These are the archives for the week ending 25th May 2007
Democrats abandon timetable for withdrawal
Democrat congressional leaders have abandoned plans to tie support for a $100bn war funding bill to a timetable for troop withdrawal from Iraq.
The decision followed weeks of wrangling over the bill which the US president threatened to veto.
BBC News, 23/5/07
Bush is escalating war
The Bush administration is quietly on track to nearly double the number of combat troops in Iraq this year, an analysis of Pentagon deployment orders showed Monday.
The little-noticed second surge, designed to reinforce U.S. troops in Iraq, is being executed by sending more combat brigades and extending tours of duty for troops already there. The actions could boost the number of combat soldiers from 52,500 in early January to as many as 98,000 by the end of this year if the Pentagon overlaps arriving and departing combat brigades.
Separately, when additional support troops are included in this second troop increase, the total number of U.S. troops in Iraq could increase from 162,000 now to more than 200,000 -- a record-high number -- by the end of the year.
San Francisco Chronicle, 22/5/07
Green zone under fire as deaths continue
Several mortar shells slammed into the US-controlled Green Zone, one of them striking the Iraqi parliament building but causing no casualties.
The near daily barrages against the nerve centre of the US mission and the Iraqi government are symbolic of the tenuous security situation in Baghdad and across the country.
At least 58 Iraqis were killed or found dead across the country Monday, including seven people ambushed on a bus northeast of Baghdad, police said. The dead also included 24 men whose bullet-riddled bodies were found across Baghdad - apparent victims of sectarian death squads.
The Age, Australia, 22/5/07
Leading Afghan woman MP suspended
An outspoken woman in the lower house of the Afghan parliament, Malalai Joya, has been suspended after comparing other MPs to animals. Ms Joya said in a television interview that parliament was worse than a stable because, she said, at least stable animals were useful.
Ms Joya is an outspoken critic of the influence that former Mujahideen fighters have in parliament. She was elected to parliament in 2005, campaigning for women's rights. Correspondents say the suspension will last some months, until the end of the current parliamentary session.
BBC News, 21/5/07
Iraq makes plans for early US withdrawal
Iraq's military is drawing up plans to cope with any quick U.S. military pullout, the defense minister said Monday, as a senior American official warned that the Bush administration may reconsider its support if Iraqi leaders don't make major reforms by fall.
The U.S. official did not say what actions could be taken by the White House, but his comments reflected the administration's need to show results in Iraq - as an answer to pressure by the Democrats in Congress seeking to set timetables on the U.S. military presence.
San Francisco Chronicle, 21/5/07
Abominable, blind, loyal, subservient
"Abonimable, blind, loyal, subservient" said former US president Jimmy Carter when asked how he would caracterise the British prime minister's relationship with Mr Bush.
"I think that the almost undeviating support by Great Britain for all the ill-advised policies of President Bush in Iraq have been a major tragedy for the world"
He told the BBC that if Mr Blair had opposed the invasion he could have made it tougher for Washington to shrug off critics. "One of the defences of the Bush administration in America and worldwide..has been, 'OK, we must be more correct in our actions than the world thinks because Great Britain is backing us'."
The White House is waiting to see whether the change in British leadership will bring a policy shift, particularly on Iraq. But yesterday a spokesperson for Gordon Brown said the chancellor did not plan to change tack.
Guardian 22/5/07
One building that's been built on time
The US embassy in Iraq is destined, at 4592m (£300m) to become the biggest and most expensive US embassy on earth when it opens in September.
It will cover 104 acres of land. It will include 27 separate buildings and house about 615 people behind bomb-proof walls. There will be a pool, gym and communal living areas, and the embassy will have its own power and water supplies.
The Green Zone - the four square miles in which the Iraqi and American governments and other international officials operate - used to be relatively peaceful but in recent months has come under almost daily rocket and mortar fire. This month the US embassy ordered its people to wear flak jackets and helmets at all times when in the open after four foreign contractors were killed by a rocket landing beside the present embassy.
Toby Dodge, an expert on Iraq at Queen Mary, University of London, thinks the Americans are unlikely to pull out of Iraq fully until the end of the next presidency at the earliest.
"A fortress style embassy, with a huge staff, will remain in Baghdad until helicopters come to airlift the last man and woman from the roof" he said, adding his own advice to the builders "include a large roof".
The embassy is one of the few major projects the administration has undertaken in Iraq that is on schedule and within budget. /p>
Guardian 21/5/07
UK government breaches own arms guidelines
The Blair government has repeatedly breached its own guidelines on arms exports by selling weapons to countries with bad human rights records, according to a report by an independent thinktank.
Labour has tightened export controls on arms sales but it has flouted its own criteria, as the blocking of a Serious Fraud Office inquiry into BAE Systems deals with Saudi Arabia demonstrated, says the report by Saferworld.
In the three years up to 2006, arms exports were approved to 19 of 20 states identified as "countries of concern", including Colombia and Israel.
The report points out that Britain is the world's second largest exporter of arms, with the Blair government approving sales of £45bn worth of military equipment and services.
Guardian 22/5/07
Brown may distance himself from Bush...
Gordon Brown is prepared to risk the future of the "special relationship" with the United States by reversing Tony Blair's support for the Iraq war, President George W Bush has been warned.
He has been briefed by White House officials to expect an announcement on British troop withdrawals from Mr Brown during his first 100 days in power. It would be designed to boost the new prime minister's popularity in the opinion polls.
Senior figures in the National Security Council, the Pentagon and the State Department in Washington have expressed fears about Mr Brown. They believe that cordial relations between the two leaders will be "at an end" if the incoming premier plays "gesture politics" over Iraq.
One senior official said: "There is a sense of foreboding. We don't know if he will be there when we need him. We expect a gesture that will greatly weaken the United States government's position."
Sunday Telegraph, 20/5/07
...or maybe not
Gordon Brown has stuck by the decision to go to war in Iraq amid protests at a Labour leadership hustings event. As he described his humility at being elected Labour leader, a woman shouted "Gordon Brown, get the troops out".
Mr Brown said Iraq had been a "very divisive issue" but he believed the right decisions had been taken. Shortly after the woman was removed, Mr Brown addressed the issue of Iraq, saying he would be going himself to assess the situation.
He added: "I take my responsibility as a member of the Cabinet for the collective decisions that we made, and I believe they were the right decisions, but we're at a new stage now".
BBC News, 20/5/07
US Afghan raid left 50 dead and 2,000 homeless
Bombing by US forces in western Afghanistan last month wrecked 173 houses and left 2,000 people homeless, the Red Cross said, announcing findings of its assessment of the damage.
Preliminary UN and Afghan investigations have found that around 50 civilians were killed in the April 27 and 29 assaults, which involved US Special Forces, with final reports due this week.
The International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed in a statement that the clashes "killed dozens of civilians" and reprimanded foreign forces over civilian casualties caused in operations against Taliban militants. The assault also "left 230 families, almost 2,000 people, in four villages homeless," it said.
AFP, 19/5/07
Blair's farewell tour bombed in green zone
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, on his last visit to Iraq before stepping down in June, urged Iraq's leaders to speed up reconciliation efforts to end the violence in the country Saturday - after three blasts rocked the compound where he met with Iraq's leaders.
The attack on Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone by mortar shells or rockets wounded one person, said U.S. Embassy spokesman Lou Fintor. One round hit the British Embassy compound, security officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.
Blair appeared irritated at repeated questions about the increasing levels of violence in Iraq, saying Iraqi officials had assured him in talks that there were signs of progress on security.
San Diego Union-Tribune, 19/5/07
Collective punishment in Samarra
Food and fuel supplies are reportedly running out in the central Iraqi city of Samarra because of a curfew imposed after an insurgent attack 12 days ago. Four babies are said to have died in the city's hospital because of a lack of fuel to power their incubators. Two elderly patients have also died.
Residents have called on US and Iraqi troops to end the restrictions and allow humanitarian aid into the city. But only some aid deliveries have been allowed through after intense searches.
One Iraqi Red Crescent worker from the nearby town of Tikrit said that three of his organisation's trucks had been turned away. "The humanitarian situation in Samarra is terrible," he said.
An Iraqi humanitarian group, Doctors for Iraq, said it was gravely concerned by the situation in Samarra. The group called for an immediate lifting of the access restrictions, which it said amounted to "an act of collective punishment", and for local NGOs and health workers to be allowed into the city as soon as possible.
BBC News, 18/5/07
Mercenary deaths in Iraq soar
Casualties among private contractors in Iraq have soared to record levels this year, setting a pace that seems certain to turn 2007 into the bloodiest year yet for the civilians who work alongside the American military in the war zone, according to new government numbers.
At least 146 contract workers were killed in Iraq in the first three months of the year, by far the highest number for any quarter since the war began in March 2003, according to the Labor Department, which processes death and injury claims for those working as United States government contractors in Iraq.
That brings the total number of contractors killed in Iraq to at least 917, along with more than 12,000 wounded in battle or injured on the job, according to government figures and dozens of interviews.
New York Times, 19/5/07
Blair and Bush have no regrets
US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair were defiant to the last over Iraq Thursday despite the war's cost to their political fortunes as Blair paid a farewell visit here.
Heaping lavish praise on each other's leadership, they said history would be the judge of their decision to invade Iraq in search of elusive weapons of mass destruction and to topple Saddam Hussein's regime.
Blair said that Britain under his successor, Treasury chief Gordon Brown, would remain "a staunch and steadfast ally" of the United States "in the fight against terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere."
Still, Britain is already pulling hundreds of its troops out of southern Iraq, while Bush is under pressure from the Democratic-led Congress for a total rethink of US strategy that could include an early military withdrawal.
AFP, 17/5/07
Iraq faces possibility of collapse
Iraq faces the distinct possibility of collapse and fragmentation, UK foreign policy think tank Chatham House says. Its report says the Iraqi government is now largely powerless and irrelevant in many parts of the country.
It warns there is not one war but many local civil wars, and urges a major change in US and British strategy, such as consulting Iraq's neighbours more.
The UK Foreign Office, responding to the Chatham House report, stated that security conditions, although "grim" in places, varied across Iraq.
"Most insurgent attacks remain concentrated in just four of Iraq's 18 provinces, containing less than 42% of the population," a Foreign Office spokesman said.
BBC News, 17/5/07