These are the archives for the week ending 11th November 2005
Saddam's lawyers to boycott trial
Lawyers acting for Saddam Hussein and his fellow defendants announced yesterday that they will boycott the forthcoming trial following the murder of the second member of the defence team.
Khalil al-Dulaimi, the head of the team, accused the US led "occupation forces" of responsibility for the killing and said he and his colleagues felt unable to continue due to daily threats which was preventing them from going to their offices and interviewing witnesses.
Independent 10/11/05
Why Jordan is a target for Islamist militants
The bombings that hit hotels in Jordan's capital on Wednesday were the first mass casualty attacks Islamist militants have succeeded in inflicting in the kingdom, where authorities say they have foiled many previous plots.
Here are some facts about Jordan that help explain why it is a target for militants -
* Jordan is a pro-Western, moderate Arab state committed to its 1994 peace treaty with Israel. It is a relatively open, secular society aspiring to be a modern business hub.
* Jordanians, many of whom have Palestinian roots, tend to be much less pro-Western than their leaders, with many voicing hostility to U.S. policies towards Iraq and the Palestinians.
* Jordan's intelligence services have close links with their U.S. counterparts. Human rights groups say the Jordanians have interrogated and possibly tortured suspected militants captured in U.S. operations elsewhere. Jordan denies torture charges.
* Jordan is a popular tourist destination. Amman has become a refuge for U.N. agencies, aid workers and foreign businessmen driven from Iraq by postwar violence. Many foreign contractors and journalists working in Iraq transit through Jordan.
* About 400,000 Iraqis fleeing the mayhem in their homeland have swelled Amman's population in recent years. Their wealth has fuelled a construction boom and driven up property prices.
Reuters 10/11/05 -
US increases pressure on Syria
The United States has cut off nearly all contact with the Syrian government as the Bush administration steps up a campaign to weaken and isolate President Bashar al-Assad's regime, according to US and Syrian officials.
The United States has halted high-level diplomatic meetings, limited military coordination on Syria's border with Iraq, and ended dialogue with Syria's Finance Ministry on amending its banking laws to block terrorist financing.
In recent months, as distrust between the two countries widened, the United States also declined a proposal from Syria to revive intelligence cooperation with Syria, according to Syria's ambassador to the United States, Imad Moustapha, and a US official.
The new era of hostility flows from American frustration at what it considers Syria's failure to effectively control its border with Iraq and continued support for radical Palestinian groups that threaten the chances of peace in Israel.
The US-Syrian confrontation has sharpened just as Syria is also facing pressure from many Arab and European governments -- as well as the United States -- over Syria's suspected role in the assassination of the former prime minister of Lebanon, Rafik Hariri.
Boston News 9/11/05
China after oil resources
China is prowling the globe in search of energy sources. Oil executives and diplomats have signed a flurry of deals, from Canada to Kazakhstan.
The scramble has triggered unease in Washington, where American conservatives worry about China's growing economic muscle, but has sparked an unprecedented engagement with Africa.
Chinese business is blazing a trail across the continent. Trade with China has almost tripled in five years. Railways in Angola, roads in Rwanda, a port in Gabon and a dam in Sudan have all been paid for with Chinese loans and built by Chinese contractors.
The driving ingredient is oil. China's flagship African project is in Sudan. Isolation from the west meant that Khartoum barely pumped a barrel of crude a decade ago. Now, after intensive Chinese investment, it has the third largest oil business in sub-Saharan Africa.
Guardian 9/11/05
Ukraine to leave Iraq
Ukraine will pull out its peacekeeping contingent from Iraq by the end of 2005, replacing the mission with economic aid, a Ukrainian diplomat said Tuesday.
"Ukraine will withdraw its military contingent from Iraq by year's end," Foreign Ministry Spokesman Vasily Filipchuk said. "The peacekeeping mission will be replaced by economic aid."
Ukraine's 950-troop contingent is the fourth-largest in the U.S.-led military coalition and operates under Polish command in southern Iraq.
RIA Novosti 8/11/05
Death count rises as US aggression continues
At least five U.S. soldiers and a dozen Iraqis were reported slain across Iraq as American and Iraqi troops continued their offensive Monday in the western town of Husaybah and insurgents targeted security forces and civilians. Four U.S. soldiers were killed Monday when a suicide car bomber struck their vehicle at a checkpoint south of Baghdad. Another died Sunday when his vehicle hit a roadside bomb near Tikrit, northwest of Baghdad, the military announced.
The deaths brought to at least 2,051 the number of U.S. military personnel who have died since the Iraq war started in 2003, according to an Associated Press count. At least 24 have died this month - most in roadside bombings.
Seattle Times, 8/11/05
US used chemical weapons in Fallujah
A documentary to be aired on Tuesday by Italian state satellite TV channel RAI News 24 alleges that US troops used chemical weapons during their assault on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah in November last year. The documentary - 'Fallujah - the hidden massacre' - uses witness accounts from former US soldiers, Fallujah residents, video footage and photographs, to support its claim that contrary to US State Department denials, white phosphorous was used indiscriminately on the city, causing terrible injuries to civilians, including women and children.
"I heard the order being issued to be careful because white phosphorous was being used on Fallujah. In military slang this is known as Willy Pete. Phosphorous burns bodies, melting the flesh right down to the bone," says one former US solider, interviewed by the documentary's director, Sigfrido Ranucci. "I saw the burned bodies of women and children. The phosophorous explodes and forms a plume. Who ever is within a 150 metre radius has no hope," the former soldier adds.
"A rain of fire came down on the city, and people targeted by the different coloured substances began to burn. We found people dead, with strange injuries, with their clothes intact," a biologist from Fallujah, Mohamad Tareq al-Deraji tells Ranucci.
The evidence in 'Fallujah - the hidden massacre' claims to show the US forces did not use phosphorous in the legitimate way - to highlight enemy positions - but dropped the substance indiscriminately on the city, and on a massive scale. The documentary also shows the terrible damage wrought by the US bombardment of Fallujah, and the carnage to civilians, some of whom lay sleeping.
AKI, Italy, 7/11/05
US attacks Qaim
U.S. and Iraqi security forces swept through an area near the Syrian border Sunday, the second day of one of the largest military offensives since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. About 3,500 troops participated in the operation in the region in and around Qaim, which the military has dubbed Steel Curtain.
Mohammed Azzawi, a physician at the Qaim hospital, said five civilians had been killed and nine wounded since the assault began. He said 13 civilians were missing and presumed trapped under wreckage. The Marines said there had been no reports of civilian casualties.
"Marines can confirm 17 insurgents have been killed since the operation began" on Saturday, the Americans said in a statement. "Many more are suspected of being killed, but Coalition forces haven't been able to confirm those numbers yet."
Washington Post, 7/11/05
Blair 'seduced' by US power
Prime Minister Tony Blair was "seduced by the glamour of U.S. power" in the build-up to the Iraq war and repeatedly failed to influence U.S. policy, a former top British diplomat said in comments published on Monday.
Christopher Meyer, a former British ambassador in Washington who was heavily involved in the pre-war planning, said Blair was reluctant to negotiate conditions with President George W. Bush over Britain's support for war. Blair did not use his position as Washington's most important ally to delay the start of the war to give more time to plan for what to do after the fall of Saddam Hussein, Meyer said.
Reuters, 7/11/05
Arms procurement chief charged
Ziad Cattan was a Polish Iraqi used-car dealer with no weapons-dealing experience until U.S. authorities turned him into one of the most powerful men in Iraq last year - the chief of procurement for the Defense Ministry, responsible for equipping the fledgling Iraqi army. As U.S. advisors looked on, Cattan embarked on a massive spending spree, paying hundreds of millions of dollars in Iraqi funds for secret, no-bid contracts, according to interviews with more than a dozen senior American, coalition and Iraqi officials, and documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times.
The money flowed, often in bricks of cash, through the hands of middlemen who were friends of Cattan and took a percentage of the proceeds. Although much of the material purchased has proved useful, U.S. advisors said, the contracts also paid for equipment that was shoddy, overpriced or never delivered. The questionable purchases - including aging Russian helicopters and underpowered Polish transport vehicles - have slowed the development of the Iraqi army and hindered its ability to replace American troops, U.S. and Iraqi officials say.
Cattan, now facing corruption charges leveled by the Iraqi Justice Ministry, insists that he is innocent of any wrongdoing and the victim of a smear campaign. In interviews in Poland, where he now lives, Cattan said he had worked under pressure from U.S. and Iraqi officials to arm the Iraqi forces as quickly as possible. "Before, I sold water, flowers, shoes, cars - but not weapons," said Cattan, who signed most of the 89 military contracts worth nearly $1.3 billion to equip Iraqi security forces, according to the documents. "We didn't know anything about weapons."
Los Angeles Times, 5/11/05
US offensive
U.S. forces mounted their biggest offensive in a year against Sunni Arab insurgents in western Iraq on Saturday, saying they would make the lawless area on the Syrian border safe for voters in next month's election.
Some 2,500 U.S. troops and 1,000 local Iraqis met "sporadic" resistance, a U.S. Marines statement said, when they advanced through the streets of Qusayba on the Syrian border at the start of Operation Steel Curtain against foreign al Qaeda fighters.
It was the biggest operation in the mainly Sunni desert province of Anbar since weeks of fighting forced insurgents from the city of Falluja, close to Baghdad, in November last year.
Several U.S. offensives this year in the Euphrates valley, running from the border towards the capital, have been aimed at stemming the flow of Islamist militants into Iraq, although local people have complained that al Qaeda-linked militants have returned to their towns once the Americans have withdrawn.
Reuters 5/11/05
Innocent Iraqis can spend months in prison
Hani Hashem Salen crowded into a small square outside the al Nosoor prison near Baghdad's Mansour district and joined 127 other men who were stealing longing glances at three white pickups. The men were dusty and gray, barefoot - their clothes little more than rags. The pickups would take them to freedom, after months of wrongful imprisonment.
"For two months I sat in that dirty, dim cell and cursed the day I was born," Salen whispered as he waited earlier this week for official word that he was free. "I did nothing, yet I wasn't allowed even to see my family. They don't even know I'm getting out today. Why did this happen to me?"
The answer is simple: Iraq can't process the thousands of people who are being arrested these days. It can't even come close. Even wrongly accused men such as those in the square wait months - sometimes more than a year - before their cases are investigated, helping to erode any confidence in Iraq's government.
"The problem is that we have far more detainees than the judges can get around to," Human Rights Minister Nermeen Othman said.
San Jose Mercury, 4/11/05
US should repay millions to Iraq
An auditing board sponsored by the United Nations recommended yesterday that the United States repay as much as $208 million to the Iraqi government for contracting work in 2003 and 2004 assigned to Kellogg, Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary. The work was paid for with Iraqi oil proceeds, but the board said it was either carried out at inflated prices or done poorly.
Some of the work involved postwar fuel imports carried out by K.B.R. that previous audits had criticized as grossly overpriced. But this is the first time that an international auditing group has suggested that the United States repay some of that money to Iraq.
New York Times, 5/11/05
London bombings caused by war
London's former ambassador to Washington says the war in Iraq fuelled home-grown terrorism in Britain, in comments likely to cause further problems for Prime Minister Tony Blair at the end of turbulent political week. Sir Christopher Meyer, who was heavily involved in the planning that led up to the war, said he disagreed with Blair's view that joining the United States in the 2003 invasion of Iraq had not exposed Britain to terrorist attacks.
"There is plenty of evidence around at the moment that home-grown terrorism was partly radicalised and fuelled by what is going on in Iraq," Meyer said.
Reuters, 5/11/05