the reports are true, that it had to be Moscow-directed." Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, was also cautious, noting that "the intelligence world is a very murky world." But if Russia did pass American secrets, he said on Fox News, "it would be very disgusting." Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, said on the CBS News program "Face the Nation" that the United States should review the allegation and consider boycotting this summer's economic summit conference of the Group of 8 big industrialized countries, which is to be hosted by Russia in St. Petersburg. But Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, said that while the United States have some "tough questions" for the Russians, it was also important to remain engaged with them. "This is not the Soviet Union," he said, also on CBS News. "And one of the things you have to think about is, if you want to encourage democracy in Russia, do you want to kick Russia out of all these institutions that are trying to enshrine these values." Russian spokesmen have rejected reports of the leak as "absolutely nonsense," suggesting that the Pentagon might have publicized the reports to increase pressure on Russia to press Iran more actively to curb its nuclear program. Ms. Rice noted that diplomatic consultations regarding Iran were continuing over the weekend among United Nations Security Council members, but suggested that American patience was limited. She also said that if Afghan authorities had in fact canceled the planned execution of the Christian convert, Abdul Rahman, then "it would be a very good step forward." The notion that a government installed with American help could contemplate the death penalty in such a case has provoked outrage in many parts of the world. But Ms. Rice, while welcoming reports that the case against Mr. Rahman was faltering, said outsiders should also judge the Kabul government with patience. It was not yet a fully fledged, modern democracy, she said, but "It's also a far cry from the Taliban." She similarly counseled patience with Iraqi politicians struggling to form a unity government — even though President Bush had said Wednesday that "it's time to get a government in place that can start leading this nation." The Iraqis, Ms. Rice said, were not simply dividing up government posts, but were grappling with "some very important, really existential, issues." She said that if she thought it would help to travel to Baghdad to intervene personally, "I would do it."
By BRIAN KNOWLTON, International Herald Tribune

Bomb kills 30 at US-Iraqi base in Mosul Reuters.uk
At least 30 people were killed in a bomb blast inside a joint US-Iraq base in Mosul on Monday, police said. An Interior Ministry source said the explosion targeted Iraqi army recruits and may have been carried out by a suicide bomber strapped with explosives but it was not immediately possible to verify this. No further details were available. In December 2004 a suicide bomber wearing Iraqi uniform blew himself up at a U.S. armed forces mess tent in Mosul, killing 21 people, among them 14 U.S. troops and four other Americans. It was not immediately clear if Monday's explosion took place at the same site. The blast occurred one day after 20 people were shot dead in the Mustafa mosque near Sadr City in Baghdad in what some Shi'ite leaders said was a massacre of worshippers by U.S. troops. Police and residents said the killings resulted from a clash between American and Shi'ite militia men.
Blast rocks US-Iraq military base BBC News
'Many dead' after blast at US-Iraqi base Times Online
Trading Markets - Xinhua - Reuters - all 50 related

March 27, 2006
Shiite Officials Express Anger Over U.S. Clash With Militia
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
and JOHN O'NEIL
BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 27 — Shiite officials reacted angrily today to a clash that pitted American and Iraqi government forces against Shiite militiamen in Baghdad on Sunday night.

Iraqi security officials Sunday night said that 17 people had been killed in a mosque, including its 80-year-old imam. The American military, which denied that American forces had entered the mosque, said Sunday night that 16 insurgents had been killed and 15 captured in a combat operation near the mosque against a terrorist cell.

But other Iraqi officials today put the death toll higher. Abdul al-Karim al-Enzi, the national security minister, said that 37 people were killed and charged that they were all unarmed. "Nobody fired a single shot" at the troops, Mr. al-Enzi told Reuters.

And Interior Minister Bayan Jabr called the incident "unjustified aggression against the faithful at prayer in a mosque," news services reported.

At a funeral procession today for victims of the clash, the mood was tense and members of the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, kept their weapons on prominent display. Shiite leaders demanded a full investigation of the incident, and the governor for Baghdad's provincial government, Hussein Al-Tahan, said today that he was suspending all cooperation with American forces until an investigation was completed.

Mr. Al-Tahan said at a press conference that he would start "restricted measures to protect the dignity of the Iraqi citizen."

In other incidents, at least 40 Iraqis were killed today and 20 were wounded when a car bomb exploded at a police recruiting station between the cities of Tal Afar and Mosul in the country's north. The bodies of 45 men who had been executed were found in three separate locations, according to Iraqi and American officials.

Those killings came on top of the discovery of 10 bodies in Baghdad on Sunday. But the shootout with the Shiite militiamen who have come to control much of the capital raised tensions in a way that the steady stream of bombings and executions did not.

In its statements after the militia clash, the American military was clearly worried about exacerbating a combustible situation that many Iraqis are already describing as civil war.

,

The differing versions of what happened seemed to raise a broader question about who is in control of Iraq's security at a time when Iraqi politicians still have not formed a unified government, sectarian tensions are higher than ever and mutilated bodies keep surfacing on the streets. American officials are now saying that Shiite militias are the No. 1 problem in Iraq, more dangerous than the Sunni-led insurgents who for nearly the past three years have been branded the gravest security threat.

Shiite militias have been accused of running death squads that kidnap and brutalize Sunni men, and on Sunday the American militay said the cell its forces raided had kidnapped Iraq civilians.

But the deadly clash could reopen an old wound. The Iraqis who were killed had apparently worked for Mr. al-Sadr, who has led several bloody rebellions against American forces.

Mr. Sadr has recently become much more politically aggressive and he is considered a pivotal force in the maneuvering over the delayed formation of a new government.

Earlier on Sunday, a mortar shell nearly hit Mr. Sadr's home in the southern holy city of Najaf. Immediately he accused the Americans of trying to kill him.

American officials have been more overt in the past week than ever in blaming Mr. Sadr's militia for a wave of sectarian bloodshed that seems to have no end.

On Sunday night, American and Iraqi Army forces surrounded a mosque in northeast Baghdad used by Mr. Sadr's troops as a headquarters, Iraqi officials said. Helicopters buzzed overhead as a fleet of heavily armed Humvees sealed off the exits, witnesses said, and when soldiers tried to enter the mosque, shooting erupted, and a heavy-caliber gun battle raged for the next hour.

The Interior Ministry said 17 people had been killed, including the mosque's 80-year-old imam and other civilians.

Sheik Yousif al-Nasiri, an aide to Mr. Sadr, said that 25 people had been killed and that American troops had shot the mosque guards and then burst inside and killed civilians.

American officials provided few details about the raid on Sunday night.

A short news release said that Iraqi Special Forces soldiers, advised by American Special Forces personnel, conducted a raid to "disrupt a terrorist cell" and that "no mosques were entered or damaged during this operation."

The release also said no American soldiers had been hurt in the raid, and one prisoner being held by the gunman had been freed.

Lt. Col. Jonathan Withington, an Army spokesman, said he could not comment on any reports of civilian casualties, including the imam.

Iraqi television showed what appeared to be a prayer room filled with more than a dozen bodies. Several looked well beyond military age. Some had identification cards on their chests, with jagged bullet holes drilled through the plastic.

The discovery of large numbers of dead bodies is becoming more common around the country. This morning, Iraqi police discovered 18 men, all Shiites, who had been kidnapped from a village in Nahrawan in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad. All of the men had been shot. A similar find — 18 men, all shot — was made in Baquba, where earlier reports had described 30 men who had been beheaded.

On Saturday, Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador, urged Iraqi leaders to crack down on militias.

"More Iraqis are dying from the militia violence than from the terrorists," he said. "The militias need to be under control."

Both Shiites and Sunnis have militias. But the Shiite militias are much bigger, much better organized and, most critically, much better connected to the Iraqi security forces.

Shiites make up a majority in Iraq, and two rounds of elections have tightened their grip on power, including over the police and commando forces.

The widespread suspicion is that Shiite militias are running death squads and focusing on Sunni Arab civilians in a wave of sectarian revenge.

Witnesses have said that they have seen Shiite militiamen and officers in the Shiite-controlled police force abduct Sunni men, often in daylight and in public. Their bodies surface days later, many tortured — eyes gouged, toes cut, faces splashed with acid. Few, if any, cases are investigated.

Mr. Sadr has complicated the picture in two ways. His militia, called the Mahdi Army, has shown an almost messianic zeal to fight American forces, including a long and costly battle in Najaf in the summer of 2004.

Now, his militia is being blamed at least in part for the new problem, the death squads.

Mr. Sadr's top aides deny any connection to the killings, but lower-level Mahdi Army commanders have boasted of vigilante justice.

In Baghdad on Sunday, Iraqi officials said that American forces raided a small, secret jail and found several foreign prisoners, possibly people suspected of being terrorists. The soldiers detained the jail guards, though it is not clear for how long, and American officials did not provide any information about the incident.

The Associated Press quoted Interior Ministry officials as saying that the prison was legitimate and that the detainees had not been abused. Mr. Sabr today said that the detainees were foreigners who were being held separately from other prisoners prior to their deportation.

American-led forces have been turning over more and more security responsibility to the Iraqis, but there are still substantial doubts that Iraqi forces are up to the job. American commanders have sent more troops into Baghdad in the past few weeks and increased their patrols.

Also on Sunday, a Kurdish writer was sentenced to a year and a half in jail for criticizing Kurdish leaders. The writer, Kamal Sayid Qadir, who also uses the name Kamal Karim, had published stories on a Kurdish Web site accusing one of the most powerful men in Kurdistan, Masoud Barzani, of corruption.

Mr. Qadir was originally sentenced to 30 years for defaming Mr. Barzani, but he was retried. A judge on Sunday said he was giving him a lenient sentence because Mr. Qadir was a college professor.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections XML Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map Back to Top

Ruling Shi'ites demand Iraq regain security control Yahoo! NEWS
Iraq's ruling Shi'ite alliance on Monday urged U.S. forces to return control of security to Iraqis after what it called the cold-blooded killing of unarmed people in a Baghdad mosque during a U.S.-Iraqi raid. It made the demand as angry Shi'ites buried those killed in Sunday's operation by Iraqi special forces backed by U.S. advisers. The U.S. military has denied targeting a mosque. In northern Iraq, a suicide bomber killed 40 army recruits after walking into an Iraqi base near the restive city of Mosul. "The Alliance calls for a rapid restoration of (control of) security matters to the Iraqi government," Jawad al-Maliki, a senior spokesman of the United Iraqi Alliance and ally of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, told a news conference. Some Shi'ite government officials have joined aides to radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in accusing U.S. troops of massacring worshippers at the Mustafa mosque near Sadr City, a poor district that is home to about two million Shi'ites. The group led by Sadr, whose power base is in Sadr City, also forms part of the powerful Shi'ite alliance. The U.S. military said Iraqi troops, with U.S. advisers, only returned fire during a raid against militants, killing 16 people, and that no mosque was entered or damaged. But government-run Iraqi media have portrayed the operation as a U.S. raid on unarmed worshippers in a holy place. The building was not a traditional mosque but a former Baath party compound used by Shi'ites for prayers and other religious events and was known locally as the Mustafa mosque. The bombing in the north occurred between Mosul and Tal Afar, a town U.S. President George W. Bush has recently held up as an example of security progress in Iraq. The Iraqi Defense Ministry said a suicide bomber wearing an explosive belt killed 40 men and wounded 30 among a crowd of would-be army recruits. The base has been attacked in the past.

MILITIA CALLS
At the burials of the mosque victims in Baghdad, men wailed and hugged each other as some coffins were loaded onto vans. Furious mourners said only Sadr's Mehdi Army militia, not Iraqi security forces, could save them from sectarian bloodshed. "No one is protecting us," shouted Hamid Taayab, his voice high-pitched with anger, waving his arms wildly. "If it wasn't for the Mehdi Army we would be slaughtered in our homes." Violence between Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs, who were favored under Saddam Hussein's rule, has been rising. Many Iraqis fear the bloodshed could spiral into all-out civil war. Police said they found the strangled, tortured bodies of 12 more apparent victims of sectarian feuding in Baghdad on Monday. Scores of such corpses turn up in Iraq every day in killings so commonplace that local media barely noted Sunday's discovery of 30 bodies, many beheaded, in a village northeast of Baghdad. Baghdad provincial governor Hussein al-Tahan said he would halt all cooperation with U.S. forces until there was a U.S.-Iraqi inquiry that excluded the U.S. military. It was not clear what practical impact such a ban would have. Although the facts of Sunday night's raid are in dispute, analysts say it has been damaging for the United States and a propaganda windfall for Sadr as the country's Shi'ite, Kurdish and Sunni leaders struggle to form a government of unity to head off civil war three months after parliamentary elections. Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group said Sadr could stir up trouble at a time when the United States and Iran are preparing for talks on stabilizing Iraq. "The mosque incident will definitely boost his cause," Hiltermann said of the cleric, who like other Shi'ite leaders in the alliance, has links with Tehran. "The Shi'ites now believe the Americans, who brought them to power, are engaged in what they call the second betrayal. First the Americans abandoned them in the first Gulf War and now they believe the Americans are turning their backs on them," he said. Hiltermann was referring to Shi'ite and Kurdish revolts in 1991 which Washington let Saddam Hussein crush, and to growing Shi'ite suspicion of recent U.S. attempts to calm a Sunni Arab insurgency by pushing for a Sunni role in a unity government. Saddam's former lieutenant, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, called on Arab leaders to support the insurgency and boycott the government, in an audio tape aired by Al Jazeera TV on Monday. Al Jazeera identified the voice on the tape as that of Ibrahim, but it was not immediately possible to confirm this. The speaker urged an Arab summit in Sudan this week to recognize the "Iraqi resistance as the sole legitimate representative of the Iraqi people" and to "boycott the regime of agents and traitors." Ibrahim is the most senior member of Saddam's government not captured or killed. It was not clear when the tape was recorded.
By Omar al-Ibadi

Ruling Shi'ites demand Iraq regain security control Reuters RSS
Iraq's ruling Shi'ite alliance on Monday urged U.S. forces to return control of security to Iraqis after what it called the cold-blooded killing of unarmed people in a Baghdad mosque during a U.S.-Iraqi raid. It made the demand as angry Shi'ites buried those killed in Sunday's operation by Iraqi special forces backed by U.S. advisers. The U.S. military has denied targeting a mosque. In northern Iraq, a suicide bomber killed 40 army recruits after walking into an Iraqi base near the restive city of Mosul. "The Alliance calls for a rapid restoration of (control of) security matters to the Iraqi government," Jawad al-Maliki, a senior spokesman of the United Iraqi Alliance and ally of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, told a news conference. Some Shi'ite government officials have joined aides to radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in accusing U.S. troops of massacring worshippers at the Mustafa mosque near Sadr City, a poor district that is home to about two million Shi'ites. The group led by Sadr, whose power base is in Sadr City, also forms part of the powerful Shi'ite alliance. The U.S. military said Iraqi troops, with U.S. advisers, only returned fire during a raid against militants, killing 16 people, and that no mosque was entered or damaged. But government-run Iraqi media have portrayed the operation as a U.S. raid on unarmed worshippers in a holy place. The building was not a traditional mosque but a former Baath party compound used by Shi'ites for prayers and other religious events and was known locally as the Mustafa mosque. The bombing in the north occurred between Mosul and Tal Afar, a town U.S. President George W. Bush has recently held up as an example of security progress in Iraq. The Iraqi Defense Ministry said a suicide bomber wearing an explosive belt killed 40 men and wounded 30 among a crowd of would-be army recruits. The base has been attacked in the past.

MILITIA CALLS
At the burials of the mosque victims in Baghdad, men wailed and hugged each other as some coffins were loaded onto vans. Furious mourners said only Sadr's Mehdi Army militia, not Iraqi security forces, could save them from sectarian bloodshed. "No one is protecting us," shouted Hamid Taayab, his voice high-pitched with anger, waving his arms wildly. "If it wasn't for the Mehdi Army we would be slaughtered in our homes." Violence between Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs, who were favored under Saddam Hussein's rule, has been rising. Many Iraqis fear the bloodshed could spiral into all-out civil war. Police said they found the strangled, tortured bodies of 12 more apparent victims of sectarian feuding in Baghdad on Monday. Scores of such corpses turn up in Iraq every day in killings so commonplace that local media barely noted Sunday's discovery of 30 bodies, many beheaded, in a village northeast of Baghdad. Baghdad provincial governor Hussein al-Tahan said he would halt all cooperation with U.S. forces until there was a U.S.-Iraqi inquiry that excluded the U.S. military. It was not clear what practical impact such a ban would have. Although the facts of Sunday night's raid are in dispute, analysts say it has been damaging for the United States and a propaganda windfall for Sadr as the country's Shi'ite, Kurdish and Sunni leaders struggle to form a government of unity to head off civil war three months after parliamentary elections. Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group said Sadr could stir up trouble at a time when the United States and Iran are preparing for talks on stabilizing Iraq. "The mosque incident will definitely boost his cause," Hiltermann said of the cleric, who like other Shi'ite leaders in the alliance, has links with Tehran. "The Shi'ites now believe the Americans, who brought them to power, are engaged in what they call the second betrayal. First the Americans abandoned them in the first Gulf War and now they believe the Americans are turning their backs on them," he said. Hiltermann was referring to Shi'ite and Kurdish revolts in 1991 which Washington let Saddam Hussein crush, and to growing Shi'ite suspicion of recent U.S. attempts to calm a Sunni Arab insurgency by pushing for a Sunni role in a unity government. Saddam's former lieutenant, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, called on Arab leaders to support the insurgency and boycott the government, in an audio tape aired by Al Jazeera TV on Monday. Al Jazeera identified the voice on the tape as that of Ibrahim, but it was not immediately possible to confirm this. The speaker urged an Arab summit in Sudan this week to recognize the "Iraqi resistance as the sole legitimate representative of the Iraqi people" and to "boycott the regime of agents and traitors". Ibrahim is the most senior member of Saddam's government not captured or killed. It was not clear when the tape was recorded.
By Omar al-Ibadi

Shiites Assail U.S. Raid; Bombing Kills 40 Yahoo! NEWS
New violence flared Monday in northern Iraq with 40 dead in a suicide bombing, while Shiite leaders cut off political talks and denounced the United States over a weekend raid that they said killed worshippers in a mosque. Although the United States said no mosque was attacked, Shiites blamed the military for killing 22 people Sunday. Jawad al-Maliki, a lawmaker from the United Iraqi Alliance, said the Shiite bloc had canceled Monday's session of negotiations to form a new government because of the raid. "We suspended today's meetings to discuss the formation of the government because of what happened at the al-Moustafa mosque," al-Maliki said, adding that the alliance was expected to decide Tuesday when to resume the talks. President Jalal Talabani said he called U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and they decided to form an Iraqi-U.S. committee to investigate the attack. "I will personally supervise, and we will learn who was responsible. Those who are behind this attack must be brought to the justice and punished," Talabani said. Monday's bomber struck an army recruiting center, which is in front of a joint U.S.-Iraqi military base between Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, and the ancient city of Tal Afar. The attack shortly after noon killed 40 people and wounded 30 others — civilians and military personnel — who had gathered among a crowd of recruits for the Iraqi army, the Defense Ministry said. The U.S. military said no American troops were hurt in the bombing and reported only 30 dead. Iraqi army Lt. Akram Eid told The Associated Press that many of the injured were taken to the Sykes U.S. Army base on the outskirts of Tal Afar, about 40 miles west of Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city. U.S. troops helped secure the area after the attack and treat the wounded, the U.S. military said. In continuing sectarian violence, at least 21 more bodies were found — many with nooses around their necks — and mortar and bomb attacks killed 11 people in Baghdad and other towns. Details of a joint U.S.-Iraqi Special Operations attack in northeast Baghdad late Sunday continued to filter out, with Iraqi officials angrily disputing a U.S. account of what happened. Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr said the Mustafa mosque was attacked with worshippers killed, while a U.S. statement said the operation focused on "a compound of several buildings and that "no mosques were entered or damaged during this operation." The military said the joint operation "killed 16 insurgents and wounded three others during a house-to-house search on an objective with multiple structures." "They also detained 18 other individuals, discovered a significant weapons cache and secured the release of an Iraqi being held hostage," the statement said. Jabr angrily denounced the operation and rejected the U.S. account. "Entering the Mustafa Shiite mosque and killing worshippers was unjustified and a horrible violation from my point of view," Jabr said on the Al-Arabiya TV news network. "Innocent people inside the mosque offering prayer at sunset were killed." Police said gunmen fired on the joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol from a position in the neighborhood but not from the mosque. Police and representatives of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who holds great sway among poor Shiites in eastern Baghdad, said all those killed were in the complex for evening prayers and none was a gunmen. AP reporters who visited the scene Monday morning said the site of the attack was a neighborhood Shiite mosque complex. TV video shot Monday showed crumbling walls and disarray in a compound used as a gathering place for prayer. It was filled with religious posters and strung with banners denouncing the attack. Other video from Sunday night showed dead male bodies with gunshot wounds on the floor of what was said by the cameraman to be the imam's living quarters, attached to mosque itself. The compound, once used by Saddam Hussein's government, consists of a political party office, the mosque and quarters for the imam. The video showed 5.56 mm shell casings scattered on the floor. U.S. forces use that caliber ammunition. A grieving man in white Arab robes stepped among the bodies strewn across the blood-smeared floor. Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a U.S. military spokesman, said the operation was only launched after observation of the site convinced the military it was being used as a kidnapping cell. "In our observation of the place and the activities that were going on, it's difficult for us to consider this a place of prayer," Johnson said. "It was not identified by us as a mosque, though we certainly recognized it as a community gathering center. I think this is frankly a matter of perception." Hundreds of people turned out for the funerals of those killed in the raid. The mourners, many carrying Iraqi flags, walked alongside coffin-laden trucks. Baghdad Gov. Hussein Tahan said the local government had cut ties to the U.S. military and diplomatic mission "because of the cowardly attack on the al-Moustafa mosque." In the capital, a bomb exploded in a bus headed for the Sadr City slum, killing two passengers and wounding four others, police Col. Hassan Jaloob said. The bomb had been left in a bag, he said. A rocket that hit the headquarters of the Shiite Fadhila party in southeast Baghdad killed seven people and wounded 13, including children, police Capt. Ali Mahdi said. The latest violence came a day after 69 people were reported killed in one of the bloodiest 24-hour periods in weeks. Most of the dead appeared to be victims of the shadowy Sunni-Shiite score-settling that has torn at the fabric of Iraq since Feb. 22 when a Shiite shrine was blown apart in Samarra, north of Baghdad. Thirty victims of the continuing sectarian slaughter — most of them beheaded — were found dumped on a village road north of Baghdad. Among the 21 bodies reported Monday, nine were found in west Baghdad that were handcuffed, blindfolded and with ropes around their necks, police Lt. Akeel Fadhil said. Three bodies, of two men and a woman shot in the head, were found late Sunday in east Baghdad, police said. At a farm east of Baghdad, the bodies of nine men kidnapped a day earlier were discovered by relatives, police said. All had been shot in the head. Much of the recent killing is seen as the work of Shiite militias or death squads that have infiltrated or are tolerated by police under the control of the Shiite-dominated Interior Ministry. In an audiotape broadcast Monday, Saddam's fugitive chief deputy purportedly called for Arab leaders to back Iraq's Sunni-backed insurgency. The tape, which Al-Jazeera television said was made by Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, appeared to be an address to the Arab League summit in Khartoum, Sudan, this week. The voice said the Sunni-led insurgency was "the sole legitimate representative of the Iraqi people." It was impossible to determine the tape's authenticity. Al-Douri had been Revolutionary Command Council vice chairman and a longtime Saddam confidant.
By MARIAM FAM, Associated Press Writer

Suicide bomber kills 40 in blast in Iraq's Mosul:

Iraq's Defense Ministry said on Monday that a blast in the northern city of Mosul was carried out by a suicide bomber who killed 40 people in an attack on army recruits.
http://snipurl.com/o9pq

===
Troops accused of mosque massacre:

A senior aide to Sadr, accused US troops of shooting dead more than 20 unarmed worshippers at the Mustapha mosque after tying them up. The mosque's faithful follow Sadr but the aide denied they were Mehdi Army gunmen.
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12504.htm

===
Iraqi interior minister calls joint US-Iraqi raid 'unjustified' :

"It was an unjustified aggression against the faithful at prayer in a mosque," he told the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya satellite channel about the special forces raid that took place late Sunday.
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12507.htm

===
BBC Report: Many dead in Baghdad mosque raid :

The US military says its soldiers were helping Iraqi forces carry out an operation to arrest a fugitive.
http://snipurl.com/o9ps

===
Iraqi PM concerned over killings :

We saw unarmed worshippers and we didn't find any Iraqi weapons.
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12512.htm

===
Baghdad governor says suspends cooperation with US:

Baghdad provincial governor Hussein al-Tahan said on Monday he would suspend all cooperation with U.S. forces until an independent investigation is launched into the killing of 20 Shi'ites in a mosque.
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12519.htm

===
Iraq parties demand U.S. cede control:

Iraq's ruling parties demanded U.S. forces cede control of security on Monday as the government launched an inquiry into a raid on a Shi'ite mosque that ministers said saw "cold blooded" killings by U.S.-led troops.
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12518.htm

===
Juan Cole: 69 Killed in Separate Outbreaks of Violence:

It seems possible that the US committed two major military blunders that will worsen its relationship with Iraqi political forces.
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12509.htm

===
Secret Memo: Bush Was Set on Path to War,:

During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, he made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without a second resolution.
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12505.htm

===
Bush-Blair Iraq war memo revealed :

The memo indicates both leaders acknowledged it was possible no unconventional weapons would be found in Iraq before the invasion, the New York Times says.
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12506.htm

===
Charley Reese: Told You So :

What we are witnessing is the beginning of the end of Euro-American domination of the planet. When the emperors start being idiots, the empire is on the way to the ash heap of history. If you have any grandchildren, you might suggest that they study Chinese.
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12508.htm

===
Purported Saddam aide sends message:

A taped message purported to be from Saddam Hussein's former deputy calls on Arab leaders to support the Iraqi "resistance" and boycott the government.
http://snipurl.com/o9pv

===
US troops arrest Iraq forces:

US troops today arrested at least 40 Iraqi Interior Ministry forces who were holding 17 foreigners in a secret bunker complex, political sources said.
http://snipurl.com/o9px

===
Corrupt police and Iraqi crime gangs are the new 'enemy' for British troops:

The British estimate that some 10 per cent of the police are actively working against them and the first loyalty of the majority is to a Shia Muslim militia or to their tribe.
http://snipurl.com/

===

BBC Hardtalk - Iraq: Debating a new government :

Three years after the US led invasion of Iraq President Bush looks at Iraq and sees, a 'free and secure people getting back on their feet'. Former interim Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi sees a country already descended into civil war.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/hardtalk/4841902.stm

===
Signs of a long US stay ahead:

The concrete goes on forever, vanishing into the noonday glare, 2 million cubic feet of it, a mile-long slab that's now the home of as many as 120 US helicopters, a ''heli-park" as good as any back in the States.
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12514.htm

===
Video: Anti-US sentiment madness: Blair:

Real Video
http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200603/r78602_225072.ram

Windows Media
http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200603/r78602_225074.asx

March 27, 2006
Shiite Leaders, Furious Over Raid, Halt Talks on Government
By KIRK SEMPLE
BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 27 — Frayed relations between Iraq's Shiite leadership and the American authorities came under increased strain on Monday as Shiite leaders expressed fury over an American-led attack on a Shiite compound and suspended negotiations over a new government.

The raid on Sunday evening that killed at least 16 people also led the governor of Baghdad to announce a halt in cooperation with the United States, and it led Shiite militiamen to brandish their weapons in the streets of eastern Baghdad and declare their readiness to retaliate against American troops.

The suspension of the difficult talks over the formation of a new government prolonged a power vacuum that American and Iraqi officials agree creates a fertile environment for more lawlessness and sectarian violence.

In the village of Kasak, between Mosul and Tal Afar, a man wrapped in explosives detonated himself at an army recruitment center on Monday, killing at least 40 people and wounding at least 30 others, an official at the Interior Ministry said. The center is located in front of a joint American-Iraqi military base, although the American military said no American troops were wounded.

President Jalal Talabani said he would lead a joint Iraqi-American committee to investigate the Sunday evening raid as American and Iraqi authorities continued to offer wildly conflicting accounts of it. Shiites said the victims were civilians gathered in a mosque, while the Americans said they were insurgents holed up in a guerrilla headquarters. Iraqi leaders said they would reassess the pause in political talks on a day-by-day basis. .

The American-Shiite tension has numerous sources. The American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, has been pressing the government of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite, to crack down on Shiite militias and rid the Interior Ministry of militia influence.

The militias, and their fighters working within the government's security forces, have been accused of conducting a dirty war against Sunni Arabs through kidnappings and executions, and thereby helping to push the country toward all-out civil war.

In addition, Mr. Khalilzad has been urging the Shiite leaders to be more politically accommodating to Sunni Arabs. In the aftermath of the bombing of a major Shiite shrine last month, Shiite leaders began to lash out at the ambassador for his insistence on appeasing the Sunni Arabs and defended their use of militias for self-defense.

Some Shiite leaders warned that the raid was being widely interpreted among their constituents as a strong-arm tactic to cow them into making political concessions, including forcing the largest Shiite bloc to drop Mr. Jaafari as its nominee for prime minister in the new government. They demanded that the American authorities give a public and transparent accounting of the incident.

"There was something tragically wrong, and it's got to be explained or it's going to be seen by many to be a crackdown on certain political factions in Iraqi politics," said Haydar al-Abadi, a top adviser to Mr. Jaafari. "We are facing a crisis."

President Talabani said at a news conference that Gen. George W. Casey Jr. agreed to the formation of the joint investigative committee, a move that was confirmed by a spokeswoman for the American embassy. "I will personally supervise, and we will learn who was responsible," the president said. "Those who are behind this attack must be brought to justice and punished."

The governor of Baghdad, Hussein al-Tahan, said he was suspending cooperation with the American authorities "due to the aggression that the innocent people and worshippers were subjected to." The practical effects of the move remained unclear, though it would likely have symbolic resonsance.

The raid on Sunday happened at the Mustafa husayniyah, a small Shiite community center and mosque in Ur, a predominantly Shiite neighborhood in northeastern Baghdad. The mosque, with a small minaret, is built around a central open-air courtyard and was frequented by followers of the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia. Mr. Sadr led two major armed uprisings against American troops in 2004 and has become one of the most powerful political forces in the country.

The mosque's imam, Sheikh Safaa al-Tamimi, said he fled the mosque when the troops arrived Sunday evening, but returned after the shooting was over and saw corpses in several different rooms. Adel Abu al-Hassan, 34, the supervisor of the mosque and a prayer caller, was outside the mosque during the seige but said he, too, returned to find corpses scattered around the complex.

A reporter visiting the mosque on Monday saw blood stains in rooms and on rugs that had been hauled into the courtyard, bullet-pocked walls and even a chunk of human brain in a pool of blood on the tile floor of an office used by a Shiite political party, the Iraq Branch of the Islamic Dawa Party.

In a conference call with reporters in Baghdad late Monday, Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, commander of the day-to-day operations of the multinational forces in Iraq, said the building was "an office complex," and not a mosque. He said the raid, which involved Iraqi Special Forces assisted by about two dozen American troops, was aimed at an insurgent group that was using the building as a base of operations for conducting kidnappings and executions.

General Chiarelli said that as the troops approached the complex, they received fire from "several buildings" in the area. The troops killed 16 insurgents, wounded three, detained 18 other people, discovered a large weapons stockpile and released a dental technician who was being held hostage there, he said.

The soldiers were met with "gunfire throughout every one of those rooms we went in," according to Maj. Gen. James Thurman, commander of multinational forces in Baghdad, who also participated in the conference call. The Iraqi forces, he said, made "a heroic effort recovering the hostage."

Gen. Chiarelli said he did not know which organization the insurgents represented. "What I know is that we had a terrorist organization that's involved in executions and murders and were holding a hostage," he stated.

The general said he believed that the scene was disrupted after the raid to make the building look like something other than a terrorist headquarters, including by planting religious paraphernalia. "After the fact, someone went in and made the scene look different than it was, for whatever purposes," he said.

But Iraqi government officials and political leaders vociferously disputed the American command's version of events, insisting that Iraqi and American troops had raided a mosque, not a fortified office complex, as a political party meeting was under way and unarmed worshippers gathered for evening prayer.

Khudair al-Khuzaie, the spokesman for the Iraq Branch of the Islamic Dawa Party, said he knew of 16 people killed, all of whom were attending a meeting in the party's office at the time of the raid. The office is accessible through a doorway from the mosque's courtyard. Of those killed, he said, 13 were party members and three were civilians.

Jawad al-Maliki, a deputy to Prime Minister Jaafari's Dawa Party, accused the American command of committing "an ugly crime" that "has dangerous political and security dimensions intended to ignite the fire of civil war."

In the hours after the attack, an official in the office of Mr. Sadr, the anti-American Shiite cleric, claimed that members of his Mahdi Army were among the victims. But on Monday, another representative of Mr. Sadr said no Mahdi Army fighters died in the raid.

Mahdi fighters brandishing weapons took to the streets in Ur and Sadr City in a show of force and warned they were prepared to attack American troops. Many accompanied a solemn and tense funeral cortege for the victims through the streets of Ur.

But Shiite leaders, including Mr. Sadr, urged calm. There was no reported fighting between American-led coalition troops and Shiite militias.

"We are ready to resist the Americans and strike their bases," vowed Katheer Abdul-Ridha, 22, a member of the Mahdi Army, who was guarding a roadblock in Sadr City. "The Sunnis have nothing to do with this and we shouldn't accuse them of everything that's going on. These are schemes to edge out Jaafari from his post, but God willing, they will fail as long as we back him."

Mr. Khalilzad has been pressuring Iraqi leaders to rein in the militias. On Saturday, he declared that more Iraqis were now dying from militia violence than from the insurgency. "The militias need to be under control," he said.

In the carnage at the northern recruitment center, Gen. Muhammed al-Dosaki, deputy commander of the Third Division of the Iraqi Army, said a suicide bomber waded into a crowd of about 70 applicants who had gathered outside the center and detonated a vest of explosives.

And in Baghdad, Iraqi police recruits stumbled across nine bodies, all of which had been garroted, an official in the Interior Ministry said. At least 267 bodies showing signs of execution-style killings have been recovered in Baghdad in the past three weeks.

In southern Baghdad, a missile hit a building containing two offices of the Shiite-led Fadhila and Dawa parties, killing six people and wounding 12, an Iraqi police official in Zafaraniya said.

Khalid al-Ansary, Omar al-Neami and Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi contributed reporting for this article from Baghdad, and an Iraqi employee contributed reporting from Mosul.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections XML Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map Back to Top

US Presses Moscow On Reports Of Spying For Iraq
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/US_Presses...g_For_Iraq.html

Washington (AFP) Mar 28, 2006 - The United States pressed Moscow on Monday for an explanation of reports that Russia had given Saddam Hussein intelligence on US troop movements during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Dan Fried, assistant secretary of state for European affairs, spoke to the Russian ambassador here and conveyed a request that Moscow look into the allegations, the State Department said.

Russia Calls US Charge Of Helping Iraq 'Politically-Motivated'
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Russia_Cal..._Motivated.html

Angered by Fatal Raid, Shiites Exit Unity Talks

BAGHDAD-As coffins of shooting victims rolled past wailing
mourners, Iraq's dominant Shiite Muslim political alliance
condemned the United States for a weekend raid that left at least
16 people dead in a Shiit