These are the archives for the week ending 26th August 2005
US played 'major role' in draft constitution
Negotiators here described American officials as playing a major role in the draft. U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad shuttled among Iraqi leaders, pushing late Monday for the inclusion of Sunnis in talks, negotiators said.
U.S. Embassy staff members worked from a Kurdish party headquarters to help type up the draft and translate changes from English to Arabic for Iraqi lawmakers, negotiators said.
Washington Post, 23/8/05
Shi'ites split on new constitution
Fighting broke out in Baghdad and the holy city of Najaf late on Wednesday between rival Shi'ite militias, kindling fears of a renewed uprising by radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr against the U.S.-backed government. Hours after a bloody show of force by Sunni insurgents on the streets of Baghdad, it raised the prospect of Iraqis across the sectarian divide opposing the constitution the Shi'ite-led government is expected to force through parliament on Thursday.
At least eight people were killed and dozens wounded, health officials said, in street battles in Najaf involving pro- government fighters and supporters of Sadr, who has joined Sunni Arab leaders in denouncing the constitution as divisive. Washington has pressed hard for the charter to be adopted as part of its strategy for eventually pulling out its troops.
Reuters, 24/8/05
Iran bomb smoking gun a damp squib
Traces of bomb-grade uranium found two years ago in Iran came from contaminated Pakistani equipment and are not evidence of a clandestine nuclear weapons program, a group of U.S. government experts and other international scientists has determined.
"The biggest smoking gun that everyone was waving is now eliminated with these conclusions," said a senior official who discussed the still-confidential findings on the condition of anonymity. Scientists from the United States, France, Japan, Britain and Russia met in secret during the past nine months to pore over data collected by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, according to U.S. and foreign officials. Recently, the group, whose existence had not been previously reported, definitively matched samples of the highly enriched uranium -- a key ingredient for a nuclear weapon -- with centrifuge equipment turned over by the government of Pakistan.
Iran has long contended that the uranium traces were the result of contaminated equipment bought years ago from Pakistan. But the Bush administration had pointed to the material as evidence that Iran was making bomb-grade ingredients.
Washington Post, 25/8/05
Draft constitution deepens splits
Iraq's new constitution, supposedly the blueprint for a democratic future, was threatening to drag the country into civil war last night. As Shia and Kurdish factions presented the document to the National Assembly, minutes before a midnight deadline, Sunni Muslims strongly opposed to its federal structure made accusations of "betrayal" and warned of a violent sectarian backlash.
The draft constitution is the principal plank of President George Bush's exit strategy from the Iraq conflict, which has made his popularity collapse among American voters. American diplomats, led by the ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, had been frantically lobbying for it to be adopted before last night's deadline. But far from sealing Iraq's post-Saddam era, the draft appeared to be quickly fracturing the fragile edifice of government, with Shia and Kurdish parties declaring they were prepared to use their parliamentary majority to push through the document in the teeth of Sunni opposition.
Independent, 23/8/05
Bush encourages Shiite / Kurd stitch up on constitution
The draft constitution given to Iraq's national assembly last night does little to advance the prospects for a unified and peaceful Iraq. Nor does it reflect well on the Bush administration, which let its politically motivated obsession with an arbitrary deadline trump its responsibility to promote inclusiveness, women's rights and the rule of law.
The draft got to the assembly ahead of this latest deadline, a week later than Washington wanted, only by sidelining until almost the last moment the Sunni Arabs who had so painstakingly been added to the drafting group earlier this year. Since the Bush administration has promoted the constitution as a way to drain support from Sunni insurgents, this exclusionary move was reckless and indefensible.
Months ago, the United States was assuring skeptics that the secular Kurds would rein in the Shiite religious parties, while the majority Shiites would limit Kurdish separatism. But instead of being counterweights, these two groups seem mainly to have reinforced each other. Washington, desperate for any draft, encouraged their complicity.
New York Times, 23/8/05
Militias on the rise
Shiite and Kurdish militias, often operating as part of Iraqi government security forces, have carried out a wave of abductions, assassinations and other acts of intimidation, consolidating their control over territory across northern and southern Iraq and deepening the country's divide along ethnic and sectarian lines, according to political leaders, families of the victims, human rights activists and Iraqi officials.
While Iraqi representatives wrangle over the drafting of a constitution in Baghdad, the militias, and the Shiite and Kurdish parties that control them, are creating their own institutions of authority, unaccountable to elected governments, the activists and officials said. The parties and their armed wings sometimes operate independently, and other times as part of Iraqi army and police units trained and equipped by the United States and Britain and controlled by the central government. Their growing authority has enabled them to control territory, confront their perceived enemies and provide patronage to their followers.
Washington Post, 21/8/05
Millions embezzled at Iraqi ministry
British officials are seriously concerned about the level of corruption in the Iraqi defence ministry, after the embezzlement of vast amounts of money earmarked for the country's security forces.
A report compiled by the Iraqi Board of Supreme Audit has concluded that at least half, and probably more, of $1.27bn (£700m) of Iraqi money spent on military procurement has disappeared into a miasma of kickbacks and vanished middlemen - or else has been spent on useless equipment.
The vanished money came solely from Iraqi funds, not from foreign donations to Iraq's military or the US-funded training budget.
The report focuses on an 8-month period after the transfer of sovereignty from the US-led occupation to caretaker Iraqi authorities on June 28 2004. During this period, 20 US officials worked alongside the Iraqi defence ministry.
Guardian 22/8/05
Halliburton firm in UK contract overspend
Defence ministers awared a huge nuclear contract to a company even though officials had serious doubts about the competence of the firm, internal documents obtained by the Guardian reveal.
The estimated cost then nearly doubled to more than £900m. The Ministry of Defence said one of the main causes of this was the 'poor performance' of the company.
The project to build docks to refit nuclear-powered submarines at Devonport, Plymouth, is crucial for maintaining Britain's nuclear arsenal. Ministry officials had concerns about the firm, DML, before ministers awarded the contract.
DML is partly owned by Halliburton, the American company formerly run by the US vice-president, Dick Cheney. In a previously secret evaluation of DML, MoD officials concluded that the firm failed eight of the 10 criteria measuring its competence, and the company should not be 'considered a suitable organisation to be awarded the contract".
Three years ago the cost had risen 'significantly' to more than £933 million.
The ministry yesterday stood by its decision to award DML the contract, emphasising that much of the increase was the result of unforeseen safety regulations. DML declined to comment.
Guardian 22/8/05
Constitution may exclude Sunnis
Iraqi Kurdish and Shia politicians said on Sunday that they were close to resolving differences over the country's draft constitution but at the cost of isolating the Sunni Arab minority. The disclosure that, on the eve of their extended deadline for producing the document, they had yet to reach agreement with Iraq's third main ethnic and sectarian group, raises the prospect that Sunnis might block the new constitution in a later referendum.
Under strong US pressure to meet the deadline to agree a text already extended by a week Shia and Kurdish leaders have held closed-door meetings since last Monday. But some Sunnis say that if the Shia and Kurds push through a draft without their support, they will try to defeat it in the planned October referendum. That would undermine George Bush's attempts to argue that the political process is working, as he seeks to deflect domestic criticism of the US's involvement in Iraq.
Times, 21/8/05
Occupation could continue for 4 more years
The Army is planning for the possibility of keeping the current number of soldiers in Iraq - well over 100,000 - for four more years, the Army's top general said Saturday. Gen. Peter Schoomaker said the Army is prepared for the "worst case" in terms of the required level of troops in Iraq. He said the number could be adjusted lower if called for by slowing the force rotation or by shortening tours for soldiers.
Schoomaker's comments come amid indications from Bush administration officials and commanders in Iraq that the size of the U.S. force may be scaled back next year if certain conditions are achieved. Among those conditions: an Iraqi constitution must be drafted in coming days; it must be approved in a national referendum; and elections must be held for a new government under that charter.
San Francisco Chronicle, 20/8/05
Rumsfeld attacks Iran
Iran is continuing to supply weapons to insurgents in Iraq with the goal of creating an Islamist government, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said. "I see intelligence reports and we know that we're finding Iranian weapons inside the country,"
Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters. "They don't just get there by accident. They don't fly there. And we know that Iran has a system of government it would like to replicate in Iraq. And we know the system of government they have with a handful of clerics running the place and telling everyone what to do is fundamentally inconsistent with the kind of a constitution that's currently being drafted in Iraq."
Washington Times, 20/8/05
US kills sleeping civilians
Multi-National Forces in Iraq apologised Thursday for the death of civilians in central Baghdad as US helicopters tracked and engaged terrorists on August 16th. Iraqi Ministry of Interior sources reported that 26 Iraqis were sleeping on the roofs of buildings during the incident and were severely injured.
Multi-National forces said in a statements, "Terrorists attacked a Task Force Baghdad patrol in central Baghdad during the early hours of Tuesday August 16th." The statement added, "This fight resulted in an undetermined number of civilian casualties."
Kuwait News Agency, 18/8/05
Crowd denounce US terrorists
An angry Iraqi crowd carried coffins through a Baghdad district on Thursday and threw rocks at American soldiers, accusing U.S. troops of killing three innocent middle-aged brothers, one of them in a wheelchair. The U.S. military said they had killed three "terrorists".
"They call everybody terrorists but they just commit terrorist acts whenever they want," said Mohsen Thabit, a friend of the men whom neighbours found shot in the head at home after a raid by U.S. and Iraqi troops in the Amiriya district overnight. The bodies of Khalil, Khalid and Jamal Hussein, filmed by a neighbour, lay sprawled in their home, that of the crippled Khalil lying in the bathroom next to his wheelchair.
Reuters, 18/8/05
Iraqi minister lambasts occupation
A government minister has openly lambasted U.S. occupation of the country, blaming it for the upsurge in violence and rampant corruption. Salam al-Maliki, transport minister, said the presence of U.S.-led troops was as detrimental to the country's well-being as the devastation resulting from terror attacks.
"Corruption, terror . and occupation are taking their daily toll on the life of Iraqi citizens," Maliki said in an interview. He said the worsening conditions in Iraq along with the hike in terror, insurgent attacks and violence "are a product of the occupation." Maliki is the first government minister who publicly condemns U.S. troops, saying that they shoulder the responsibility of the chaos in the country. Maliki, a Muslim Shiite, was the former deputy governor of the southern city of Basra for administrative affairs.
Azzaman, 18/8/05
Britain says Afghanistan could fail
Almost four years after the defeat of the Taliban, efforts to rebuild Afghanistan face a "real and worrying risk of failure", the British Government has warned. Terrorism remains an ever-present threat and opium production is spreading, it says, while large parts of the country's infrastructure are in tatters and UN targets for improving basic services such as education and water will not be met.
The assessment, by the Department for International Development, says that unless the Afghan Government delivers improvements, the people could lose faith in their nascent democracy. "Governance problems - notably high corruption, limited capacity and dysfunctional institutions - affect everything," it says.
The Australian, 19/8/05