These are the archives for the week ending 26th November 2004
New calls to postpone election
Some of Iraq's most powerful political groups, including the party led by the interim prime minister, called Friday for a six-month delay in elections scheduled for Jan. 30, citing concerns over security. The list of groups seeking the delay includes some that have been among the strongest backers of U.S. policy in Iraq, and their call indicates sudden momentum for those arguing for a postponement.
The two main Kurdish parties supported the delay request, marking the first time the Kurds, closely allied with the Americans, have taken a clear stand on the issue. One participant said Allawi's party, the Iraqi National Accord, limited itself to oral agreement perhaps out of fear that a written call by the prime minister for an election delay would be seen as a self-serving effort to stay in power.
Houston Chronicle, 26/11/04
UN committee concerned by British torture policy
A United Nations human-rights panel, the Committee Against Torture, urged Britain on Friday to "to make public the results of all investigations into alleged conduct by its forces in Iraq and Afghanistan," especially when it appears they have violated the treaty. The committee's recommendations came at the end of its two-week fall session during which it quizzed British officials on compliance with the 20-year-old Convention Against Torture.
The committee expressed concern at Britain's "limited acceptance of the applicability of the convention to the actions of its forces abroad." There have been several reports of British abuse of prisoners in Iraq.
CBC news, 27/11/04
Baghdad now more dangerous
A mortar attack has killed four former Gurkhas working for a British security company in Baghdad's Green Zone, the heavily fortified headquarters for the US and the Iraqi interim government. The US capture of Fallujah is making Baghdad more dangerous. Many resistance fighters have moved to the capital, where they are difficult to detect. Mortar shells and rockets are fired every day into the Green Zone, situated in Saddam Hussein's palace complex on the Tigris river in the heart of Baghdad, and echoes from explosions resound across the city.
Independent, 27/11/04
Epidemics on increase
The epidemic monitoring department in the Iraqi Ministry of Health announced that 29 Iraqis had died of epidemic diseases during the past few weeks and 31,088 others infected, local newspaper Al Nahdhah reported here on Thursday.The department said, "These deaths occurred as a result of the infections of various epidemics and the number of the infected are increasing to reach 31,088 in the last two months."
The department also said the infections were mostly found in thecities that suffer a dire shortage of drinking water and medicalcare. The diseases could spread very fast unless people were provided with vaccines, antibiotics and clean water and the stray dogs carrying epidemics were eliminated, warned the department.
Xinhua, China, 25/11/04
Fallujans unimpressed by Granola bars
Braving snipers, Falluja residents walked past demolished homes to an aid distribution centre on Tuesday but American granola bars and Frosted Flakes cereal failed to raise hopes of a brighter future. "We have no water and this is the only food we get.
We still have the feeling that our homes can be bombed at any time," said Muhammad Ali, 58, one of the few civilians who stayed in Falluja during this month's U.S.-led offensive against rebels. "How can our life improve? The Americans are back and the guerrillas and the people of Falluja will not accept them so we will have more death."
The Marines have imposed a curfew during all hours except for 8 to 12 in the morning. But some Iraqis complain that is not enough time carry out important tasks. The Americans are unlikely to leave anytime soon, and Falluja residents say anti-U.S. resentment will only deepen when people return to homes reduced to rubble or damaged in aggressive weapons searches.
As an explosion echoed across the city, resident Omat Takhrati said: "That's what the future holds for Falluja."
Reuters, 23/11/04
Fallujah - the truth gradually emerges
Allegations of widespread abuse by US forces in Fallujah, including the killing of unarmed civilians and the targeting of a hospital in an attack, have been made by people who have escaped from the city. They said, in interviews with The Independent, that as well as deaths from bombs and artillery shells, a large number of people including children were killed by American snipers.
US forces refused repeated calls for medical aid for injured civilians, they said. Some of the killings took place in the build-up to the assault on the rebel stronghold, and at least in one case - that of the death of a family of seven, including a three-month baby - the American authorities have admitted responsibility and offered compensation.
Independent, 24/11/04
Black watch in new offensive
The Black Watch are set to play a key role in a major new US-led offensive in Iraq, it emerged tonight. The operation - codenamed Plymouth Rock because it takes place around Thanksgiving - is billed as the biggest coalition offensive since the assault on Fallujah. More than 5,000 men supported by Cobra attack helicopters, F-18 hornets and F-16s, will launch surgical raids in and around the so-called Triangle of Death south of Baghdad.
The 850 British soldiers of the Black Watch battlegroup, based to the west near the Euphrates, are included in the 5,000-strong force but will not enter the Triangle of Death in Babil province. Their role since they arrived at Camp Dogwood, 25 miles south west of Baghdad, nearly four weeks ago has been to block insurgents fleeing Fallujah. As US attention switches from Fallujah to the trouble hotspots in Babil around the towns of Mahmudiyah, Latifiyah and Yusufiyah, The Black Watch are expected to perform a similar function.
Scotsman, 23/11/04
80% of Mosul police desert
U.S. authorities spent millions of dollars and many man hours setting up, training and supplying Mosul's 4,000-strong police force over the past year, only to have 80 percent of it desert the moment insurgents threatened. A multi-million-dollar police academy full of computers, weapons, first aid equipment and other supplies was attacked and looted during the rampage and is now smashed up and deserted.
A few days before it was attacked, several of the U.S. military's top generals in Iraq had visited the centre to praise the effectiveness of the recruiting and training.
Reuters, 22/11/04
Cleric killed
Gunmen killed a Sunni Muslim cleric in the city of Miqdadiya Tuesday, the second such killing in Iraq in as many days, witnesses and hospital officials said. Sheikh Ghaleb al-Zuheir was a member of the Muslim Clerics Association, which aims to speak for the once dominant Sunni minority and which has called for a boycott of January's Iraqi election. The Association says its members have been targeted by U.S. and Iraqi security forces and also by insurgents trying to fuel sectarian unrest.
Reuters, 23/11/04
Debt reduction
German construction firms yesterday slammed plans by the Paris Club of creditor nations to wipe out 80 per cent of Iraq's debt, warning that individual companies might seek to seek legal action against the German government to protect their claims.
During the 1980s, German companies built roads, airports and a dam in Iraq, the cost of which was covered by so-called Hermes guarantees, whereby the German state would take over repayment if Iraq defaulted due to war or other reasons.
Gulf Daily News, 23/11/04
US open fire on civilian bus
In Ramadi, west of Falluja, the police chief said seven people were killed when American soldiers opened fire on a civilian bus. The US military said the vehicle had failed to stop at a checkpoint. Television footage showed the bus riddled with bullets and soaked in blood.
Guardian, 22/11/04
Iraqi children pay price
Acute malnutrition among young children in Iraq has nearly doubled since the United States led an invasion of the country 20 months ago, according to surveys by the United Nations, aid agencies and the interim Iraqi government. After the rate of acute malnutrition among children younger than 5 steadily declined to 4 percent two years ago, it shot up to 7.7 percent this year, according to a study conducted by Iraq's Health Ministry in cooperation with Norway's Institute for Applied International Studies and the U.N. Development Program.
The new figure translates to roughly 400,000 Iraqi children suffering from "wasting," a condition characterized by chronic diarrhea and dangerous deficiencies of protein. Iraq's child malnutrition rate now roughly equals that of Burundi, a central African nation torn by more than a decade of war. It is far higher than rates in Uganda and Haiti.
Washington Post, 21/11/04
British troops may expand role
Britain's top military commander has refused to put a deadline on the withdrawal of British soldiers from Iraq and says they may be redeployed to more dangerous parts of the country. "How long we stay there is going to be event driven," General Mike Jackson told the Independent in an interview published on Monday.
He raised the prospect of more British soldiers being redeployed from the relative calm of their southern base in and around Basra. Any such move would be deeply unpopular, with opinion polls suggesting most people are against the war in Iraq.
Britain, which has 8,500 soldiers in Iraq and was the United States's main ally in the 2003 invasion to topple former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, has lost 71 soldiers in Iraq during the invasion and occupation.
Reuters, 22/11/04
More US troops to be sent
Senior U.S. military commanders in Iraq say it is increasingly likely they will need a further increase in combat forces to put down remaining areas of resistance in the country. Convinced that the recent battle for Fallujah has significantly weakened insurgent ranks, commanders here have devised plans to press the offensive into neighborhoods where rebels have either taken refuge after fleeing Fallujah or were already deeply entrenched.
Some senior officers have worried that any move to bring in more U.S. troops could be perceived as a sign of U.S. vulnerability in the face of the tenacious insurgency or as a vote of no confidence in the ability of Iraq's new security forces to fill the gap.
Washington Post, 22/11/04
Attacks continue
Violence surged through central and northern Iraq on Saturday as a tenacious insurgency led by Sunni Arabs kept up relentless assaults in several major cities, including Baghdad, Ramadi and Falluja, which the Americans devastated during an intense weeklong offensive aimed at routing the insurgency.
In the capital, insurgents armed with Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenades tried storming a police station at dawn in the northwestern neighborhood of Amariya, where American and Iraqi soldiers had engaged in a mosque shootout on Friday. The attack on the police station left three Iraqi policemen dead and two others wounded. Hours later, a car bomb exploded in downtown Baghdad, at the eastern end of the bridge over the Tigris River leading to the Green Zone, the fortified compound housing the American Embassy and the headquarters of the interim Iraqi government. The bomb was aimed at a convoy of vehicles from a Western security contractor. At least one Iraqi was killed and another wounded, witnesses said.
Four employees of the Public Works Ministry were gunned down from a passing car, and three Iraqi national guardsmen died in explosions in western Baghdad during gun battles with insurgents, Iraqi officials said. An ambush on an American military convoy in central Baghdad ended with the death of one soldier, the military said. Nine others were wounded in what appeared to be a highly coordinated attack, with insurgents using explosives, automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. Fighting raged in the rubble of Falluja. Two marines were killed and four wounded in an ambush on Friday in which an insurgent deceived the Americans by waving a white flag, military officials said Saturday.
New York Times, 21/11/04
Red Cross condemns contempt for international law
The International Red Cross is "deeply concerned" with the killing of civilians and non-combatants in Iraq and the apparent failures by all sides to respect humanitarian law. The International Committee of the Red Cross operations director, Pierre Kraehenbuehl, stressed that international law prohibits killing anyone who is not actively taking part in fighting -- or has ceased to do so.
"As hostilities continue in Falluja and elsewhere, every day seems to bring news of yet another act of utter contempt for the most basic tenet of humanity: the obligation to protect human life and dignity," Kraehenbuehl said in a statement released late Friday.
CNN 20/11/04
Iran next target
Pentagon hawks have begun discussing military action against Iran to neutralise its nuclear weapons threat, including possible strikes on leadership, political and security targets. With a deadline of tomorrow for Iran to begin an agreed freeze on enriching uranium, which can be used to produce nuclear weapons, sources have disclosed that the latest Pentagon gaming model for 'neutralising' Iran's nuclear threat involves strikes in support of regime change.
Sources close to the Bush administration have warned that Tony Blair will have to choose between the EU's pursuit of the diplomatic track and a more hardline approach from the White House.
Observer, 21/11/04