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Iraq
Politicians Fed Up with "Unnecessary Searches" by US Troops
2007-04-04
Although the original title suggests it is all Iraqis - except, possibly, the "Iraq, The Model" blogger.
Government officials and lawmakers say they are fed up with what they feel are unnecessary searches by American troops and private security contractors in the Green Zone and persuaded President Jalal Talabani to take action, his office said Tuesday. The president, a Kurd, set up a committee to develop new security rules and then meet with U.S. officials to agree on a new relationship between American-led coalition forces and all Iraqis, not just government officials and lawmakers.

The statement gave no other details, but Shiite legislator, Bassem Sharif, who attended the session at which the committee was established, said politicians complained bitterly about being searched every time they went into the parliament or Cabinet building.
We're special, just like the US Congress!
Only Talabani, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Parliament Speaker Mahmoud Mashhadani are not searched under current practice.

An example of some complaints included a recent incident in which the U.S. military closed the Baghdad airport and wouldn't allow Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi's plane to land on a return trip from Turkey. He was forced to fly back to Ankara and spend the night.

Another incident involved the son of Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the head of the largest bloc in parliament, who was taken into U.S. custody for 12 hours in February after crossing from Iran with bodyguards, Sharif said.

After his release, Ammar al-Hakim asked, "Is this the way to deal with a national figure? This does not conform with Iraq's sovereignty."

The new committee includes Abdul-Mahdi and the ministers of the interior, foreign affairs, defense and the national security adviser, the statement said.
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Iraq
Maliki vows to keep Iraq from being a battlefield for others
2006-11-20
Iraq's premier said Monday he will not let country become a proxy battleground for Syria's differences with the United States, as Tehran called for a three-way summit with the Syrian and Iraqi presidents.

Amid the stepped up diplomacy, more than 100 deaths were reported since Sunday morning and gunmen attacked the convoy of a second Iraqi deputy health minister.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's comments to Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem came as the US military claimed that as many as 100 foreign fighters cross into Iraq from Syria every month.

"If Syria or any other state has differences with the United States, it's their own business," Maliki said.

"It should settle these differences, but not at our cost," the premier told a joint news conference with Moallem, the first Syrian official to visit Iraq since the US-led invasion of 2003.

But Moallem insisted that he was not in Iraq to "please the United States."

"I am nobody's godfather and not a mediator for the United States," he told a joint news conference after talks with powerful Iraqi Shiite Islamist leader Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim.

"In this current situation there is no dialogue between Syria and the United States," he said.

Maliki said Iraq aimed to improve its relationship with Syria, but that "this requires a strong desire from both the brother countries."

"What goes on in Iraq is a threat for everybody," he said. "The interest of Syria is to contribute in the stability of Iraq."

Maliki told Moallem that many of the terrorist attacks in Iraq are being planned in neighboring countries and that this must stop.

Moallem denied Syria wanted to see instability grip its eastern neighbor.

"Danger to Iraq is danger for the entire region," he argued.

A government spokesman said that diplomatic relations between Syria and Iraq will be restored this week during Moallem's visit.

There has been increased talk of diplomatic efforts to involve Syria and Iran in helping to end the violence Iraq.

An official in Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's office said he had accepted an invitation from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to visit Tehran this weekend.

An MP for the main Shiite bloc, Bassem Sharif, said that there was a possibility that President Bashar Assad might join the talks.

"There is some expectation that the Syrian president may be present," he said. "There is a real desire to have such a three-way summit and there could be a surprise."

But a Syrian official said "there are no plans for such a [tripartite] summit."

In Washington, US State Department spokesman Tom Casey voiced skepticism that any meeting between Iran, Syria and Iraq could help to reduce the violence and said similar meetings in the past had not resulted in that happening.

"In those contacts, we have seen public statements from the Iranian government, expressing their desire to reduce the violence and to respond positively to the situation in Iraq," Casey told reporters in Washington.

"As I've said, unfortunately, those positive statements - and this applies to the case of Syria as well - have not been backed up by actual, concrete steps," he added.

Concerning Damascus, Casey said, Washington is still waiting for action to stop foreign fighters from entering Iraq from Syria.

In Baghdad, coalition spokesman Major General William Caldwell said Monday that up to 100 foreign fighters cross into Iraq from Syria every month.

"We don't know how much they [the Syrians] are assisting this effort, but we don't know how much they are trying to preclude it either," Caldwell told reporters in Baghdad.

"We still see foreign fighters coming, between 70 and 100 a month coming across the Syrian border into Iraq," he said, figures in line with those of the past year.

He said US and Iraqi soldiers had killed 425 foreign fighters so far this year and captured 670. Twenty percent of them were Syrian, a similar percentage Egyptian, and most of the rest from Sudan and Saudi Arabia.

The past week has seen bitter sectarian tensions come to a head inside Iraq's national unity government.

At a news conference uniting ministers who have been openly at odds over the fate of dozens of civil servants kidnapped last week, Defense Minister Abdel-Qader Jassem said the security forces were hunting the kidnappers: "We are in a state of war and in war all measures are permissible."

Maliki, who is preparing a Cabinet reshuffle, warned political leaders they had to abandon sectarian, partisan interests and pull together.

"We cannot be politicians by day and with the militias or terrorists ... by night," he told generals, whose own loyalties are in question.

Deputy Health Minister Hakim al-Zamily said gunmen attacked his convoy and killed two guards near a Sunni rebel stronghold. Zamily was the second ministry deputy targeted in two days. Ammar al-Saffar, a member of Maliki's Daawa party, was kidnapped from his home by gunmen in uniform.

In all, 21 Iraqis were killed Monday in a series of attacks in Baghdad, Ramadi, Baqouba and near the Syrian border, and the bodies of 26 Iraqis who had been tortured were found on the streets of several cities across the country, police said.

US military data showed less violence in Baghdad in the past four weeks than at any time since the government was formed but it spiked last week, Caldwell said. - Agencies
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Iraq
Iraqi leaders to meet Talabani to finalise cabinet
2006-05-09
BAGHDAD - Leaders of Iraq’s various parliamentary blocs were set to meet President Jalal Talabani on Monday to finalise the country’s first full-term post-Saddam Hussein cabinet, a Shiite MP said.

Bassem Sharif of the dominant Shiite United Iraqi Alliance said all the leaders were meeting at Talabani’s house to decide on the new cabinet. He said the leaders of the Shiite alliance were also meeting separately to choose its candidate to head the crucial interior ministry.

Another political source close to the negotiations said Shiite leaders were considering independent Shiite MP Qassem Daoud to head the ministry or retain the incumbent Bayan Jabr Solagh. Sunni Arab politicians have strongly criticised Solagh and accused his ministry’s Shiite-led forces of operating death squads that indulged in extra-judicial killings of Sunni Arabs.

Following his nomination as prime minister designate, Nuri al-Maliki has said he would form the new cabinet by May 10 and was also considering an independent candidate to head the interior ministry. The source also said that former parliament speaker Hajem al-Hasseni, a Sunni, was being considered to head the defence ministry.
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Iraq
Hunt for Zarqawi escalates, now broader effort than hunt for Osama
2006-05-03
As the search for terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi intensifies, U.S. troops raided a suspected al Qaeda hideout Tuesday, killing 10 insurgents, and CBS News correspondent David Martin reports that investigators have learned that in another raid, forces were within 1,000 yards of al-Zarqawi.

More than 200 members of al-Zarqawi's network have been killed or captured, including many of his top lieutenants, Martin reports. In an effort to build momentum, Lt. Gen. Stan McChrystal, who is leading the effort, is asking for several hundred paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne to be thrown into the hunt.

One insurgent was wounded in the pre-dawn raid at a safehouse as American troops searched for "an al Qaeda terrorist leader" about 25 miles southwest of the U.S. air base in Balad, north of Baghdad, the military said.

Troops surprised a guard and shot him before he could fire his pistol, the statement said. As the insurgent fell, he detonated a suicide vest, the statement added. Two more insurgents were killed inside the hideout and the others outside as they tried to escape, the statement said. Two of the dead were also found wearing explosive vests, the statement said.

The statement did not say whether al-Zarqawi was the target of the raid or whether anyone escaped. It was the fourth raid reported by the U.S. command against al-Zarqawi's network since April 16, when American troops stormed a house in Youssifiyah just south of the capital, killing six people, including a woman, and arresting five people, among them an unidentified al Qaeda official.

However, CNN reported that the captives said al-Zarqawi had been in a nearby house.

Martin reports under the command of McChrystal, the hunt for al-Zarqawi has now eclipsed in size the hunt for Osama bin Laden, which has been hampered by a lack of good intelligence and Pakistan's refusal to allow U.S. troops to operate in their border area. The assault on al-Zarqawi's network is being conducted by a secret unit known as Task Force 145, which is divided into four teams — three American and one British — which conduct raids virtually every night.

In other developments:

• Since the drop in U.S. deaths in March, American casualties have been rising. April was the deadliest month of the year for American forces with more than 70 deaths. A U.S. soldier was killed Tuesday in a roadside bombing south of Baghdad, the U.S. command said.

• In the latest violence, a bomb exploded inside a bus in central Baghdad, killing two people and injuring five, police said. Gunmen killed four students in an ambush in southwestern Baghdad, police said.

• Four Iraqi soldiers were slain the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi two days after they graduated from basic training as part of the first all-Sunni class, according to police.

• The German Foreign Ministry said two German men taken hostage in January had been released and are safe. Thomas Nitzschke and Rene Braeunlich were with Germans officials in Iraq, said a ministry spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with government policy. A militant Iraqi group that identified itself in a video as the Brigade of Supporters of the Sunna and Tawhid kidnapped the pair Jan. 24.

• On Monday, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee proposed that Iraq be divided into three separate regions — Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni — with a central government in Baghdad. In a column in The New York Times, Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., wrote that the idea "is to maintain a united Iraq by decentralizing it, giving each ethno-religious group ... room to run its own affairs, while leaving the central government in charge of common interests." CBS News correspondent Allen Pizzey reports Biden's statement is a reflection of what is happening in Iraqi neighborhoods, where people who feel they are in the minority are coalescing along ethnic lines and turning to ethnic militias rather than the state for protection.

Stepped up operations against al-Zarqawi's network are occurring as U.S. and Iraqi officials are making overtures to other Sunni Arab groups, hoping to convince them to abandon the insurgency and join the political process under a new government of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.

Last weekend, President Jalal Talabani said officials from his office had met with insurgent representatives and he was hopeful they might agree to a deal. Talabani also said American officials had met with insurgents.

U.S. officials have confirmed meeting Iraqis linked to the Sunni Arab insurgency but have avoided identifying them. Last month, however, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad attributed a sharp drop in U.S. deaths in March to an ongoing dialogue with disaffected Sunnis.

On Tuesday, a leading Arabic language newspaper said Khalilzad had met with insurgent representatives in Amman, Jordan, on Jan. 16 and later in Baghdad on seven occasions. The newspaper, Asharq Al-Awsat, attributed the information to an unidentified insurgent official.

The official was quoted as saying the insurgents presented several demands, including halt to military operations, an end to arrests of "innocent Iraqis" and the release of prisoners "who were arrested unjustly."

According to the newspaper, the official said his group presented a memorandum to Khalilzad, who expressed interest and promised to respond. However, no response was received and the insurgents decided to break off the dialogue after the new government was announced April 22.

There was no immediate comment from the U.S. Embassy on the report. In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said "we have made it clear that we are interested in talking to people who know somebody who might be involved in insurgent activities in an effort to bring these people into the political process."

Khalilzad has spoken in several interviews about reaching out to the Sunnis, however U.S. officials have avoided saying publicly that they had met with representatives of insurgent groups.

In an interview with the BBC in April, the ambassador also cautioned that the dialogue was "a long way" from a deal to end the fighting.

U.S. overtures to the Sunnis appear to have slowed in recent weeks as American diplomats and Iraqi politicians focused on speeding up formation of the new government, which had been deadlocked until the Shiites agreed to replace Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari with another Shiite, Nouri al-Maliki.

Al-Maliki was officially appointed as prime minister-designate on April 22 and has pledged to complete his Cabinet this month. That is the final stage in establishing the new government. U.S. officials believe a unity government can over time calm sectarian tensions and lure many Sunnis away from the insurgency.

On Tuesday, Shiite officials reported a new snag emerged in the negotiations when Sunni politicians insisted on key posts, including deputy prime minister and a major ministry such as finance or education.

Shiites, who hold 130 of the 275 seats in parliament, offered a lesser ministry but the Sunnis refused, according to Shiite politician Bassem Sharif. Talks were to continue Wednesday, he said.

Sunni politicians are also anxious for parliament to consider amendments to the new constitution. Sunnis oppose several provisions, including one allowing formation of regional governments. Many Sunnis fear that would lead to Iraq's breakup and deprive them of a fair share of the country's vast oil wealth.

Shiites and Kurds agreed to study changes in the constitution during the first four months of the new parliament. However, Shiite officials said Tuesday they want to delay formation of the committee to study changes until the new Cabinet has been chosen.

The issue is due for discussion during a parliament session Wednesday.
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Iraq
Shiites won't bounce Jaafari
2006-04-12
Shiite leaders from the powerful United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) have failed to decide the fate of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari. Kurds and Sunni Arabs have rejected his candidacy to head the next government, a key sticking point holding up its formation almost four months after elections, forcing the Shiites to meet to decide his fate. But Bassem Sharif, spokesman of the Fadhila Party, says the Shiite alliance leaders broke up the talks aimed at resolving the political impasse until Wednesday (local time). Mr Sharif says the secularists led by former premier Iyad Allawi "had reservations about the programs of the alliance and not about Jaafari himself". Mr Allawi's group had also rejected Mr Jaafari's candidacy.

As the deadlock continues, an adamant Mr Jaafari is refusing to budge, reaffirming his position that only Parliament could now decide his fate. "I have a principle that I will accept what our people decide," he said. "I was elected democratically by the people and I do not see power as a personal gain but a reward to be given to the people."

The dominant UIA, which won 128 out of 275 parliament seats in the December election, chose Mr Jaafari by a single vote in February but his nomination has faced stiff resistance amid accusations he failed to quell violence. The alliance lacks the overall majority in parliament needed to push through a nomination for prime minister on its own.
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