These are the archives for the week ending 5th May 2006
Turkish military build up
Turkey has massed troops along its Iraqi border to increase pressure on the United States and the new government in Baghdad to act against a growing threat from Kurdish rebels based in northern Iraq.
The Turkish army traditionally launches a spring offensive against the rebels as they descend from their mountain hideouts, but the latest military build-up is the biggest for years.
Turkey has sent some 40,000 troops to its mainly Kurdish southeast region to reinforce some 220,000 already based there in anticipation of Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant raids.
Ankara insists it has the right under international law to carry out cross-border operations against the rebels if need be.
With the consent of the United States, NATO member Turkey has kept a contingent of up to 1,500 special forces in northern Iraq since Iraqi Kurdish groups clashed there in 1996.
Now, the Americans - busy battling insurgents in Iraq's Arab heartland - see Kurdish-dominated northern Iraq as an oasis of calm which a big Turkish incursion would destabilise.
Washington may class the PKK as terrorist, but its eradication in northern Iraq is no immediate priority.
Reuters 4/5/06
Another sad day in occupied Iraq
It is another sad day in occupied Iraq as more than 62 people were reported killed and dozens others were injured across the country.
The smell of death haunts Iraq as many forms of violence are being practiced. Again Iraqi police found 36 bullet-riddled bodies of men shot dead. An interior ministry official said 14 blindfolded and bound bodies were found in eastern Baghdad Wednesday, while 20 other corpses were recovered from various areas in the capital late Tuesday.
Also gunmen killed four college students in Baghdad's notorious Al-Dura neighborhood. And two civilians were killed in an explosion near a popular market in Baghdad's Al-Shuala neighborhood which also left 15 people wounded.
The situation in Falluja was not better. A suicide bomber blew himself up among a crowd of men waiting to sign up to join the police force killing at least 18 people, and injuring at least 25 people.
Al-Manar TV 3/5/06
Deadliest year for journalists in decade
At least 63 journalists were killed world-wide in 2005, the highest numbering a decade, said a media watch-dog.
The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said in its annual report that more than 1,300 media workers were attacked or threatened last year and more than 100 were in jail.
For the third year running, Iraq was the most dangerous country. Seventy-four journalists and media workers have been killed there since the US-led invasion in March 2003.
Guardian 3/5/06
Religious persecution in Iraq & Afghanistan
A U.S. government commission warned of rising religious persecution in Iraq and Afghanistan, two countries invaded by the United States in the past five years to free their people from tyranny and abuse.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, in its annual report to Congress and President George W. Bush's administration, also harshly criticized three key U.S. allies - Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Egypt - for their poor performance on religious rights.
The commission designated 11 countries as being "of particular concern" because of extreme religious persecution: Myanmar (former Burma), North Korea, Eritrea, Iran, Pakistan, China, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.
Another seven states were placed on a watch list because of serious violations: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Cuba, Egypt, Indonesia and Nigeria.
Created by Congress in 1998 to ensure that religious freedom became a central goal of U.S. foreign policy, the commission cannot mandate any specific action and its past calls for steps to punish violators have mostly been ignored.
Washington Post 3/5/06
UK troops 'doomed to fail' in Afghanistan
British Army commanders formally took over responsibility for Afghanistan's lawless Helmand province yesterday as Britain's strategy to eradicate opium production and defeat Taleban insurgents was criticised as "doomed to failure".
A report published by the Senlis Council, an independent think tank that monitors Afghanistan's drugs trade, paints a depressing picture of the prospects for the deployment of 3,300 British troops to southern Afghanistan later this month.
It says previous efforts to eradicate poppy farming in the province have fuelled the insurgency that is threatening to overwhelm the Kabul government's control of the lawless region. Most controversially, it recommends that forced eradication should be replaced by the legal cultivation of poppies for use in legitimate painkilling drugs, such as morphine. The leading producers of legal opium are currently India and Australia.
The council says widely advertised previous eradication operations in Helmand have worsened the security situation. Although the British government has stressed that its troops will not carry out eradication but provide security for those involved in it, the report says local people will not see that distinction, and will turn against international military forces.
"The local population has now come to identify international troops with eradication activities rather than with reconstruction efforts."
The Scotsman 2/5/06
Iraq, Afghanistan on 'failed states' index
Despite large-scale U.S. support, Iraq and Afghanistan rank among the world's 10 most vulnerable states, according to a private survey being released today.
In its second annual "failed states" index, Foreign Policy magazine and the Fund for Peace concluded that Sudan is the country under the most severe stress because of violent internal conflict.
Each country received a score based on data from numerous available sources. A "failing state" was described as one in which the government does not have effective control of its territory, is not perceived as legitimate by a significant portion of its population, does not provide domestic security or basic public services to its citizens and lacks a monopoly on the use of force.
According to the review, the situation in Iraq (No. 4) and Afghanistan (No. 10) has deteriorated since 2005, the first year the survey was taken.
Kansas City Star 2/5/06
Bolivia seizes gas fields
Evo Morales, the Bolivian president, last night ordered his soldiers to occupy the country's natural gas fields immediately and threatened to evict foreign companies unless they sign new contracts within six months giving the state majority control over petroleum production.
Britain's BG Group and BP, as well as the US-based Exxon Mobil, are among those firms operating in Bolivia. Bolivia has South America's second largest natural gas reserves after Venezuela.
Within the next six months, all foreign companies must turn over most production control to Bolivia's cash-strapped, state-owned oil company, Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPBF), Mr Morales said.
Multinational companies that produced 100 million cubic feet of natural gas daily last year in Bolivia will be able to retain only 18 per cent of their production, with the rest being given to YPFB, he said.
The Scotsman 2/5/06
US investment in Iraq winds down
A senior U.S. official said on Sunday Gulf Arab states and other foreigners should help Iraq build new power stations, as U.S. investment in the electricity sector winds down after three years of reconstruction aid.
But some $20 billion of investment may be needed to start meeting all Iraq's electricity demand, and there is no quick end in sight to chronic shortages of power that are among the biggest complaints of the Iraqi people.
In keeping with overall U.S. strategy three years after invading, the emphasis was now on encouraging Iraq to fund its own reconstruction through oil sales and on pressing other governments and international institutions to provide aid.
"There is now a donor coordination working group for electricity," U.S. diplomat Daniel Speckhard said. "We're looking forward to Japanese lending, we're looking forward to World Bank lending."
"Gulf countries could do a lot more in the area," he added. He noted some estimates put the cost of doubling Iraq's generating capacity to meet demand at about $20 billion.
Reuters 1/5/06
Iraq's president meets with insurgents
President Jalal Talabani met recently with representatives of armed groups and is optimistic they may agree to lay down their weapons, his office said Sunday.
"I think we may reach an agreement with seven armed groups that visited me and I met with them," his office said in a statement, without indicating when the meeting took place.
Talabani spokesman Kamran Qaradaghi refused to identify the groups, although they were presumed to be Sunni Arab insurgents.
It was the first time a senior Iraqi official has acknowledged meeting with figures from the insurgency, although U.S. officials have said privately they have conferred directly with Iraqis who claimed to have contacts with insurgents.
Washington Post 1/5/06
US senator calls for division of Iraq
Iraq should be divided into three largely autonomous regions - Kurd, Sunni Arab and Shiite Arab - with a weaker central government in Baghdad, Sen. Joseph Biden said on Monday.
Biden, the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee's top Democrat, said the Bush administration's effort to establish a strong central government in Baghdad had been a failure, doomed by ethnic rivalry that had spawned widespread sectarian violence.
He said the division of Iraq would follow the example of Bosnia a decade ago when that war-torn country was partitioned into ethnic federations under the U.S.-brokered Dayton Accords.
Biden billed his plan as a "third option" beyond the "false choice" of continuing the Bush administration policy of nurturing a unity government in Iraq or withdrawing U.S. troops immediately.
As part of the plan, the United States should withdraw most of its troops from Iraq by 2008, except for a small force to combat terrorism, Biden said.
Under Biden's proposal, the Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite regions would each be responsible for their own domestic laws, administration and internal security. The central government would control border defense, foreign affairs and oil revenues.
Reuters 1/5/06
UN won't sanction oil industry, say Iran
A senior Iranian oil official said the United Nations was unlikely to impose sanctions on Iran's oil industry over its nuclear programme, because any such action would send world oil prices soaring.
Iran may face a new resolution from the U.N. Security Council after the International Atomic Energy Agency reported on Friday that the country hampered its checks and rebuffed requests to stop making nuclear fuel.
Western powers led by the United States support limited sanctions if Iran fails to back down. Russia and China, two veto-wielding members of the Security Council, have been more guarded on this issue.
Iran's deputy oil minister, Mohammad Hadi Nejad-Hosseinian, said any curbs on its oil and gas industry were unlikely. "I don't think anybody could put any sanction on the oil and gas industry," he told a news conference "Due to the sensitivity of the oil market, any action like that will increase oil prices very high. I believe not the U.N., not other bodies will put any sanction on oil or the oil industry."
Reuters 30/4/06
Clinic-building in Iraq is a failure
A $243 million program led by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to build 150 health-care clinics in Iraq has in some cases produced little more than empty shells of crumbling concrete and shattered bricks cemented together into uneven walls, two reports by a federal oversight office have found.
The reports detail a close inspection of five of the clinics in the northern city of Kirkuk as well as an audit of the entire program, which began in March 2004 as a heavily promoted effort to improve health care for Iraqis.
The reports say none of the five clinics in Kirkuk and only 20 of the original 150 across Iraq will be finished without new financing.
Written by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, an independent office, the reports cite a wide range of factors, including disputes among Iraqi construction companies and problems with local materials. The American company Parsons, the prime contractor, also comes in for stiff criticism.
But the main finding is that lax oversight by the Army corps is responsible above all for the program's failure. Cowed by security fears that the reports suggest may have been overblown, the corps sometimes inspected the work only through "windshield surveys" -- hasty drive-bys in which little but a structure's existence could be noted.
Indianapolis Star 30/4/06
Days of sacrifice and struggle
While anti-war protests gather thousands across the country, President Bush is warning of "more days of sacrifice and struggle'' in Iraq as April drew to a close as the deadliest month for American forces this year.
In his weekly radio address Bush said, "There will be more tough fighting ahead in Iraq and more days of sacrifice and struggle.''
At least 70 Americans were killed in Iraq in April. The toll was 31 in March, 55 in February and 62 in January.
All Headline news 30/4/06
100,000 families fleeing violence in Iraq
A new estimate by one of Iraq's vice presidents has put the number of Iraqi families fleeing sectarian violence at 100,000, far outstripping previous projections and raising the possibility that a total of a half-million people could be displaced.
The estimate, made by Adel Abdul Mahdi, a Shiite leader selected as one of two vice presidents, is much higher than other recent estimates. For example, the national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, said in an interview last week that 13,750 families had been displaced, which could mean about 70,000 people. Yet both statements go far beyond estimates by American military leaders, who have said there is no "widespread movement" of Iraqis fleeing from sectarian fighting.
Even if Mr. Mahdi's estimate proves too high, it suggests how concerned Iraqi leaders have become about the entrenched and vicious sectarian fighting that has reshaped the lives of many Iraqi families, particularly since the Feb. 22 Askariya shrine bombing in Samarra.
Militias - some inside the official Iraqi security forces and some outside - have gained considerable new influence as attacks against civilians have surged, and Iraqis increasingly say that they have more faith in the militias than in the official Iraqi security forces.
New York Times 30/4/06
US admits Iraq could become haven for terrorism
The US state department acknowledged yesterday that there is a risk of Iraq becoming a safe haven for terrorists three years after the invasion of the country.
The warning is contained in the state department's annual country reports on terrorism. The report, which suggests an increase in terrorist attacks worldwide, appears to undermine repeated claims by President George Bush that the US is winning the "war on terrorism".
The department said some of Iraq's neighbours, including Syria, had not been helpful in the battle to try to prevent the creation of a terrorist safe haven.
The report said there had been more than 11,000 terrorist attacks worldwide, killing 14,600 people, and blamed al-Qaida or al-Qaida-linked groups.
Guardian 29/4/06
US brands Iran enemy No 1
The US administratioan branded Iran public enemy number one, calling it one of the world's most active sponsors of terrorism, as the UN nuclear inspectors revealed that Tehran has successfully enriched uranium and is racing ahead with its nuclear programme.
The report from Mohamed ElBaradei, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to the UN security council shifted the nuclear dispute on to a new plane, with the US and Britain leading a campaign for enforcement and punitive action against Iran.
The US state department's annual report on terrorism worldwide described Iran as the most active state sponsor of terrorism. It said the Revolutionary Guards and the ministry of intellignece and security were directly involved in the planning and support of terrorist acts in Iraq and elsewhere and supported militant groups in Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza.
Jack Straw said Britain would ask the UN security council to "increase the pressure on Iran"
Guardian 29/4/06
Rice & Rumsfeld bury the hatchet
Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, and Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, put on a united front during a visit to Iraq yesterday after a series of spats over the conduct of the US military campaign.
The two, travelling separately, visited Baghdad in support of prime minister designate Jawad al-Maliki, whose appointment after four months of wrangling is regarded by Washington as a breakthrough.
Hopes in the White House for substantial troop withdrawals before the end of the year rest on Mr Maliki's ability to create a more stable and less sectarian Iraqi government.
The US hopes to reduce its 132,500 troops in Iraq to about 100,000 by the end of the year, and, in the best-case scenario, to 75,000. Britain hopes to reduce its force from 7,500 to about 5,000 by the end of the year.
Guardian 27/4/06
1,000 secret CIA flights
The CIA has operated more than 1,000 secret flights over EU territory in the past five years, some to transfer terror suspects in a practice known as "extraordinary rendition", an investigation by the European parliament said yesterday. The figure is significantly higher that previously thought.
EU parliamentarians who conducted the investigation concluded that incidents when terror suspects were handed over to US agents did not appear to be isolated. They said the suspects were often transported around Europe on the same planes by agents whose names repeatedly came up in their investigation.
They accused the CIA of kidnapping terror suspects and said those responsible for monitoring air safety regulations revealed unusual flight paths to and from European airports.
The Bush administration has admitted to secret rendition flights but says it doens not condone torture. Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, says he has no evidence that the US used British airspace or airports to transport detainees and that he believes Washington would have told the government if it had plans to do so.
Extraordinary renditions would breach European human rights legislation and British domestic law.
Guardian 27/4/06