These are the archives for the week ending 1st April 2005
US doubles number of prisoners
The United States is holding about 10,500 prisoners in Iraq, more than double the number held in October, the military says. About 100 of those prisoners are under age 18, said Army Lt. Col. Guy Rudisill, a spokesman for detention operations in Iraq.
Five months ago, the military said it was holding about 4,300 prisoners in Iraq. The growth in the prison population has come amid a lingering insurgency in Iraq and despite the formal transfer of power to an interim Iraqi government last June.
San Francisco Chronicle, 30/3/05
Children starving in new Iraq
Acute malnutrition among Iraqi children aged under five nearly doubled last year because of chaos caused by the US-led occupation, a United Nations expert said yesterday. Jean Ziegler, the UN Human Rights Commission's special expert on the right to food, said more than a quarter of Iraqi children do not have enough to eat and 7.7% are acutely malnourished - a jump from 4% recorded in the immediate aftermath of the US-led invasion.
Prof Ziegler based some of his analysis on a US study in October 2004 which estimated that up to 100,000 extra Iraqis, mostly women and children, had died since the invasion than would have been expected to before the war.
Guardian, 31/3/05
Assembly bickers as resistance continues
A meeting of the Iraqi national assembly fell apart along ethnic and sectarian lines Tuesday after members began hurling angry accusations over the failure to form a government, and some leaders said the delay could push back a constitution and elections by half a year. Prominent assembly members said it appeared that the deadline for a first draft of a constitution would have to be pushed back six months beyond the original deadline of Aug. 15. Elections for a full-term government by the end of the year would then have to be delayed as well.
In Baghdad, about 1:15 p.m., shortly before the national assembly meeting began, two mortar shells landed in the heavily fortified Green Zone, where the session was being held. There were no reports of injuries. Apache attack helicopters swooped over the Green Zone the entire day, and American troops and the Iraqi police closed most of the main bridges spanning the Tigris River.
New York Times, 30/3/05
Power-sharing deal on hold
Iraq's political deadlock deepened when the parliament failed to elect a speaker today.
As the proceedings degenerated, the body's stand-in-speaker expelled journalists from the hall, and the US-funded national broadcaster, Iraqiya, cut its live transmission to show a black-tie orchestra playing music.
Guardian 30/3/05
Top US general authorised torture
The top US general in Iraq authorised interrogation techniques including the use of dogs, stress positions and disorientation, a memo has shown. The document was obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union through the US Freedom of Information Act.
The September 2003 document is signed by the then commander of US forces in Iraq, Gen Ricardo Sanchez.
BBC, 30/3/05
Sunnis want withdrawal timetable
For several weeks, Iraq's most powerful politicians and foreign diplomats have been streaming to visit Sheik Harith al-Dari, a 64-year-old cleric and tribal leader who has become a leading spokesman for Iraq's disaffected Sunni Arabs. Will Mr. Dari, they ask, be willing to help bring Iraq's Sunnis into politics?
Much could depend on the answer. No new government will be viewed as legitimate without the participation of the Sunni Arabs, who largely boycotted the election in January and dominate the violent insurgency here. But in a rare interview, conducted Monday through an interpreter in his office at the mosque, Mr. Dari made clear that he would continue to view the armed resistance as legitimate until the American military offered a clear timetable for its withdrawal - a condition very unlikely to be met.
New York Times, 30/3/05
Troops at risk from depleted uranium
Australian troops being sent to Iraq in May could be at risk of contracting cancer or conceiving deformed children, doctors warned. The Medical Association for Prevention of War has written to Defence Minister Robert Hill advising him against deploying troops to the Al Muthanna province in southern Iraq.
Research teams have found depleted uranium wherever the US attacked Iraqi tanks using weapons tipped with the toxic nuclear waste, Association vice president Dr Gillian Deakin said. "United Nations statistics for southern Iraq where depleted uranium was used heavily in 1991 reveal a seven-fold increase in cancer rates between 1989 and 1994," Dr Deakin said. "Congenital deformities of types virtually never seen in other circumstances are occurring in newborns in Iraq in areas where depleted uranium is present."
Sydney Morning Herald, 28/3/05
Guards kill demonstrator
Guards opened fire on a crowd of several dozen protesting workers outside the headquarters of Iraq's Ministry of Science and Technology this morning, killing one and injuring three, officials said. The workers, who were guards at an old uranium storage site south of Baghdad, had arrived at the ministry to collect their wages and ammunition, and after discovering that both had been reduced, they erupted in protest, Interior Ministry officials said.
New York Times, 27/3/05
Many missiles missing in Iraq
Dozens of ballistic missiles are missing in Iraq. Vials of dangerous microbes are unaccounted for. Sensitive sites, once under UN seal, stand gutted today, their arms-making gear hauled off by looters, or by arms makers.
The world now knows that Iraq had no threatening WMD programs. But two years after US teams began their futile hunt for weapons of mass destruction, Iraq has something else: a landscape of ruined military plants and of unanswered questions and loose ends, some potentially lethal, a review of official reporting shows.
The chief UN arms inspector, Demetrius Perricos, said that outsiders are seeing only a ''sliver" of the mess inside Iraq. He reports that satellite images indicate at least 90 sites in the old Iraqi military-industrial complex have been pillaged.
Boston Globe 27/3/05
Blair 'comfortable' with Wolfowitz
Tony Blair was sounded out on the candidacy of Paul Wolfowitz to lead the World Bank before the White House announced his nomination but did not share the controversial proposal with cabinet colleagues or fellow European leaders. Mr Blair's discreet support gave President George W. Bush the confidence to know that Mr Wolfowitz would not face united opposition from the World Bank's European shareholders. A Blair aide said the Prime Minister was 'comfortable' with the architect of the Iraq war taking the helm of the world's most important poverty alleviation institution, which dishes out loans of $20 billion each year.
Wolfowitz has cited his experience as US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs from 1982 to 1986, and as ambassador to Indonesia during the Reagan administration's final three years in the late 1980s. But details are emerging of how he pandered to Indonesia's dictator, Suharto, who seized power in 1965-66 through a slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people. Rather than express pro-democracy arguments, Wolfowitz did little to stop the military's illegal occupation of East Timor, which resulted in more than 200,000 deaths. He also spent time helping to secure lucrative contracts for US business interests.
Financial Times, 25/3/05 and Observer, 27/3/05
US supports Syrian opposition
The Bush administration is reaching out to the Syrian opposition because of growing concerns that unrest in Lebanon could spill over and suddenly destabilize Syria, which borders four countries pivotal to U.S. Middle East policy -- Israel, Iraq, Lebanon and Turkey, U.S. and Syrian sources said. A meeting Thursday, hosted by new State Department "democracy czar" Elizabeth Cheney, brought together senior administration officials from Vice President Cheney's office, the National Security Council and the Pentagon and about a dozen prominent Syrian Americans, including political activists, community leaders, academics and an opposition group, a senior State Department official said.
The opposition group comes from the Syria Reform Party, a small U.S.-based Syrian organization often compared to the Iraqi National Congress led by former exile Ahmed Chalabi. U.S. officials, however, yesterday denied that the meeting was intended to coordinate efforts to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad's government. "That would be a monumental distortion," a senior State Department official said. "But it was a discussion about supporting reform and change in the region and specifically Syria -- and how we can help that and work with people in the region and Syria to support that process."
Washington Post, 26/3/05
Less Americans die, but more Iraqis
A trend of more attacks against Iraqis and fewer against occupation forces has resulted in a sharp dip in the rate of US deaths since the January elections.
At the current rate, about 35 US troops will die this month, the lowest number since February 2004.
Guardian 26/43/05
US steps on war on Afghan opium
The Pentagon, frustrated by the failure of the British-led battle against opium production in Afghanistan, plans to quadruple the spending on its anti-narcotics campaign, and deploy its troops in a full-scale war on the country's drug lords.
The Pentagon believes the drugs trade is a grave threat to US strategic objectives in Afghanistan, and to the government of Hamid Karzai. The plans envisage a greatly expanded role for the 17,000 US service personnel in Afghanistan in blocking the cultivation of and trade in opium.
The Pentagon has asked for $257m (£137.5m) emergency funding to step up the war on drugs, four times the amount it sought last year.
British aid to Afghanistan's counter-narcotics programme is to be doubled to $100m.
Guardian 26/3/05
Resistance continues across Iraq
Suicide bombers killed 15 Iraqi soldiers, a senior commander was assassinated and five women were murdered in an ambush in a wave of violence across the country. Although the US death toll had fallen, attacks on Iraqi security forces, as well as civilian casualties, have risen.
Iraqis connected with the occupying powers remain prime targets for the insurgents. The five women, translators for the US military, were on their way home when men in two cars sprayed them with machine-gun fire in Baghdad.
Hamid al-Rahim, a 22-year-old labourer and Ramadi resident who saw one of the bombings said: "We have had nothing but violence since the war. They talk about elections, but the Americans and the government in Baghdad do not control the country."
Independent, 26/3/05
Rumsfeld attacks Venezuela
U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld yesterday criticized Venezuela's reported efforts to purchase 100,000 AK-47 assault rifles from Russia, suggesting that Venezuela's possession of so many weapons would threaten the hemisphere.
Harsh accusations and increasing animosity have marked the relationship between the United States and Venezuela. Venezuela's President, Hugo Chavez, has warned that he will cut off shipments of his country's oil to the United States if the Bush administration supports an attempt to force him from office. Venezuela is the world's fifth-largest oil exporter and provides about 13 per cent of U.S. crude-oil imports. The United States it the biggest purchaser of Venezuelan oil.
Globe and Mail, Canada, 25/3/05
US arms Pakistan
The White House rewarded a crucial ally in the war on terror yesterday, approving the sale of F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan. An Indian government spokesman said that India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh, had expressed "great disappointment" at the move, which the Indian government described as endangering security in the region.
Guardian, 26/3/05
Doubts over raid story
New details about an intense battle between insurgents and Iraqi police commandos supported by U.S. forces cast doubt Thursday on Iraqi government claims that 85 rebels were killed at what was described as a clandestine training camp. Accounts of the fighting continued to indicate that a major battle involving dozens of insurgents occurred Tuesday on the eastern shore of Tharthar Lake, which is about 50 miles northwest of Baghdad.
The reported rout appeared to bolster recent claims by U.S. commanders that Iraq's beleaguered security forces are improving. U.S. officials have said repeatedly that American troops will withdraw from Iraq only after the Iraqis are deemed able to defend the country. However, two U.S. military officials said Thursday that no bodies were found by American troops who arrived at the scene after the fighting. A US spokesperson said that by the time additional U.S. ground forces arrived, "the insurgent forces who had fled . . . were able to recover their casualties and take them with them."
The news service Agence France-Presse reported that one of its correspondents visited the site Wednesday and found that 30 to 40 insurgents were still there. A man who identified himself as "Amer" and claimed membership in the militant Secret Islamic Army of Iraq said 11 insurgents were killed in the raid.
Washington Post, 26/3/05
Parliamentary report criticises US torture
The United States has committed "grave violations of human rights" against prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan and Iraq, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the British Parliament said in a report on Friday. "We recommend that the government make it clear to the United States administration, both in public and private, that such treatment of detainees is unacceptable," the committee wrote in its influential annual report on human rights.
The report called on the British government to make clear if it uses intelligence passed on by other countries that may have been gained by torturing suspects. The committee said it was "surprising and unsettling" that the government had twice failed to answer whether British officials receive information extracted under torture by a third country.
Washington Post, 25/3/05