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(01/18/05 5:10pm)
CHICAGO -- Abdul Albisherawy says he doesn't care who wins the upcoming Iraqi elections as long as his homeland isn't run by a dictator.\n"Any leader that gets in, that's fine, as long as the people run the country," the Chicago cab driver said Monday as he prepared to join thousands of Iraqi expatriates registering to vote in the upcoming Iraqi election.\nAs the seven-day voter registration period opened Monday in the Chicago area and four other U.S. cities, Albisherawy and others talked with excitement about the opportunity to cast ballots in Iraq's first independent election in nearly 50 years.\n"Oh, boy, you can't even imagine the happiness for us, believe me," said Tommy Alyasiry, a 38-year-old school maintenance worker in St. Louis who plans to rent a car and drive his family to Chicago to register later this week. "We waited a long time, but finally we see the freedom."\nFor voters like Alyasiry, driving hundreds of miles to register this week in suburban Chicago, Detroit, Nashville, Los Angeles or Washington, D.C., and then returning Jan. 28 to 30 to vote may be an inconvenience, but many say it's worth the effort.\n"I talked to a guy yesterday, he said if I have to go walking I will go," said Ihsan Alyasiry, executive director of the Mesopotamian Center of St. Louis, who plans to register in Chicago. "My own feeling is even if I have to go 10 times I will do it."\nThe Mesopotamian Center arranged for four vans to take voters from St. Louis to the two suburban Chicago registration sites in Skokie and Rosemont and back this week. The Assyrian National Council of Illinois is picking up others at Chicago homes and churches, said Susan Sarkis, the council's assistant director.\nOn Jan. 28, 29 and 30, those Iraqis who have registered will have the chance to vote for members for their homeland's 275-member Assembly, which will elect a president and two deputy presidents and draft the country's Constitution.\nOfficials don't know how many Iraqis will register in the United States, but if the phones at the Assyrian National Council of Illinois are any indication, the steady stream of people at the council's community center in Skokie on Monday will continue through the week.\nThe 2000 U.S. Census put the number of Iraqi-born immigrants in the United States at about 90,000. With voting open to second-generation Iraqi-Americans, more than 230,000 people are eligible to vote -- at least 31,000 of them in the Chicago area, Sarkis said.\nEdward Shamoun, a Schaumburg resident who fled Iraq in 1976, said he and others expect violence and trouble during the election but they believe in the election process.\n"I'm sure the first election won't make us real happy," said Shamoun, 54. "But we're very happy just to have the opportunity."\nIhsan Alyasiry's sister and family live outside Baghdad and are hopeful about what the votes cast in Iraq and by Iraqis around the world will mean.\n"They think the election is going to be a magic stick, that it will turn everything to gold, everything shiny," he said.\nBut they also believe they are literally risking their lives by voting, he said. After so many years under the brutal rule of Saddam Hussein there also may be some concern that they could somehow end up paying for the votes cast by relatives outside the country.\n"But they don't care," he said. "My sister says, 'Even if I know I'm going to die, I'm going to it for my kids."
(01/18/05 4:47pm)
RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas ordered his security forces Monday to try to prevent attacks against Israel and to investigate a shooting at a Gaza Strip crossing that killed six Israeli civilians last week.\nPalestinian officials would not provide details of the order, and it was unclear how it would be translated into action, if at all. Abbas insists he will use persuasion, not force, to rein in armed groups.\nA Hamas spokesman said the Islamic militant group will continue carrying out attacks.\nAbbas was under growing pressure to move against militants following last week's attack at the Karni crossing between Gaza and Israel. Israel suspended ties with Abbas in response and ordered its army Sunday to do whatever was needed to stop Palestinian attacks.\nIsrael decided to hold off on a major military offensive in Gaza to give Abbas more time to act against militants, a senior government official said Monday.\nSecretary of State Colin Powell also urged Abbas in a phone call Sunday to rein in the armed groups, officials said.\nAbbas' victory in presidential elections last week had raised hopes for a breakthrough in Mideast peacemaking. However, the Karni attack, two days before Abbas was sworn into office, ended his honeymoon with Israel before it ever started.\nIsraeli troops raided several areas of Gaza over the weekend to halt rocket fire on Israeli settlements and border towns, withdrawing early Monday. Sixteen Palestinians were killed in the raids, among them nine gunmen and seven civilians, including a 10-year-old boy.\nA senior Israeli military official said Monday the army will re-enter areas of the West Bank it is slated to evacuate later this year if Palestinian security forces cannot prevent attacks from the area. The remarks by the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, indicated that Israel's planned withdrawal from the northern West Bank this summer might not be permanent.\nIn a Palestinian Cabinet meeting Monday, Abbas instructed the security forces to try to prevent attacks against Israel.\n"A decision was taken that we will handle our obligation to stop violence against Israelis anywhere," Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat said.\nAbbas moved up his planned negotiations with militants. Ministers said he would travel to Gaza for talks with various factions Tuesday, instead of Wednesday, as initially scheduled.\nThe Palestinian Cabinet also asked the Palestinian Preventive Security Service, which controls the crossings into Israel, to investigate the Karni attack. Three militant groups, including Hamas and the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, which has ties to Abbas' ruling Fatah movement, carried out the attack.\nIsraeli officials said they have indications the attackers left from a Palestinian Authority base and passed through a Palestinian checkpoint on the way to the attack.\nIsrael has accused Palestinian security forces of permitting acts of violence and even collaborating with attackers. It wants Abbas to overhaul the myriad security forces and place them under a central authority.\nRaanan Gissin, a Sharon aide, called Monday's Cabinet decision a "small step in the right direction."\n"Now we have to see how it happens on the ground, based on things that were said," he added.\nHamas spokesman Mushir al-Masri said the group would not comply with the new orders.\n"We consider resistance as a red line, and no one is allowed to cross this line," al-Masri said.\nHamas leaders have said they would consider halting attacks if Israel stops military operations.
(01/14/05 2:57pm)
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Gunmen killed a representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most senior Shiite Muslim cleric, along with the aide's son and four bodyguards in a town south of Baghdad, an official in the cleric's office said Thursday.\nInsurgents trying to derail Iraq's Jan. 30 elections appeared to be sending a message to al-Sistani, who strongly supports the vote. Insurgents have targeted electoral workers and candidates.\nGunmen opened fire on a minibus picking up a Turkish businessman from the Bakhan Hotel in central Baghdad on Thursday, killing six Iraqis and kidnapping the Turk, who reportedly ran a construction company that worked with U.S.-led occupation authorities.\nIraq's interim President Ghazi al-Yawer also weighed in on the U.S. announcement Wednesday that the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has concluded without finding any evidence of the banned weapons that President Bush cited as justification for going to war against Iraq.\nAl-Yawer, in Paris for talks with French President Jacques Chirac, said the war still served a purpose.\n"What has happened has happened," he told reporters, speaking in English. "But the war rid Iraq of a vicious regime which established a dynasty of villains."\nSheik Mahmoud Finjan, al-Sistani's representative in the town of Salman Pak, 10 miles southeast of Baghdad, was shot dead Wednesday night as he was returning home from a mosque where he performed the evening prayers, the official said on condition of anonymity.\nThe aide's son and four bodyguards also were killed, the official said at al-Sistani's office in the Shiite holy city of Najaf.
(01/14/05 2:53pm)
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia -- Indonesia on Thursday ordered foreign aid workers in tsunami-devastated Aceh province to have military escorts in areas facing violence by insurgents, even as the vice president welcomed a cease-fire offer by the rebels. The total death toll from the disaster rose to more than 157,000.\nRelief groups have not reported any security problems in Banda Aceh, where rebels have fought a low-level separatist war against government troops for three decades, and some worried that the new restrictions could harm their reputation for independence.\n"We discourage such actions because it blurs the distinction between humanitarian and military efforts here," said Eileen Burke of Save the Children.\nIndonesian military spokesman Col. Ahmad Yani Basuki said in a telephone interview that the army considers only the areas around the provincial capital Banda Aceh and the stricken coastal town of Meulaboh safe for foreigners.\n"Other areas aside from that are potential trouble spots," he said. Anyone going to the troubled zones must take military escorts. But Basuki warned: "We don't have enough personnel to secure everyone."\nHealth officials planned a massive spraying campaign starting Friday in Indonesia's disaster zone to head off the threat of malaria, which one expert said could kill up to 100,000 people in the coming months if authorities don't act quickly to kill mosquitoes.\nIndonesia's Social Affairs Ministry raised the country's official death toll from the Dec. 26 disaster to 110,229, an increase of nearly 4,000. Sumatra island's Aceh province was worst hit, with the number of people missing there at more than 12,000, with 703,518 homeless survivors.\nDeath tolls also went up in India -- by 345, to 10,672 -- and in Sri Lanka -- by six, to 30,899. The overall toll across 11 nations stands at 157,642.\nIndonesia's restrictions highlight its sensitivity over foreign involvement in the humanitarian effort, especially that of troops from the United States, Australia, Singapore and Japan.\nThe security measures represent an effort to regain control of Aceh and the west coast of Sumatra island. Before the disaster, the military controlled Aceh with a tight grip, and foreign journalists and aid workers were barred. Widespread rights abuses were reported.\nRebel leaders reaffirmed their commitment to a cease-fire they declared hours after the Dec. 26 earthquake that sent killer waves fanning out across the Indian Ocean.\nIndonesia's vice president welcomed the cease-fire offer. "Indonesia will also make efforts toward it," Jusuf Kalla said at the vice presidential palace.\nThe U.S. ambassador to Indonesia urged Jakarta and rebels to negotiate peace. "Both sides should get together quickly, negotiate a settlement and get on with rebuilding Aceh," ambassador B. Lynn Pascoe said Thursday.\nKalla said Tuesday that Indonesia wants the foreign troops to leave the country by late March. Survivors among the tens of thousands living in refugee camps welcomed the foreign troops, which have been flying helicopter aid missions to otherwise inaccessible areas and running field hospitals.\n"If they leave, we will starve," said Syarwan, 27, a tailor who survived the tsunami and is crowded with some 45 relatives under a tarp at a survivor camp in the provincial capital, Banda Aceh.\nRichard Allan, director of the Mentor Initiative, an aid group leading the malaria campaign in Indonesia, said the tsunami had produced conditions ripe for huge swarms of mosquitoes in areas where survivors were extra vulnerable to malaria.\n"They are stressed. They've got multiple infections already and their immune systems are weakened," Allan said. "Any immunity they had is gone."\nHealth workers will walk house-to-house fumigating all the neighborhoods of Banda Aceh, officials said. Tents in refugee camps dotted around the city also will be sprayed.
(01/14/05 2:36pm)
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Palestinian militants set off a large truck bomb as gunmen stormed an Israeli base at a vital Gaza crossing Thursday, killing five Israelis and wounding five others in an attack that defied peace efforts by new Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.\nThe assault, in which three Palestinians attackers were also killed, was by far the biggest since Abbas won an election Sunday to succeed Yasser Arafat as head of the Palestinian Authority. Abbas has been trying to persuade militant groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad to agree to a cease-fire, but so far with no success.\nThe bombing came just hours after Hamas' West Bank leader -- known as a relative moderate within Hamas -- said it might consider an end to attacks against Israel. Hamas was one of three militant groups that claimed responsibility for the bombing, dubbing it "Shaking Castles."\nThe attack took place just before 11 p.m. at the Karni crossing, where all the farm produce and other goods enter and leave the Gaza Strip.\nThe militants entered the crossing in a bomb-laden truck minutes before it was to close, the military said. They blew a hole in the security wall between the Israeli and Palestinian sides of the crossing, and at least two gunmen charged through and attacked the Israelis.\nOne report said they blew themselves up, but another said they opened fire and were killed by Israeli soldiers.\nAbout 90 minutes after the attack, Israeli helicopters fired three missiles early Friday at a building in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza used by Islamic Jihad, the Israeli military and Palestinian security officials said. One person was slightly wounded.\nIsrael intends to pull out of Gaza in the summer. Militant groups have been stepping up their attacks in recent months in an attempt to show that they are forcing the Israelis out. A month ago, soldiers discovered a tunnel militants were digging toward the Karni checkpoint in an attempt to blow it up.\nFive Israelis were killed in Thursday's attack, the Israeli military said. Israeli hospital officials said they were treating three seriously wounded people and two slightly wounded.\nOn the Palestinian side, a statement to The Associated Press from the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, affiliated with Abbas' Fatah faction, said two fighters were killed "in a martyrdom operation" near the Karni crossing. Later, a militant faction said a third gunman was killed while trying to ambush rescue workers.\nA spokesman for another group, the Popular Resistance Committees, said militants filmed the attack. Hamas also claimed responsibility in the joint operation.\nJust hours earlier, the top Hamas official in the West Bank, Sheik Hassan Yousef, told the AP that Hamas is open to a truce with Israel and is no longer bent on destroying the Jewish state, recognizing that Palestinians are weary after four years of conflict.\nThe comments went a step beyond previous Hamas statements indicating it might accept Israel as a temporary presence only.\nYousef, who is among Hamas' founding members, is known as a relative moderate within the group, and other leaders couldn't immediately be reached for reaction. The group's main leaders are based in Syria and Lebanon, and they usually stick to the Islamic movement's uncompromising line against Israel.\nYousef said the group is reconsidering its violent tactics, though a final decision hasn't been made.\nThe official ideology of Hamas does not recognize a place for a Jewish state in an Islamic Middle East. In the past, the furthest Hamas leaders have gone is to say they would accept a "temporary" Palestinian state in only the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the framework of a long-term cease-fire with Israel -- but that Hamas would not make peace with the Jewish state and believes the Palestinians have the right to all Israeli land.\nYousef said Hamas understands that the Palestinian people are weary after more than four years of fighting. "We read the regional and the international reality and the changes that have taken place based on this reality, and we take positions according to these changes," Yousef said.\n"Hamas doesn't want to eliminate Israel. Hamas is a realistic political movement," he said. "There is a thing called Jews and a thing called Israel and we deal with this reality."\nDespite Yousef's comments on Thursday to The Associated Press, Israelis were skeptical.\n"We're going to have to see what the reaction is. This guy has a reputation for piping off," cautioned Mark Heller, an analyst at the Jaffe Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. "I don't think he was speaking for the (Hamas) movement."\nA senior Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Israel would deal only with Abbas' Palestinian Authority.\nIsrael insists that Abbas dismantle the militants groups, according to the terms of the stillborn "road map" peace plan, backed by the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia.\nInstead of cracking down, Abbas has been trying to prod the Islamic militants into a truce. In his brief tenure as prime minister in 2003, Abbas succeeded in forging a cease-fire to halt attacks against Israel, but it collapsed after a few weeks amid Palestinian bombings and Israeli reprisals.\nOn Wednesday, Mahmoud Zahar, a top Hamas leader in Gaza, said Hamas has no plans to disarm, and Abbas has no authority to order an end to attacks on Israel.
(01/14/05 2:35pm)
WASHINGTON -- Leaders of a Senate committee have asked the Education Department to turn over records of recent years' public relations contracts, while reminding the education secretary of a federal ban on "propaganda."\nThe request came after revelations that the Bush administration had paid a prominent black media commentator, Armstrong Williams, to promote the new education law that had been strongly supported by President Bush.\nSeparately, a Democratic member of the Federal Communications Commission called Thursday for his agency to investigate whether Williams broke the law by failing to disclose that the Bush administration paid him $240,000 to plug its education policies.\nWilliams, who has apologized for a mistake in judgment, said he had broken no law.\nIn the same contract as the Armstrong arrangement, the Education Department paid the public relations firm Ketchum for a video that promoted the law and appeared as a news story without making clear the reporter was hired as part of the deal.\nThe agency has also paid for ratings of news reporters, with points given for flattering coverage.\n"Given our jurisdiction over the funds involved, we would appreciate your careful review of the contract with Ketchum and the payment made to Mr. Williams," said Sens. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, in a letter to Education Secretary Rod Paige.\nThe letter, dated Wednesday, was obtained by The Associated Press Thursday.\nThe lawmakers are the chairman and ranking member of the Senate panel that oversees education spending.\nThey also asked Paige for a list of any grant, contract or arrangement of public money being used "for public relations or anything similar to the purpose of the Ketchum contract" from the 2002, 2003 and 2004 budget years.\nMeanwhile, at an FCC meeting Thursday, Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein said the agency had received about a dozen complaints concerning the Williams arrangement.\n"I certainly hope the FCC will take action and fully investigate whether any laws have been broken," Adelstein said.\nThrough the Ketchum contract, the department paid the $240,000 to Williams' company, the Graham Williams Group, which was to produce radio and TV ads that featured Paige.\nThe deal allowed Paige and other department officials to appear as studio guests with Williams. And Williams, one of the nation's leading black conservative voices, was to use his influence with other black journalists to persuade them to talk about the law, known as No Child Left Behind.\nThe department has defended its decision as a "permissible use of taxpayer funds under legal government contracting procedures." Williams, though, has apologized, saying that accepting money and then publicly supporting the law was "an obvious conflict of interests."\nWilliams, responding to the request for an FCC investigation, said that neither he nor any of the stations that carried his syndicated program violated the law because ads that aired during the show specifically stated they were paid for by the Education Department.
(08/25/04 5:14am)
WASHINGTON -- U.S. soldiers running the Abu Ghraib prison are mainly to blame for the inmate abuses there, but fault also lies with the Pentagon's most senior civilian and military officials, according to a report released Tuesday by an independent panel of civilian defense experts.\nSenior leaders did not establish clear guidelines on permissible techniques for interrogating various categories of prisoners held at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in Iraq, the report said.\nHigh-level commanders failed to shift resources to an understaffed and ill-trained prison detention unit once it became apparent that the system was out of control, the report said.\nThe findings were presented at a Pentagon news conference by James Schlesinger, the former secretary of defense who headed a four-person commission created last May by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.\n"There was chaos at Abu Ghraib," Schlesinger said, and it was due in part to the prison being a regular target of shelling by an Iraqi insurgency not adequately anticipated by U.S. leaders.\nThe report said the direct responsibility lay with soldiers and commanders in the field rather than in Washington.\n"There was direct responsibility for those activities on the part of the commanders on the scene up to the brigade level, because they did not adequately supervise what was going on at Abu Ghraib," Schlesinger said. "There was indirect responsibility at higher levels, in that the weaknesses at Abu Ghraib were well-known and that corrective action could have been taken and should have been taken."\nHe said Rumsfeld's office could be faulted for inadequate supervision, but he strongly objected to the suggestion that Rumsfeld should step down from his post.\n"His resignation would be a boon to all of America's enemies," Schlesinger said.\nAsked later about the culpability of senior military commanders, Schlesinger said "they were not focused on the detention operations," but even so, they should not be forced to resign or be punished. He referred specifically to Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who was the top U.S. commander in Iraq during the period in question.\nThe mistreatment of prisoners, described by the commission as "acts of brutality and purposeless sadism," would have been avoided with proper training, leadership and oversight, the report said.\nIn most cases, the abuse was not carried out with the purpose of achieving intelligence from prisoners, Schlesinger said.\n"There were freelance activities on the part of the night shift at Abu Ghraib," he said. "It was a kind of 'Animal House' on the night shift."\nThe report did not suggest that Rumsfeld ordered any of the abuses or did anything to encourage them. But it indicated that his policies created some confusion at lower levels of the military.\n"The abuses were not just the failure of some individuals to follow known standards, and they are more than the failure of a few leaders to enforce proper discipline," the report said. "There is both institutional and personal responsibility at higher levels."\nThe commission was particularly critical of Sanchez and other commanders.\n"We believe Lt. Gen. Sanchez should have taken stronger action in November when he realized the extent of the leadership problems at Abu Ghraib," the report said. It concluded that he "failed to ensure proper staff oversight" of detention and interrogation operations.\nSanchez also takes a portion of the blame in a separate Army investigation which looked specifically at the role of military intelligence soldiers.\nThat probe has been completed and is expected to be publicly released as early as Wednesday. It is expected to say that at least two dozen lower-ranking military intelligence soldiers, as well as civilian contractors, were responsible for the abuses, which were depicted in photographs and videos taken by U.S. soldiers.\nThe Schlesinger commission made no recommendations about disciplinary action against any civilian or military officials.\nThe question of how high responsibility for the abuse goes continues to be one of the central unanswered questions in the scandal -- and it is key to the ongoing criminal cases against several low-ranking military police soldiers charged with mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib.\nSix military police accused of abusing detainees at the prison near Baghdad insist they were following orders from military intelligence officers and civilian contractors. A seventh soldier pleaded guilty May 19 to taking pictures of naked prisoners and was sentenced to a year in prison.\nNone of the investigations has found that Rumsfeld or Myers ordered or encouraged any mistreatment of prisoners. In May, Rumsfeld told the House and Senate that as secretary of defense "I am accountable" for the events at Abu Ghraib, and he issued "my deepest apologies" to the Iraqis who were abused.\nThe Schlesinger commission interviewed Rumsfeld twice during its investigation, which began in May. The three other commission members are former defense secretary Harold Brown, former Republican Rep. Tillie Fowler of Florida, and retired Air Force Gen. Charles Horner.\nWhen he chartered the commission, Rumsfeld told its members he wanted independent advice on a wide range of issues related to the abuse allegations. "I am especially interested in your views on the cause of the problems and what should be done to fix them," he wrote at the time.
(08/25/04 5:13am)
BALTIMORE -- A man described as a high-ranking Hamas operative was arrested last week as he videotaped the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, authorities said Tuesday.\nIsmael Selim Elbarasse, long suspected by authorities of having financial ties to the Palestinian extremist group, was held as a material witness in an unrelated terrorism case in Chicago. He was not charged with any wrongdoing in connection with the videotaping.\nGov. Robert Ehrlich said the arrest has prompted the state to place more police around the bridge but said "it shouldn't be a generator of fear. It should serve as a reminder that there is a war going on around the world."\nElbarasse made an initial appearance in Baltimore federal court Monday before Magistrate Paul W. Grimm. He is to appear again Friday for a detention hearing at which the magistrate will likely decide to turn him over to federal officials in Chicago, authorities said.\nA federal grand jury in Chicago, in an indictment unsealed Friday, described Elbarasse as an unindicted co-conspirator in a 15-year racketeering conspiracy to illegally finance terrorist activities in Israel.\nCourt documents allege he and defendant Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook -- considered one of the highest-ranking Hamas leaders internationally -- shared a Virginia bank account that was used to launder hundreds of thousands of dollars for Hamas.\n"He is being held only on the material witness charge," said Marcia Murphy, a spokeswoman for the Maryland U.S. attorney's office.\nNeither his court-appointed attorney, Franklin W. Draper, nor his private attorney, Stanley Cohen, immediately returned calls seeking comment Tuesday.\nElbarasse was spotted Friday by two off-duty Baltimore County police officers on the Bay Bridge, a 4.3-mile span that links central Maryland with the Eastern Shore, authorities said. The officers noticed a man in an SUV who appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent videotaping the bridge, authorities said.\nAuthorities said the man, who was with a woman and two teenagers, said they had gone to the beach but could not specify what beach they had visited. They said the camera had recorded close-up images that seemed unusual for a tourist and that officers saw Elbarasse try to hide the camera.
(07/29/04 6:12am)
CAIRO, Egypt -- Touching on two sensitive Mideast issues, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell repeated Wednesday calls for reform in the Palestinian leadership and urged pressure on Sudan to stop violence blamed on ethnic cleansing.\nPowell, in the first stop on a regional tour, also condemned the car bombing in Iraq that killed dozens of Iraqis. He said that he still believed Iraq's elections could be held as scheduled in January.\n"We are holding to that date," Powell said at a news conference after a series of meetings with Egyptian leaders. "We continue to solicit assistance from other nations to provide additional forces that might be able to provide security for the U.N. workers who are coming in for the election."\nPowell arrived in Egypt Tuesday on a Mideast tour aimed at trying to revive the Palestinian-Israeli peace process and talking with some of America's closest Arab allies about Iraq's future, the war on terror, violence in Sudan and the U.S. initiative to encourage greater democracy in this troubled region.\nOn Sudan, where Arab-led militias have attacked blacks in the Darfur region, Powell said he agreed with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that "we have to give the Sudanese government more time" to stop the fighting and facilitate humanitarian deliveries to the people in the besieged region.\nPowell described the situation as catastrophic in an interview with Egyptian Television and noted that a proposed U.N. Security Council resolution being circulated by the United States would give Sudan a month to make progress.\nReferring to the resolution, Powell said, "At the end of 30 days, one more month, the Security Council has to consider possible measures. It might even include sanctions," he said in an interview with the Al Akhbar newspaper.\nAfter Powell and Mubarak met Wednesday morning, presidential spokesman Maged Abdel Fattah issued a statement to reporters saying the two had agreed Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia should work together.\nQureia withdrew a resignation he had offered 10 days ago in frustration at Arafat's refusal to let him restructure the security forces and deal with growing unrest in the Palestinian areas.\nArafat's almost absolute control over the Palestinian Authority has been a source of frustration for the United States and other countries demanding reform in the Palestinian leadership. The Israelis have frozen out Arafat, saying he is not a fit negotiating partner. The Americans have tried to present Qureia as an alternative.\nEgypt has agreed to work with the Palestinians and the Israelis to ensure order after Israel's proposed pullout from Gaza.\nAt the news conference, Powell said the United States hoped Qureia would be able to act "to provide political control and security control over Gaza."\nEgyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, appearing with Powell, said the Gaza plan should be linked to the U.S.-backed peace plan calling for a Palestinian state by next year.\nOn the issue of Sudan, Egypt and other Arab nations have resisted as counterproductive a U.S.-backed draft U.N. Security Council resolution that could threaten sanctions against Sudan.\n"Nobody wishes to make the situation any worse with the imposition of sanctions, but at the same time pressure must keep on the Sudanese government to make sure that access is allowed and that security is improved," Powell said.\nAid groups, U.N. officials and Western governments say ethnic cleansing in Sudan's Darfur region has killed 30,000 people, most of them black villagers, and threatens 2 million.\n"These people are in desperate need," Powell said. "We should give the Sudanese government time to respond, but these people don't have much time."\nThe Bush administration holds the Sudanese government principally responsible for the violence against Sudanese of African descent by Arab Sudanese believed to be backed by the government.\nThe Egyptian presidential spokesman reiterated that Egypt believes Sudan should be allowed to resolve the situation without outside interference and said his government would push Sudan to act "in order to prevent the adoption of this (Security Council) resolution."\nOn Iraq, the Egyptians told Powell they did not want to send in Egyptian troops. Most Arab governments have rebuffed requests from Iraq for peacekeepers. Many Arab citizens see the insurgents who oppose the interim Iraqi government and U.S.-led forces in Iraq as freedom fighters standing up to the United States.\nPowell expressed appreciation for an Egyptian offer to train Iraqi security forces.\nBesides talks with Egyptian officials, Powell met in Cairo with Egyptian political and civil society leaders to discuss U.S. plans to promote democratic reform in the Middle East.\nAfter the closed meeting, several participants told The Associated Press they had stressed to Powell that they believed reform could not be imposed from the outside and that a resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict would make room for change.
(07/29/04 6:12am)
BAQOUBA, Iraq -- A suicide car bomb exploded on a busy downtown boulevard in Baqouba Wednesday, reducing a bus full of passengers to a charred wreck, ripping through nearby shops and killing at least 68 Iraqis in one of the deadliest single insurgent attacks since the U.S. invasion.\nDozens of burned bodies were strewn in the street and piled on curbsides and vehicles, fruit stalls and shops were a bloody tangle of twisted metal from the blast, which targeted Iraqis lined up outside a police recruiting station. Most of the victims were civilians or from among the hundreds of men waiting to join the force.\n"These were all innocent Iraqis, there were no Americans," an angry man shouted as Iraqis tried to cover the dead with pieces of cardboard.\nThe attack, the deadliest since Americans handed power to an Iraqi government June 28, came three days ahead of a national conference aimed at creating an interim assembly -- widely considered a vital step toward democracy. Iraqi officials have warned attacks could intensify as the country tries to move forward.\nU.S. and other coalition forces were caught in fierce gun battles with militants in two cities.\nA raid by Iraqi forces backed by U.S. and Ukrainian troops sparked fighting in Suwariyah, southeast of Baghdad; 35 guerrillas and seven Iraqi policemen were killed. Ten Iraqi police were wounded and 40 insurgents were captured, said Polish Lt. Col. Artur Domanski, a multinational force spokesman.\nIn Ramadi, west of the capital, insurgents launched near-simultaneous attacks on several U.S. bases, wounding 10 soldiers. A guerrilla was killed, and during the fighting a mortar hit an apartment building, killing an Iraqi woman. Later, gunmen in the city fired on two U.S. aircraft, damaging both and wounding a pilot, a military spokesman said without specifying the type of craft.\nThe blast in Baqouba is an insurgent hotbed 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.\n"(The bombing) was once again an attempt by murderers to deny the Iraqi people their dream of a peaceful country that rests on a solid foundation of freedom," Secretary of State Colin Powell said during a news conference in Cairo. "We have to condemn it, we have to fight it. We must not let these kinds of tragic incidents deter us from our goal."\nIraqi officials have expressed concerns that Saturday's national conference will be a major target for attack. During the conference, some 1,000 delegates are to put together an assembly that will work alongside Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's government.\n"The terrorists' goal is to hamper the police work, terrorize our citizens and show that the government is unable to protect the Iraqi people, and this will not happen," said Hamid al-Bayati, a deputy foreign minister.\nThe 10:13 a.m. bombing shattered the bustling heart of a commercial district filled with shops, government buildings and the police station.\nTwenty-one of the dead were passengers on a white commuter bus that was left a charred husk by the blast. Pieces of glass, twisted metal and abandoned shoes, all covered in blood and human remains, were strewn across the pavement, and a shop's white security gate was splattered with blood.\nWitnesses said the bomb targeted men waiting outside the al-Najda police station trying to sign up for the force.\n"As one of the officers was giving us instructions on how to register, we heard a big explosion," said one of the men in line, 33-year-old Sabah Nouri, whose left leg and hand were injured. "Suddenly I found myself being thrown to the ground, and I was unable to move."\nThe blast killed 68 people and wounded 56 others, according to Saad al-Amili, a Health Ministry official. "It's all civilian casualties at this stage," U.S. Army Capt. Marshall Jackson said.\nThe local hospital was overwhelmed with the casualties. Every bed was filled, forcing many of the injured to sit on the floor amid pools of blood as frantic health workers treated them. One injured man sat against the wall, holding his head in his hands and weeping.\nIn an audio recording posted Wednesday on one such site, a speaker purported to be the spiritual adviser of an Iraqi insurgency group justified killing fellow Muslims when they protect infidels or even the deaths of bystanders in an attack.\n"If infidels take Muslims as protectors and Muslims do not fight them, it is allowed to kill the Muslims," said the speaker, identified as Sheik Abu Anas al-Shami, spiritual leader of Tawhid and Jihad, a group led by al-Qaida-linked Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.\nThe speaker also said that if Muslims who "mingled" among infidels were killed in an attack, that would be justified because killing infidels is paramount. The tape was recorded before the June 28 handover of power.
(04/12/04 1:47pm)
SRINAGAR, India -- A grenade explosion and gunfire at an election rally in Indian-held Kashmir killed nine people Thursday and wounded at least 56, including the state's tourism and finance ministers, police said.\nThe rally was being held by the state's governing People's Democratic Party ahead of national parliamentary elections to begin April 20.\nPolice said they suspected Islamic militants in the attack, and a man who said he was with the little-known rebel group Save Kashmir Movement quickly claimed responsibility.\nBut the president of the PDP said she didn't believe insurgents were behind the assault in the border town of Uri, 60 miles north of Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu-Kashmir state.\nEight civilians and a police officer were killed and at least 56 people were wounded, according to Dr. S. Jalal, administrator of the Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences, where most of the wounded were being treated.\nState Finance Minister Muzaffar Baig and Tourism Minister Ghulam Hasan Mir were among those hurt. Their injuries were not life-threatening, police officer Junaid Ahmed said.\nSome security officials blamed militants fighting for the independence of Kashmir or its merger with neighboring Pakistan for the attack. The insurgents have opposed India's elections and have called for voter boycott.\n"These are attempts to derail both the peace process and the poll process," said Jammu-Kashmir's Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. "But we are determined to defeat such intentions."\nMinutes after the explosions and gunfire, PDP president Mehbooba Mufti, surrounded by bodyguards, told Associated Press Television News she believed the attack was carried out by those opposing the reopening of a crucial highway between the capitals of divided Kashmir.\nThe Himalayan region is divided between India and Pakistan. Both claim the entire territory and have fought two wars over it.\n"We know which elements are responsible for this. Militants are not behind it. They don't operate in (the) Uri area," Mufti said. "This happened because some people do not want the highway to Muzaffarabad to reopen."\nDuring an ongoing thaw in relations between India and Pakistan, both sides have talked about launching a bus service on the Muzaffarabad Highway, which runs from Srinagar to the capital of Pakistani-controlled Kashmir.\nSome Kashmiris believe the federal government and army are privately opposed to reopening the highway because it would create logistical problems and possibly even help the militants.\nThe state Interior Minister A.R. Veeri said it was too early to say who was behind the attack.\n"It is a matter of investigation. We have ordered an inquiry into it and it will only be possible to identify culprits after the investigations are done," Veeri told The Associated Press.
(04/12/04 1:47pm)
ALGIERS, Algeria -- Rivals of Algeria's president said they feared fraud in Thursday's election, seen as a pivotal test for democracy in this North African nation emerging from more than a decade of Islamic-inspired bloodshed.\nDozens of soldiers in riot gear lined a highway between the capital and the restive Berber region of Kabylie, east of Algiers, Algeria, in a sign the army was bracing for potential unrest after the vote.\nThe elections went smoothly, though minor skirmishes broke out between rock-throwing youths and riot police near a polling station in a village in Kabylie, Algeria.\nPresident Abdelaziz Bouteflika, a U.S. ally in the war against terrorism, faced five opponents, including his one-time protégé, former Prime Minister Ali Benflis, and Islamic leader Abdallah Djeballah.\nOfficial results were not expected until Friday, and if no candidate wins a majority, there will be a runoff later this month.\nFour hours before the polls closed, the Interior Ministry said the turnout was 46 percent of Algeria's 18 million eligible voters.\nCritics claimed cronies of the 67-year-old president were planning to hijack the election by tampering with votes. About 120 election observers, mostly from Africa and the Middle East, were on hand.\n"He can't win in the first round without using fraud," said Mohammed Khendek, a spokesman for Said Sadi, a candidate from Kabylie.\nIn the 1999 election, six candidates charging fraud pulled out on the eve of the balloting, and Bouteflika won a five-year term.\nThursday, police guarded polling stations as streams of women in headscarves lined up to vote.\nA smiling Bouteflika cast his ballot at a high school near the presidential palace.\nBut in the Kabylie town of Freha, just east of Tizi Ouzou, 60 miles from Algiers, protesters barricaded a street and threw stones at police, who responded with tear gas.\n"Because our demands haven't been answered, we're not going to let anybody vote," said a part-time construction worker who identified himself only as Abrahim.\nBerbers have long demanded greater regional autonomy and recognition of their language, Tamazight.\n"This is going to continue. When the riot police leave, we're going to burn the ballot boxes," said Abrahim, holding a rock.\nRebellions against Algerian authorities erupt frequently in mountainous Kabylie, and the region has boycotted previous elections.\nThe election came as Algeria, a country rich in oil and gas, lurches toward democracy.\nIts nearly 33 million people have lived in the shadow of the powerful military since it gained independence from France in 1962 and suffered through a 12-year Islamic insurgency that erupted after the army canceled legislative elections a Muslim fundamentalist party was poised to win. An estimated 120,000 people have been killed.\nBut apathy is high among voters facing chronic housing shortages and more than 20 percent unemployment.\nAlgeria's Islamic extremist movement has also increasingly become a source of terrorist activities in Europe and North America, feeding international groups that helped al Qaeda.\nIn a joint statement, Benflis and two other candidates said Bouteflika intends "to announce victory in the first round with a percentage of 53-55 percent"
(04/12/04 1:46pm)
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Sunni guerrillas killed a U.S. Marine Thursday in the fourth day of the battle for Fallujah, Iraq, and militant Shiite militiamen held two southern cities. In an ominous new tactic, kidnappers seized foreign hostages, threatening to burn three Japanese captives alive if Tokyo did not withdraw troops.\nThe al-Sadr's al-Mahdi Army militia had full control in the cities of Kut and Kufa in the central part of Najaf, Iraq. Police in the cities have abandoned their stations or stood aside as the gunmen roam the streets.\nThe newly invigorated, two-front insurgency has produced scenes of chaos and violence in Iraq not seen since U.S. forces captured Baghdad a year ago Friday. The turmoil further threatened shaky Iraqi security as the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority prepared to hand political sovereignty to a still-to-be-chosen Iraqi government June 30.\nL. Paul Bremer, the chief U.S. administrator of Iraq, warned Shiite pilgrims to beware of danger from more violence this weekend at the shrines, recalling the deadly bombings in Karbala, Iraq, and Baghdad that killed nearly 150 during celebrations last month.\nTelevision pictures broadcast in the Middle East by the Al-Jazeera satellite network and rebroadcast during prime-time in Japan showed the three Japanese hostages -- two aid workers and a journalist -- wide-eyed and moaning in terror as their black-clad captors held knives to their throats, shouting "God is Great" in Arabic.\nThe Japanese government called the abductions "unforgivable" but said they did not justify a Japanese withdrawal.\nTwo Arab aid workers from Jerusalem -- one who had once lived in Georgia -- were abducted in a separate incident.\nEight South Korean Christian missionaries were seized by gunmen outside Baghdad. Seven were freed after one of them escaped, the Foreign Ministry in Seoul, South Korea, said.\nMarines battled insurgents firing automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades in continued heavy fighting at two mosques in Fallujah. U.S. forces have surrounded the city 35 miles east of Baghdad but opened the blockade for a convoy carrying food and medicine sent to the beleaguered residents by Sunni clerics in Baghdad.\nThe U.S. military, meanwhile, reported the deaths of three 1st Infantry Division soldiers Wednesday and Thursday in attacks by Sunni insurgents -- though the circumstances and day of each death were not provided. The Army said a fourth soldier died from wounds received in an attack last week.\nThose deaths, along with the Marine killed Thursday in Fallujah, brought to 40 the number of American troops killed across Iraq this week. The fighting in Fallujah, nearby Ramadi and across the south has killed more than 460 Iraqis, including more than 280 in Fallujah, according to the director of the city's hospital, Rafie Al-Issawi.\nThe spiraling violence, which began Sunday, has raised questions about whether Iraqi police and security forces would confront the violence and whether U.S. allies would stay the course.\nIn Najaf, a policeman watched helplessly Thursday as a pickup truck carrying a dozen heavily armed Shiite militiamen went past his police station -- already in the militia's hands.\n"Look, how can we control such a situation?" he asked an Associated Press reporter.\nThere also were concerns about the largely passive Shiite majority and whether it would remain peaceful, shunning radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's attempts to enlist them in the fight he is leading to oust the Americans.\nStill, U.S. administrators insist they are making both political and military progress. U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi is in Iraq trying to establish a system to pick an interim Iraqi government. And Marine commanders said they were winning the fight for Fallujah.
(12/14/03 3:10pm)
WASHINGTON -- U.S. raiders were not certain at first they had their man when they pulled a bearded man from a hole in a Iraq cellar, but soon were able to determine it was Saddam Hussein. The Associated Press was shown documentary evidence that the person captured is Saddam Hussein.\nThe evidence depicted Saddam as disheveled and wearing a long beard.\nFurther evidence depicted Saddam with his trademark mustache but otherwise clean shaven.\nRep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, said he was telephoned early Sunday by Powell Moore, the deputy secretary of defense for legislative affairs, who told him Saddam had been captured.\n"The capture of Saddam Hussein will clearly take the wind out of the sails of the Baath insurgents," Shelton said. "I think the road to a more stable Iraq is much clearer as a result of this capture."\nOne senior U.S. official said scientific testing, possibly including DNA, was being done early Sunday morning to document Saddam's identity.\nThe official said the captured man did not look like Saddam at first glance.\nThe officials discussing identification methods did so only on condition of anonymity.\nThe military raids in and near Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, were based on fresh intelligence and were aimed at capturing Saddam, the officials said, and the man was captured in one of the targeted buildings.\n"He was in a cellar of the building. His appearance was such that it made it not immediately certain you could say it was Saddam Hussein," one senior U.S. official said.\nBut some marks on the man's body and other information gave the U.S. military its first confirmation they had their target, officials said.\nThe officials said several other people were captured in the raids.\nSaddam's capture will be seen as a defining moment in the Iraq war and subsequent rebuilding process, and Bush administration officials have hoped it would lessen or break the organized resistance against U.S. troops that have led to scores of deaths since the end of combat operations.\nSaddam proved elusive at least twice during the war, when dramatic military strikes came up empty in their efforts to assassinate him. Since then, he has appeared in both video and audio tapes. U.S. officials named him No. 1 on their list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis, the lead card in a special deck of most-wanted cards.\nBut U.S. officials struck a major blow earlier this year when they killed Saddam's two sons during a raid.\nStill, Saddam and his uncanny ability to survive kept him out of U.S. custody for more than six months after the war started. Within hours of the air strike designed to kill at the start of the war in March, Saddam defiantly appeared on television and urged Iraqis to resist the U.S. invasion.\nBut worn by three decades of war and tension, the once-mighty Iraqi army folded quickly and U.S. officials took control of the country quicker than they expected.\nSince then, loyalists led by remnants of Saddam's paramilitary Fedayeen unit have begun operating like insurgent terrorists, using car bombings and grenade attacks to impose casualties.
(12/14/03 1:47pm)
WASHINGTON -- President Bush first learned that Saddam Hussein may have been captured on Saturday afternoon, and was given confirmation of the most sought-after prize in the Iraq war early Sunday, a senior administration official said.\nDefense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called the president, who was spending part of the weekend at his Camp David retreat in Maryland, around midday Saturday to deliver the news of the raid's possible success.\nJust after 5 a.m. Sunday morning, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice called Bush -- by now back at the White House -- to say the person in custody had been confirmed to be Hussein, the official said.\nThe president had returned to Washington late Saturday to be back in town before a snowstorm that hit Sunday could prevent him from attending the taping of a television Christmas special.\nBush had planned to attend church Sunday morning across the street from the White House, but decided not to make the trek through the snow.\nAides rushed in to the White House from miles away early Sunday, but it was still relatively quiet Sunday as news of Saddam's capture spread and was confirmed by a news conference in Baghdad.\nAides delivered no official reaction, despite the long-sought development that could bring significant vindication for the war Bush started nine months ago.\nDramatic military strikes came up empty in their efforts to kill Saddam at the start of the war. Since then, he has appeared in both video and audio tapes. U.S. officials named him No. 1 on their list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis, the lead card in a special deck of most-wanted cards.\nU.S. officials scored another major victory earlier this year when they killed Saddam's two sons during a raid.
(11/17/03 9:20pm)
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The U.S. military tried to determine Sunday whether insurgent gunfire caused the crash of two Black Hawk helicopters, killing 17 soldiers in the worst single loss of American life since the war in Iraq began.\nMeanwhile, an audio tape purportedly by Saddam Hussein urged Iraqis to escalate attacks against the occupation and "agents brought by foreign armies" -- Iraqis who support the coalition.\nThe speaker on the tape, aired on Al-Arabiya television, said the only way to end the chaos in Iraq was for Saddam and his now outlawed Baath Party to return to power.\nU.S. soldiers, meanwhile, took the offensive with the military mounting operations in Baghdad and Saddam's home region of central Iraq. The military fired a satellite-guided missile with a 500-pound warhead at a suspected guerrilla training base. Four insurgents were killed in a separate clash.\n"Any of those groups that are working against the best interest of the Iraqis are going to be targeted," said Lt. Col. William MacDonald, spokesman of the 4th Infantry Division.\nStrong explosions thundered through central Baghdad after sundown Sunday, apparently part of "Operation Iron Hammer," a new "get tough" strategy of going after insurgents before they can strike.\nLate Sunday, a large number of U.S. troops, backed by armored vehicles and helicopters, moved into the Sunni Muslim neighborhood of Azamiyah, sealing off a 20-block area and searching vehicles in a show of force.\nThe CIA said it would review the purported Saddam tape for its authenticity. But President Bush dismissed the recording.
(11/14/03 3:54pm)
WASHINGTON -- Under the pressure of increasing U.S. deaths in battle, President Bush said Thursday the United States wants Iraqis to take more responsibility for governing their troubled country and said coalition forces are determined to prevail over terrorists.\nBush said he was sending L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. administrator in Baghdad, back to the country to work with Iraqis on developing a plan to speed up establishment of an Iraqi government.\nHe said Bremer, in two days of urgent talks at the White House, reported that the Iraqis want to be more involved. "That's a positive development. That's what we want. We want the Iraqis to be more involved in the governance of their country."\nBush spoke in the Oval Office where he held an early-morning event to complain that Senate Democrats were stalling his nominations for federal judgeships. He accused the Democrats of "ugly politics."\nThe president did not discuss governing options for Iraq although aides have talked about establishing an interim government before a new constitution is written, a significant change from the current strategy.\nBush also expressed resolve to curb the violence which has killed 396 U.S. soldiers.\n"We're going to prevail," the president said. "We've got a good strategy to deal with these killers."\n"The goal of the terrorists ... is to create terror and fear among average Iraqis ... create the conditions where people are just so fearful for their lives that they cannot think positively about freedom. That's their goal," he said.\n"Our goal, of course, is to continue to work with those Iraqi citizens who understand that freedom is a precious commodity, those who understand that there is a hopeful life possible in a part of the world where a lot of hope has diminished in the past.\n"And that's the struggle ... and we're going to prevail," Bush vowed.\nWith casualties mounting, shrinking support from the American public, a troubling intelligence report and a stony silence from nations that have been asked for more peacekeeping troops, Bush wants to shorten the U.S. occupation.\nThat involves accelerating efforts by Iraqis to take charge of security, write a constitution, hold elections and assume control over government institutions.\n"We're looking at all sorts of ideas and we do want to accelerate the pace of reform," Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters.\nBritish Foreign Secretary Jack Straw visited the White House Thursday to talk with Vice President Dick Cheney about Iraq. "Overall the situation in Iraq -- notwithstanding the very difficult security position in some areas -- is getting better for the vast majority of Iraqi people," he told reporters after his meeting.
(11/07/03 4:00pm)
WASHINGTON -- Just days before U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq, officials claiming to speak for a frantic Iraqi regime made a last-ditch effort to avert the war, but U.S. officials rebuffed the overture, the intermediary and U.S. officials said Thursday.\nAn influential adviser to the Defense Department received a secret message from a Lebanese-American businessman indicating that Saddam Hussein wanted to make a deal, they said. The businessman, Imad Hage, told The Associated Press Thursday that he believes an opportunity was missed.\nBut senior U.S. defense and intelligence officials said Thursday the war could not have been averted by the offer; numerous such prewar leads were pursued, they said, and the Bush administration viewed them largely as stalling tactics.\n"The regime of Saddam Hussein had ample -- well beyond ample -- opportunity to avoid war," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a Pentagon press conference.\nThe White House and State Department played down the offer.\n"The United States exhausted every legitimate and credible opportunity to resolve this peacefully," presidential spokesman Scott McClellan said. "Saddam Hussein could have averted military action. He had a number of opportunities to do so."\nHe noted that the United States had given Saddam 48 hours to leave Iraq and avert war but that he had refused.\nMcClellan refused to say whether the purported Iraqi effort to avert the war was brought to President Bush's attention.\nA State Department spokesman, Adam Ereli, said, "We never received any legitimate or credible opportunity to resolve the world's differences with Iraq in a peaceful manner."\n"What we did see were vague overtures through third parties that appeared to be focused on attempts to forestall military action, as opposed to fulfilling U.N. Security Council resolution requirements," Ereli said.\nThe chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service and other Iraqi officials had told Hage that they wanted Washington to know that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction and offered to let American troops and experts do an independent search, said officials who discussed the matter only on condition of anonymity.\nThe Iraqi officials also offered to hand over a man accused of being involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing who was being held in Baghdad, an offer that became public in February.\nIraq said long before the war -- and captured officials still maintain -- that the country had no unconventional weapons. Though none has been found in seven months of searching, finding the weapons and overthrowing Saddam were the main reasons the Bush administration gave for going to war. \nHage, speaking to The Associated Press in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, said he had six meetings -- five in Beirut and one in Baghdad -- with senior Iraqi intelligence officials in the three months before the U.S.-led invasion March 20.\nHe said he believed the Iraqis he spoke to were desperate to avoid war.\n"Definitely these people feared for their life and they realized that the threat was real," Hage said. "They were motivated for some deal, that some deal could be achieved ..."\nDefense Department officials confirmed the prewar overture, first reported late Wednesday by ABC News and The New York Times. But they dismissed the idea that the offer could have averted war, since numerous other efforts by the United Nations and others had failed.\n"Iraq and Saddam had ample opportunity through highly credible sources over a period of several years to take action to avoid war and had the means to use highly credible channels to do that," said Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita.\n"Nobody needed to use questionable channels to convey messages," he said in a statement.\nDuring the run-up to the war there was a wide variety of people sending signals that some Iraqis might want to negotiate, a senior U.S. intelligence official said Thursday, adding that they came via foreign intelligence services, other governments, third parties, "charlatans and independent actors."\nAll leads that were "plausible and even some that weren't" were followed up, he said on condition of anonymity. But no one offering a deal was in a position to make an acceptable one, the official said, asserting that most were made just to stall the invasion.\nIn the case of Hage, messages from Baghdad beginning in February were portrayed by Iraqi officials as having Saddam's endorsement, though that could not be verified.\nIn early March, Richard Perle, an adviser to top Pentagon officials, met Hage in London, officials said. According to both men, Hage laid out the Iraqis' position and pressed the Iraqi request for a direct meeting with Perle or other U.S. representatives.\nA defense official said the CIA authorized Perle's meeting with the Iraqis, but eventually told him they didn't want to pursue the channel. But a senior U.S. intelligence official said CIA officials are unaware of any conversations with Perle on this subject and are unaware of any such authorization.\nHage previously lived in suburban Washington, where he started an insurance company. He moved to Lebanon in the 1990s and has been trying for 10 years to break into politics there but so far with little success.
(03/07/03 5:53pm)
HAIFA, Israel -- A bomber blew himself up aboard a bus filled with students in this northern Israeli city Wednesday, killing at least 16 people and injuring 55. The blast spread blood-splattered debris throughout a prosperous hilltop neighborhood, ending a two-month lull in suicide bombings.\nPolice identified the bomber as Mahmoud Hamdan Kawasme, 20, of the West Bank city of Hebron, and said he was carrying a letter praising the Sept. 11 attacks. There was no claim of responsibility for the attack, and it was not known whether he was affiliated with a militant group.\nThe attack followed the establishment of a new hard-line government in Israel and a government pledge to step up military strikes against militant strongholds in the Gaza Strip. Dozens of Palestinians have been killed in more than two weeks of raids, including at least 10 civilians.\nPrime Minister Ariel Sharon called an emergency meeting of senior Cabinet ministers late Wednesday to discuss the bombing.\nBus No. 37 was packed with students from Haifa University when it stopped in the hilltop neighborhood of Carmelia at 2:17 p.m. to let off passengers.\n"I suddenly heard an explosion," said bus driver Marwan Damouni, an Israeli Arab, who was being treated at a hospital. "I tried to move, to see if there were wounded. I couldn't hear anything because of the force."\nThe explosion blew off the bus roof, shattered all its windows and toppled nearby palm trees. Floodlights cast an eerie glow on the scene, illuminating the charred skeleton of the vehicle.\nThe bomb was laden with metal shrapnel for greater deadliness, according to Police Commissioner Shlomo Aharonishki. Crime lab technicians were investigating, but early reports said the blast was caused by 130 pounds of explosives.\nRescue workers and police said they believed one of the 16 dead was the bomber. Dozens were seriously injured, among them passers-by.\nOvadia Saar, who was driving a bus behind the one that was attacked, said he saw "the back of the bus fly into the air, and the windows blew out and a great cloud of dust covered the bus."\n"I got out and ran toward the bus. It was a horrible sight. There were a few bodies in the street," he said. "Those we saw breathing, we evacuated."\nA spokesman for the Islamic militant group Hamas, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, praised the bombing but did not claim responsibility. "We will not stop our resistance," he said. "We are not going to give up in the face of the daily killing" of Palestinians.\nSome Palestinians in Gaza called each other on cell phones, spreading news about the Haifa attack. Some were jubilant.\n"It's about time. They've kept on hitting us and killing us, and now we've struck back," said an ice cream vendor in Gaza, who refused to give his name.\nThe Haifa blast was the first terror attack in Israel since Jan. 5, when a pair of suicide bombers killed 23 people in Tel Aviv.\nThere have been 87 suicide attacks in Israel in 29 months of violence that has left 2,160 people dead on the Palestinian side and 743 on the Israeli side. The violence ended talks on a final peace settlement and helped Sharon win re-election.\nIn the past, Israel has reacted with tough military measures after such attacks and has blamed Yasser Arafat, saying the Palestinian Authority does nothing to prevent terrorism.\n"Once again the bestial hand of Palestinian terrorism has struck at the heart of Israel," said Mark Sofer, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, adding that Israeli forces had thwarted almost 100 attempted attacks in the past two months.\nIsrael might be constrained in any reaction by the possibility of an imminent U.S. strike against Saddam Hussein, because the United States has made clear it wants to keep a lid on Israeli-Palestinian fighting until the Iraq issue is resolved.\nPresident Bush denounced the Haifa bombing, saying terrorists would not prevail. "The president condemns in the strongest terms today's attack on innocents in Israel," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said. "His message to terrorists is that their efforts will not be successful."\nBritish Foreign Secretary Jack Straw urged Israel and the Palestinians to work toward peace. "There is no justification for attacks on innocent civilians," he said. "Attacks like these will not help the Palestinian cause."\nPalestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat condemned "any attack that is targeting civilians, whether Palestinian or Israeli." But he added, "We reject the Israel government finger-pointing that the Palestinian Authority is responsible"
(03/07/03 3:28pm)
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Baghdad residents are snapping up pistols and hunting rifles; trenches and sandbagged gun positions are multiplying. Militiamen loyal to Saddam Hussein say they're ready for a fight to the death.\nBaghdad is gearing up for what could be a street-to-street fight against American troops, if President Bush gives the order to invade. Saddam appears nightly on television to reassure Iraqis the Americans would be no match in a ground battle.\nIraqis echo his words. But some say privately they are preparing to fight off another enemy: gunmen who may try to settle old scores or simply take advantage of a power vacuum to rob and loot.\n"A lot of it is going to depend on motivation and the level of loyalty to Saddam, and that's difficult to gauge," Ian Kemp of Jane's Defense Weekly said Thursday in a telephone interview from London.\nThe United States and Britain have nearly 300,000 troops in the Persian Gulf region -- and expect to have 100,000 more within weeks -- for a threatened invasion of Iraq to remove Saddam from power and ensure Iraq isn't hiding weapons of mass destruction.\nIn a week, this city of 5 million people on the banks of the Tigris River has taken on the appearance of a defense line, where preparations for battle are visible at almost every corner.\nResidents say the number of sandbagged positions has almost tripled in two weeks. There are at least twice as many armed policemen in full combat gear as there were a week ago.\nGuns are very common in Iraq. Even so, gun shop owners say business has risen by 25 percent over the past month, with cheap pistols priced under $100 in highest demand. The shops are not allowed to sell assault rifles, but store owners say hunting rifles are selling fast.\n"This is a business like any other business, and the present situation makes everyone want to think he's equipped to defend himself and his family," gun shop owner Mahmoud Mahdi said Thursday.\nMohiey Khalaf, 72, has been in the business of repairing and maintaining firearms for over 40 years. On Thursday, he was busy fixing a black revolver at his workshop in a small pedestrian alley.\n"Business has been good. A lot of people are trying to make sure their firearms work," he said, holding a torch in one hand and a red-hot piece of metal in the other.\nOn Wednesday, in an ominous sign of what may be in store if American troops attempt to capture the city, 60 men clad in white paraded through Baghdad, pledging to give their lives in suicide attacks on U.S. troops.\nMembers of Saddam's ruling Baath Party say they've set up neighborhood brigades with a structure of command that ensures uninterrupted communication if fighting breaks out.\n"How can they possibly try and enter Baghdad?" said Ali Mohammed, a 30-year-old local Baath leader in the working class district of Al-Habibiyah. "They dare not come in because they will meet a certain defeat."\nEmerging from a gun repair shop, he tucked his pistol into his belt.\nMohammed, like millions of Baath Party members and militiamen loyal to Saddam, also has a Kalashnikov, the weapon of preference for most Iraqis. Occasional violence between rival tribes and Iraqis' love of hunting mean hardly an Iraqi household is without at least one firearm.\nSaddam has for weeks been feeding the notion that Iraqis fighting on home terrain would have an edge over the better-armed Americans. Meeting with infantry commanders Wednesday, he catalogued the features of a U.S. aircraft carrier he did not identify: a nuclear power station, a water desalination plant, nine stories and 20,000 meals a day.\n"But does it have tires to reach Baghdad? Certainly not. The one thing that will finally decide the battle is a soldier on his feet," he said.\nMany in Baghdad agreed.\n"My family taught me how to use a gun at age 5," said Nazer Qahtan Khalil, co-owner of one of Baghdad's estimated 45 gun shops. "Would you allow someone to enter your home uninvited? God willing, Baghdad will be the grave of the Americans."\nIn addition to the danger posed by street battles in Baghdad, experts and some Iraqis warn any power vacuum, however brief, would tempt looters or people who want to settle scores among the city's many clans and tribes.\nResidents of the capital are reluctant to speak openly about the prospect of violence between Iraqis, preferring instead to stick to the official line that every citizen would rise to the defense of his country against foreign invaders.\nBut Hussein, a 31-year-old Baghdad taxi driver who wouldn't give his last name, said while Iraqis would indeed fight for their country, some of the city's residents fear Iraqis could attack their local enemies if lawlessness breaks out.\n"Without government officials mediating as they always do, there could be a lot of fighting," he said.