U.S. forces accompanied by the Iraqi national guard launched a major offensive against insurgents in the northern Iraqi city of Samarra Thursday, CNN reported.
CNN's reporter in Iraq, Jane Arraf, in a live broadcast from the city, said she was accompanying U.S. forces engaged in the attack, which she described as "an entire brigade-size operation into Samarra to root out insurgents."
She said she had been told there were an estimated 2,000 fighters in the rebel stronghold, including 250 foreigners.
Arraf said the city had previously had been off limits to U.S. forces under an agreement that they would not patrol there.
But Iraqi cities, including Baghdad, have been rocked by growing violence, including three car bombings Thursday that killed 41 people, most of them children.
The U.S. military has said that with the help of Iraqi forces it will retake rebel strongholds such as Samarra, Falluja, Ramadi and the Baghdad neighborhoods of Sadr City and Haifa Street by the end of the year so that elections can go ahead in January.
In a telephone call punctuated several times by explosions, Arraf said the troops were nearing the middle of the city in an assault spearheaded by the 3rd Brigade of the U.S. Army's 1st Infantry Division.
The force was moving through the city sector by sector to clear out insurgents, she said, reporting on explosions by rocket propelled grenades and bursts of machine gun fire.
A Danish man released from the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba has said he wants to join Muslim Chechens in their fight against Russia.
Slimane Hadj Abderrahmane, 31, said his deal with US authorities not to take part in terrorist activity could be treated as "toilet paper".
He has caused a stir with various comments since his release in February.
On Sunday, he said Danish support for the Iraq war would justify making its leaders the targets of attacks.
Mr Abderrahmane, who has a Danish mother and Algerian father, was held in Guantanamo without charge or trial for more than two years, suspected of training in Afghanistan to fight in Chechnya.
He has claimed he was in a training campaign to join Islamic fighters in Chechnya when he was arrested in Pakistan and transferred to Guantanamo in February 2002.
He was not charged upon his return to Denmark.
In an interview on Danish television, he said he would go in hiding and then "try to find a way to Chechnya".
"I am going to Chechnya and fight for the Muslims," he said.
"The Muslims are oppressed in Chechnya and the Russians are carrying out terror against them."
He told the reporter that a contract signed with US authorities when he was released, agreeing not to take part in terrorist activities or conspire against the US or their allies, was worthless.
"This document is toilet paper for the Americans if they want it," he said, adding that he was "not afraid of being thrown in jail" by Danish authorities.
Denmark backed the US in the strikes against Iraq.
Danish Justice Minister Lene Espersen said Mr Abderrahmane's comments represented "a new situation that the law enforcement authorities must reconsider".
The head of the far-right Danish People's Party, Pia Kjaersgaard, said the government should hand Mr Abderrahmane back to the US.
Chinese Communist Party chief and President Hu Jintao has urged the People's Liberation Army (PLA) to prepare for a military struggle, but stopped short of singling out rival Taiwan as the target.
Many security analysts see the Taiwan Strait as the most dangerous flashpoint in Asia. China claims sovereignty over Taiwan and has threatened to attack if the democratic island of 23 million people declares independence.
Hu, who assumed the role of military chief less than two weeks ago, told the 2.5-million-strong PLA to "seize the moment and do a good job of preparing for a military struggle," the People's Daily and the Liberation Army Daily said on Thursday.
Hu did not say against whom the struggle might be fought.
But on Wednesday, a spokesman for China's policymaking Taiwan Affairs Office accused Taiwan Premier Yu Shyi-kun of clamoring for war with threats to fire missiles at Shanghai if the PLA attacked the self-ruled island.
Taiwan needed a counter-strike capability, Yu said in defense of plans to buy T$610.8 billion (US$18.2 billion) worth of weapons from the United States.
He made the remarks hours before thousands of people took to the streets of Taipei on Saturday to demand the government scrap the weapons package they said would trigger an arms race with China and squeeze social welfare and state spending on education.
Tension between China and Taiwan has been simmering since the re-election in March of the island's President Chen Shui-bian, who Beijing is convinced will push for statehood during his second four-year term.
Beijing and Taipei have been rivals since their split at the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949, but trade, investment and tourism have blossomed since detente in the late 1980s.
Hu also urged the PLA, the world's biggest army, to "comprehensively revolutionize, modernize and standardize," newspapers said. No details were given.
Hu, 61, replaced Jiang Zemin, 78, as chairman of the Central Military Commission on Sept. 19, completing the most orderly leadership succession in the 55 years since the Communist Party took power.
The following day he promoted two senior officers in a move that was likely to help consolidate his position in the PLA.
Insurgents detonated three car bombs near a U.S. military convoy in Baghdad Thursday, killing 41 people, 34 of them children, and wounding scores.
In two other attacks, a suicide bomber blew up his vehicle near a U.S. checkpoint outside the capital, killing two policemen and a U.S. soldier, and a car bomb killed four people in the restive northern Iraq town of Tal Afar.
The Baghdad blasts coincided with crowds gathering to celebrate the opening of a new sewage plant. It was not clear if the event or a U.S. convoy passing nearby was the target.
The first explosion was followed by two more that struck those who rushed to the aid of the initial victims.
Ten U.S. soldiers were wounded in the attack, two of them seriously, the military said. Iraq's Health ministry confirmed 41 dead and 139 wounded, the vast majority children.
Instability is steadily mounting just weeks before the U.S. presidential election in November and four months before Iraq is due to hold its own nationwide polls. Attacks on American troops have risen to around 80 a day from 40 a month ago.
Doctors at Yarmouk hospital struggled to treat the flood of victims, as pools of blood formed on the floor.
One boy lay swathed in bandages on a stretcher, his severed leg on a table beside him. Others were scarred by shrapnel, their clothes blown off by the force of the explosion.
The attack gouged a crater in the road and wrecked a dozen burned-out cars and a bus. U.S. troops sealed off the area with tanks, and helicopters circled overhead.
A group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq says it has captured 10 hostages, including two Indonesian women, Al-Jazeera has reported.
The Arabic-language news channel broadcast video Thursday reportedly showing three of the hostages. The network's anchor said the hostages worked for an electricity company called Jibel.
The hostages include six Iraqis and two Lebanese, Al-Jazeera said. The group did not say anything about its demands.
The edited video showed three men, shown individually seated on the ground, with armed masked men standing in the background.
The group has claimed responsibility for seizing two French journalists last month.
Libya has told the United Nations General Assembly that it deserves a permanent seat on the Security Council.
Foreign Minister Abdurrahman Mohamed Shalghem listed a series of Libya's achievements as reasons for inclusion, including abandoning its WMD programme.
He also highlighted Libya's key role in Africa and the influence of Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi.
Support is growing for attempts to expand the number of permanent members on the Security Council. The council's five veto-wielding permanent members are China, France, Russia, the UK and the US. The 10 other council members are chosen for two-year terms by regional groups.
"There can be no Mediterranean Sea without Libya," Mr Shalghem said.
The Libyan minister also called for a transfer of key powers from the 15-member Security Council to the assembly. "Before we can talk about the lack of democracy in the world, we must first admit that it is lacking in the United Nations," he said.
Mr Shalghem said that if powers were not transferred to the assembly, then the world should either "stop infusing money into this dead body" or enlarge the council's membership to include seats for the African Union, the Association of South-East Asian Nations and Latin America.
The veto power held by the five permanent members would also need to be rethought, he said.
A senior commission of experts is to deliver recommendations to Secretary-General Kofi Annan by the end of the year on United Nations reforms which will be agreed ahead of next September's 60th General Assembly ministerial meeting.
Moves to increase the number of members of the Security Council have been gaining support, with Germany, Brazil, India and Japan seeking permanent seats on the council for themselves and one African nation.
France and Britain, two permanent council members, have backed the move although Italy has expressed its opposition.
Who wants Veto Power?: A race between Africa's three regional pillars - Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt - for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council is gathering pace, though the top body has yet to formally invite Africa to its table.
All three countries have come forward to say they are keen to join Britain, China, France, the United States and Russia as members of a revamped Security Council.
"Africa, whose issues occupy a substantial part of the Security Council's time, ought to be accorded priority consideration for permanent membership and Nigeria, I strongly believe, is a well qualified candidate," Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo told the UN General Assembly last week.
Currently, Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States have veto-wielding power while 10 other nations are elected as non-permanent members in the Security Council for two-year terms each.
Nigeria, the biggest contributor of peacekeeping troops in Africa, is squaring off with South Africa, the continent's economic giant, and Egypt.
Proclaiming that it was ready to "serve the people of Africa and the people of the world", South Africa maintains that there should be two seats for Africa on the Security Council.
"It remains to be seen whether Nigeria and Egypt - if South Africa emerges as the principal contender - will actually still continue to mobilise support for an African seat," says Greg Mills, director of the South African Institute for International Affairs.
Beyond the prestige of membership in the power club, there has been little debate about the benefits that Africa may gain, he says.
The net appeared to be closing around one of Russia's two most wanted men on Wednesday night after Chechnya's Moscow-backed authorities said they thought they had cornered the breakaway region's rebel president, Aslan Maskhadov.
Ramzan Kadyrov, Deputy Prime Minister in the region's Moscow-friendly government, said he "had every reason to believe" that and his associates had been pinned down by his forces in a forest in south-eastern Chechnya.
Officials said they had picked up the call signs of Maskhadov's closest aides in radio traffic emanating from the trapped rebel fighters and disclosed that they had received tip-offs that the rebel leader was in the area.
Kadyrov said he hoped to capture Maskhadov alive after "liquidating" the armed gang surrounding him, which he said was led by the rebel president's most senior bodyguard, Akhmed Avdorkhanov.
The Kremlin blames Maskhadov and Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev for the recent Beslan school massacre, and has posted a $10-million
(about R60-million) bounty for information leading to the two men's "neutralisation".
Maskhadov denies any involvement in the Beslan atrocities, however, and has sought to disassociate himself from Basayev by saying that the latter should be tried for war crimes over the tragedy.
The former Soviet army colonel has consistently argued that the only way to solve the Chechen problem is at the negotiating table. But Russia insists that Maskhadov has blood on his hands and is a terrorist.
Putin has Georgia on his Mind: Russian President Vladimir Putin, under public pressure to retaliate against terrorists in the aftermath of the Beslan school massacre, is weighing options that include a cross-border military strike in neighboring Georgia and a dramatic escalation of Russian troops in Chechnya, military analysts say.
Assertions by Putin's top defense advisers that Russia will pursue terrorists outside the country have increased speculation that the Kremlin is aiming at Georgia's Pankisi Gorge, a reputed hideout for possibly hundreds of Chechen insurgents.
Georgia, a South Carolina-sized nation with strong ties to the United States, lies south of Russia and shares a 50-mile border with Chechnya, a breakaway Russian republic in the turbulent North Caucasus region.
Pavel Felgengauer, a Moscow defense analyst with contacts in the Russian defense ministry, said a strike into the Pankisi is emerging as the most likely response, despite the potential diplomatic ramifications of a raid into a sovereign nation.
Although the option is still under review within the Kremlin and the Defense Ministry, Felgengauer said an incursion into Georgia could come in the next two weeks, possibly involving bombings by SU-25 attack planes or a deployment of Russian paratroopers.
"People here in Moscow believe such an invasion is imminent," he said. Putin, he added, "has to do something visible that the public would see as Russia hitting back."
The Sept. 1-3 siege at a school in Beslan in southern Russia left 331 dead, including 172 children, and renewed scorn for Russia's security forces, who are often criticized for corruption and shoddy training. The deadly standoff, which Russian officials say was orchestrated by Chechen insurgents, was the latest in a series of recent terrorist attacks that have claimed more than 600 lives.
Shortly after the Beslan massacre, Col. Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, chief of the general staff of Russia's armed forces, declared that Russia will "take all measures to liquidate terrorist bases in any region of the world." Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov also defended Russia's right to carry out pre-emptive strikes outside of Russia.
A raid into the Pankisi would ignite furious protests from Georgia.
The Bush administration has sought to maintain robust relations with Georgia and Russia. U.S. officials are hoping the nations, despite more than a decade of strained relations, can work jointly to stamp out terrorist strongholds in the Pankisi.
Russian defense leaders must act soon if they pursue an attack in Georgia, because winter in the Caucasus Mountains could block off passes and bog down troops, analysts said.
"I believe military planners are reluctant," said Felgengauer, "but if they're given direct orders, they'll do what they're told."
George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist who has given $18 million to Democratic advocacy groups to defeat President Bush, is preparing to spend millions more because he fears that Senator John Kerry might lose.
Mr. Soros announced on Tuesday that he was sending himself on a $3 million 12-city tour to argue that keeping Mr. Bush in the White House would endanger the nation's security, economy and values and continue "the vicious circle of escalating violence in Iraq."
By mid-August, Mr. Soros had given more than $15 million to advocacy groups like America Coming Together. At that time, he said in an interview on Monday, he fully expected Mr. Kerry to win the election. But recently, Mr. Soros saw what he called the outrageous and slanderous Swift boat commercials against Mr. Kerry and how they had damaged his standing in the polls.
Since then, the Hungarian-born Mr. Soros said, he has become so worried that Mr. Bush will win the election that he increased his giving, to $18.2 million, and has scrapped a trip in October to Russia to work against the president's re-election.
"America has gone off the rails," he lamented in the interview over a lunch of Dover sole at his home in suburban New York. "I've been accused of messianic fantasies, and I will own up to them. To the extent that I can contribute to improving the world in which we live, I want to do it, and I'm in a better position than a lot of other people."
Even before Mr. Soros spoke Tuesday, the Republican National Committee issued a statement saying, "The only explanation for the Daddy Warbucks of the Democratic Party, George Soros, to step out from behind the curtain 35 days before the election is his obvious concern for his investment in John Kerry."
Mr. Soros, whose $7.2 billion fortune makes him the 24th richest person in the United States, has become the biggest donor to the 527 advocacy groups, a category named for the section of the tax code that covers them. He pledged $10 million to America Coming Together for a registration and get-out-the-vote drive, but gave a total of $14.5 million.
His other contributions to Democratic 527's are $2.5 million to Move On.org Voter Fund; $325,000 to Young Voter Alliance; $325,000 to 21st Century Democrats; $300,000 to the Real Economy Group; and $250,000 to Democracy for America.
Part of the Patriot Act, a central plank of the Bush Administration's war on terror, was ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge on Wednesday.
U.S. District Judge Victor Marreo ruled in favor of the American Civil Liberties Union, which challenged the power the FBI has to demand confidential financial records from companies as part of terrorism investigations.
The ruling was the latest blow to the Bush administration's anti-terrorism policies.
In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that terror suspects being held in places like Guantanamo Bay can use the American judicial system to challenge their confinement. That ruling was a defeat for the president's assertion of sweeping powers to hold "enemy combatants" indefinitely after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The ACLU sued the Department of Justice, arguing that part of the Patriot legislation violated the constitution because it authorizes the FBI to force disclosure of sensitive information without adequate safeguards.
The judge agreed, stating that the provision "effectively bars or substantially deters any judicial challenge."
U.S. and Iraqi forces will retake rebel-held cities in Iraq in October, Defense Minister Hazim al-Shalaan told Reuters on Wednesday.
"You wait and see what we are going to do. We are going to take all these cities in October," Shalaan said.
The western cities of Falluja and Ramadi, as well as some parts of Baghdad and the town of Samarra, north of the capital, are effectively controlled by insurgents.
The U.S. military has previously said it will retake these areas by the end of the year so elections can go ahead as scheduled in January.
U.S. commanders say they are waiting until Iraqi forces are large enough and sufficiently trained for the offensive.
U.S. and Iraqi forces raided suspected insurgent hideouts in the heart of the capital Wednesday, sparking clashes along a main Baghdad thoroughfare. But the release of two Italian women and five other hostages encouraged relatives of foreigners still being held.
Iraqi security forces backed by U.S. troops arrested a suspected terrorist operating on Baghdad's bloodied Haifa Street, cornering him Wednesday in a closet as he tried to conceal his face with his wife's underwear, an Iraqi National Guard commander said.
Kadhim al-Dafan is believed to be a key neighborhood leader, responsible for car bombs and other attacks in the area, said Col. Mohammed Abdullah. Five other suspected insurgents were also taken into custody as U.S. and Iraqi forces clashed with rebels on the street.
During the operation, an Associated Press photographer saw about a dozen people rounded up behind a razor wire barrier with their hands tied. It was not known whether they included the six people Abdullah said had been arrested.
The commander said his troops also uncovered large caches of weapons, ammunition and explosives secreted between graves of the nearby Sheikh Omar cemetery.
Haifa Street, a rebel enclave, has been the scene of repeated bombings, firefights and raids in recent weeks. U.S. officials also believe the area is being used to fire mortars at the Green Zone, a heavily fortified area that is home to the U.S. Embassy and government offices.
A senior Italian politician says he believes that a ransom of $1m or more was paid for the release of two female Italian aid workers kidnapped in Iraq.
Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini has said no money was paid.
But Gustavo Selva, head of the Italian parliament's foreign affairs committee, said the denial was purely "official".
The BBC's Guto Harri in Rome says Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has fuelled the rumours by talking of "a difficult choice which had to be made".
"The young women's life was the most important thing," Mr Selva, a member of the Northern League, one of the parties in Italy's governing coalition, told French RTL radio.
The government has denied this but, I dare to say, this is an official denial which is part of a government's obligations so as not to give the impression that it has given in to blackmail
"In principle, one should not give in to blackmail, but this time I think we had to give in - even though this opens a dangerous path because it is obvious that both for political or criminal reasons, this path can make others want to take others hostage to make some money."
The allegations, first made in a Kuwaiti newspaper, have been widely reported in the Italian media.
Security experts have told the BBC that money is likely to have played some part in the negotiations, but they also point to intensive behind-the-scenes negotiations on the part of the Italians.
Many years have passed since this country has had a man of convictions lead her. Women voters across America have come to understand what makes us strong, safe and secure as a people is a leader who will dare to stand strong in what they believe. There is great admiration by women for men who will not sway or tergiversate. Indecisiveness is not an admirable quality in anyone. Women don't mind if someone honestly changes their minds (after all women are known for changing theirs) but to pull the old switcheroo every couple of days because the winds are blowing, this is not what women want to help them feel safe and secure.
We as the female gender are voting for the re-election of President Bush not because we agree with everything he stands for straight down the party line, but men like our president give us a sense of stability and security. When our president takes a stand on an issue that has far reaching consequences on the safety and well being of our homes against terrorist, we find trust in his convictions. Trust and character count, you could say they've come back into fashion. American women are recognizing strong dedicated leadership for what it is. President Bush will not go to France or the U.N. for permission to defend our homeland. President Bush will not pander to the politics of far-left sabotage. President Bush will not cower to the tantrums of naysayers. President Bush will not retreat, run, and hide from those who wish to kill us in cold blood. He has drawn his line in the sand and we as moms, wives, lawyers, girlfriends, doctors, and journalist can rest assured that this breed of what a man is what women want. "Girly men" or "Metrosexual" men are not what women need or want. Being able to speak French, having ties to the Kennedy family and being married to money may play well on the movie screen, but being a namby-pamby wave drifter will not save our souls. Yes, we want men to treat us as their equal, under our differences of operation, but more importantly what we want is our men to be men. Kind, dependable, strong, resolute, loving, self assured, masculine men is what protects our homes, our children, our cities, our states, our nation and our world from the evils of those like the terrorist who seek to destroy our very lives.
A real man is what women want, and what women need- President George W. Bush is a man of convictions and unwavering in his protection of the land he loves. We women hold the voting power. We hold the ability to decide which man is the clear-thinking steadfast man who will take a stand against those who seek to kill our families, our friends and our loved ones. What women need, is a man like W. ~ Kerry Marsala
Security Moms Feel Safer With Bush: Democratic Party nominee for president John F. Kerry has staked his bid for the White House on two wars: Vietnam and Iraq.
His emphasis may be misdirected.
For much of the campaign, Kerry has played his service in Vietnam as a shield against charges that he, unlike the other Democrats who sought the presidency in the years since 1972, was not soft on U.S. national security.
It was an interesting campaign strategy -- at least until the activities of the anti-Kerry 527 organization Swift Boat Veterans for Truth made his war record a liability almost equal to its value as an asset.
Now, after a flirtation with domestic issues like healthcare and education, Kerry is talking about Iraq almost around the clock while his campaign cedes states once thought to be competitive -- like Missouri and Arizona -- to the Republicans.
Polling data suggest the key voter bloc in the 2004 election, the successor to soccer and waitress moms and NASCAR dads, may be security-minded women for whom the war in Iraq is much less of a concern than the war on terror.
The idea of security moms holding the key to the White House in 2004 was evident at least as far back as February, when former Clinton administration and political strategist Morris Reid predicted the "Homeland Security Moms," which he defined as "30- to 55-year-old mothers living in and around major cities," could be the deciding factor in the election's outcome.
"A recent poll by the Pew Research Center revealed that 76 percent of women with young children are more concerned with national security than they were prior to 9/11," he said at the time while arguing the issue should work in the Democrats' favor.
Yet with the election weeks away, the terror war remains George W. Bush's strongest issue.
The issue is still very much alive, pollster Kellyanne Conway says, but may be driving many of the women who heretofore were reliable votes for the Democrats at the presidential level into the Bush camp.
The founder and chief executive officer of the Polling Company, Conway is also the publisher of WomanTrends, a Washington-based quarterly newsletter analyzing information on how women create trends or are affected by them.
She says the trend toward greater concern about security -- personal and well as national -- has become very evident since the Sept. 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington, a view shared by other pollsters as well.
The Pew Research Center's Andy Kohut has previously noted that most polls "showed women feeling much more personally vulnerable, much more personally threatened" after Sept. 11.
"Security moms look at the world through the prism of their children. In 2000 that meant they were focused on issues like healthcare, education and to some degree the environment," Kohut said.
For women, the terror war cuts across party lines and ideologies. Californian Debbie Carlson told Time magazine earlier this year that since Sept. 11, "All I want in a president is a person who is strong" -- despite the fact that she usually backs candidates who favor abortion rights and support expansive welfare programs.
The anecdotes and the data both suggest the same thing: If voters in November base their choice on the war in Iraq, as Kerry hopes they will, it will work to his benefit. If, however, they base their vote on their desire to keep the homeland secure, the benefit appears ready to adhere to Bush.
Thirty percent of former U.S. soldiers who have been called back to duty involuntarily to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan have failed to report on time, and eight have been declared AWOL, the Army said on Tuesday.
The Army's problem with mobilizing soldiers from the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR), a seldom-tapped personnel pool, is another sign of the difficulty the Pentagon is encountering in maintaining troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan.
So far, the Army has mobilized 3,664 people from the IRR to active duty, but 1,085 have not reported on time to the Army post to which they were assigned, said Julia Collins, a spokeswoman for the Army Human Resources Command.
The Individual Ready Reserve is made up of 111,000 people who have completed their voluntary Army service commitments and have returned to civilian life but remain eligible to be mobilized in a national emergency. Many have been out of the active-duty military for years.
Eight of those recently ordered back to active duty have been listed as absent without leave, or AWOL, and could face military criminal charges as deserters, Collins said. All eight have been notified they are being classified as AWOL and still refused to report for duty, Collins added.
In addition, their names will be entered into a national criminal investigation database, and they could be arrested if, for example, they are stopped by a police officer for a routine traffic violation, Collins said.
Six others had been listed as AWOL but have agreed to report after being contacted by the Army, Collins said.
President Bush said on Monday his Democratic rival John Kerryhad shifted his positions on Iraq so many times he could "debate himself" at the prime-time face-off between the two candidates in three days.
The president's ridicule of the Massachusetts senator came as Kerry has been hammering him daily on Iraq, accusing him of mishandling the chaotic aftermath of the 2003 invasion and giving overly optimistic assessments of conditions there.
The first presidential debate on Thursday in Coral Gables, Fla. will focus on foreign affairs and may be pivotal to the outcome of the Nov. 2 election.
At an Ohio campaign event, Bush referred to his practice sessions for the debate, which he has been holding at his Texas ranch over the weekend.
"It's been a little tough to prepare because (Kerry) keeps changing positions on the war on the terror," he joked.
Then he ran through a litany of issues concerning Iraq in which he described his opponent of having flip-flopped.
"He voted for the use of force in Iraq and then didn't vote to fund the troops," Bush said. "He complained that we're not spending enough money to help in reconstruction in Iraq and now he's saying we're spending too much. He said it was the right decision to go into Iraq and now he calls it the wrong war."
"He could probably spend 90 minutes debating himself," Bush added to hoots of laughter from his supporters.
Zarqa is a dusty, dirty city. The houses sprawl over a series of brown, sun-blasted hillsides. It has a reputation for being the home to the car trade, and for crime.
It is also home to Iraq's most wanted man - Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
The name means, "the man from Zarqa".
Zarqawi himself has been on the run for years. But his wife and four children still live in a two-storey house on the edge of town. His brother-in-law Saleh al-Hami also lives across the road.
He was eager to put the record straight about his notorious relative.
Zarqawi is a good man, he insisted, a good Muslim, who has gone to Iraq out of principle to fight the American-led occupation.
He is a leader, he is strong, straight to the point, with a very strong personality
When he was in his teens, it seemed that Zarqawi was destined for a life of petty crime. He was known as a bit of a thug, a lowlife.
But while few claim Zarqawi is a great intellectual, it appears he does have the ability to lead: the ability to persuade, or to bully, others to follow him.
"He is a leader, he is strong, straight to the point, with a very strong personality," says Leith Shubeilat, an Islamic activist imprisoned with Zarqawi in the 1990s. What sounds like an obsessive personality gradually turned Zarqawi from crime to the more dangerous pursuit of radical Islam, with its fiery mix of religion and politics. He travelled to Pakistan and Afghanistan, although his relationship with Osama Bin Laden is disputed.
Most people in Zarqa are against the kidnappings. In 1993, Zarqawi was arrested in Jordan, after the authorities discovered rifles and bombs stashed in his house. In the next years in prison, he turned to learning the Koran by heart. Then in 1999, he was released by the Jordanians as part of a general amnesty.
The war in Iraq was just the opportunity he was looking for to harness his fanatical beliefs.
He is now believed personally to have carried out several of the recent, brutal, videotaped executions.
Though Zarqawi has become a mystery figure, unseen except in those gruesome beheading videos.
Zarqawi's brother-in-law, Saleh al-Hami, had no apologies for the recent violence or kidnappings, such as the holding of the British man Ken Bigley.
"Why are the British worried about this one man, and not about the thousands of Iraqis who have been killed or injured?" asked Mr al-Hami.
Iraqis have been killed too, says Zarqawi's brother-in-law
Most ordinary Jordanians I spoke to in Zarqa insisted they did not support the current wave of kidnappings.
Zarqawi cannot claim many followers in Jordan, though government buildings here are heavily fortified against any possible attacks from him or other Muslim militants.
But people here do understand what drives him, and most ordinary people I spoke to shared his hatred for America's occupation of Iraq and support for Israel.
Authorities in Kyrgyzstan say they have arrested two men who were trying to sell a large quantity of plutonium on the black market.
The men were detained last week near the capital, Bishkek, but the news was not immediately released.
There has been growing concern that radioactive materials from former Soviet military or research sites could fall into the hands of extremists.
Plutonium is very toxic and can be used in atomic weapons or as reactor fuel.
The highly radioactive material could be used to make a dirty bomb - a non-nuclear explosive which scatters radioactive material packed inside it.
The national security service in the remote mountainous republic says it arrested two Kyrgyz citizens and confiscated 60 small containers containing plutonium-239.
There is no information on exactly what quantity of plutonium was in the containers.
Kyrgyz security agents tracked the men who were attempting to sell the plutonium and arrested them while posing as buyers.
The origin of the material is unknown.
Security officials say it is not used in Kyrgyzstan, so they think it may have come from one of the neighbouring republics or from Russia.
Earlier this year, another man was arrested in Kyrgyzstan attempting to sell a quantity of caesium-137, another highly radioactive substance.
This came from a Soviet-era military establishment in the south of the country.
There has been growing international concern about the quantities of unguarded or poorly guarded radioactive material left behind in Central Asia by the Soviet military establishment.
Uranium was extensively mined in Kyrgyzstan in Soviet days and there are many sites where radioactive tailings are still stored.
On a number of occasions scrap metal from Kyrgyzstan sold to Chinese companies has been turned back at the border because of its high radioactivity.
Palestinian gunmen on Tuesday released an Israeli Arab producer for CNN television kidnapped a day earlier in the Gaza Strip.
Police officials told Reuters that Riad Ali was turned over to them in Gaza City. CNN confirmed Ali's release.
Israel Radio quoted Ali's father as saying he had spoken by telephone to his son who told him that he felt fine and was waiting to return home.
There was no claim of responsibility for Ali's abduction and no word on a possible motive. Israel Radio said he was snatched by members of Islamist militant movement Hamas, which denied any role in the incident.
A top al Qaeda lieutenant has met with leaders of a violent Salvadoran criminal gang with roots in Mexico and the United States — including a stronghold in the Washington area — in an effort by the terrorist network to seek help infiltrating the U.S.-Mexico border, law enforcement authorities said.
Adnan G. El Shukrijumah, a key al Qaeda cell leader for whom the U.S. government has offered a $5 million reward, was spotted in July in Honduras meeting with leaders of El Salvador's notorious Mara Salvatrucha gang, which immigration officials said has smuggled hundreds of Central and South Americans — mostly gang members — into the United States.
El Shukrijumah, born in Saudi Arabia but thought to be a Yemen national, was spotted in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, in July, having crossed the border illegally from Nicaragua after a stay in Panama. U.S. authorities said al Qaeda operatives have been in Tegucigalpa planning attacks against British, Spanish and U.S. embassies.
Known to carry passports from Saudi Arabia, Trinidad, Guyana and Canada, El Shukrijumah had sought meetings with the Mara Salvatrucha gang leaders who control alien-smuggling routes through Mexico and into the United States.
El Shukrijumah, 29, who authorities said was in Canada last year looking for nuclear material for a so-called "dirty bomb" and reportedly has family members in Guyana, was named in a March 2003 material-witness arrest warrant by federal prosecutors in Northern Virginia, where U.S. Attorney Paul J. McNulty said he is sought in connection with potential terrorist threats against the United States.
A former southern Florida resident and pilot thought to have helped plan the September 11 attacks, El Shukrijumah was among seven suspected al Qaeda operatives identified in May by Attorney General John Ashcroft as being involved in plans to strike new targets in the United States.
Authorities said Mara Salvatrucha gang members moved into the Los Angeles area in the 1980s and developed a reputation for being organized and extremely violent. The gang since has expanded into the Washington area, including Virginia and Maryland, and into Oregon, Alaska, Texas, Nevada, Utah, Oklahoma, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Georgia and Florida.
More than 3,000 Mara Salvatrucha gang members are thought to be in the Washington area, with a major operation in Northern Virginia. Other gang centers, authorities said, include Montgomery and Prince George's counties and the Hispanic neighborhoods of Washington.
"Our deterrent is, in all its intents and purposes, the self-defensive means to cope with the ever increasing U.S. nuclear threats and further, prevent a nuclear war in northeast Asia," he told a news conference after his speech.
Jordan's King Abdullah has said it will be impossible to hold fair elections in Iraq in the current state of chaos.
He told the French newspaper Le Figaro that only extremists would gain if the elections went ahead in January without the security situation improving.
Correspondents say these were remarkably frank comments from a man Washington regards as one of its key allies in the Middle East.
US and interim Iraqi leaders both insist that elections will go ahead.
However, last week US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told senators it might not be possible to conduct voting in some places targeted by militants.
King Abdullah was speaking before talks in Paris on Tuesday with French President Jacques Chirac.
He said he was worried that partial elections excluding troubled areas such as Fallujah could isolate Sunni Arab Iraqis and create deeper divisions within the country.
"It seems impossible to me to organise indisputable elections in the chaos we see today," the king said.
"Only if the situation improved could an election be organised on schedule."
King Abdullah also urged the Iraqi authorities to re-recruit middle-ranking officers of the old Iraqi army under Saddam Hussein and provide longer training for new troops.
"The faster we reconstitute the old army, the better the new one will be," he said.
King Abdullah is in Paris for an exchange of views on the situation in Iraq, which the French government regards as extremely worrying.
On Monday, Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said that France was willing to support a US proposal for an international conference on Iraq, but only if the issue of a US withdrawal was on the agenda and if representatives of the armed opposition were allowed to take part.
Top Bin Laden deputy Ayman al-Zawahri has been caught in Pakistan, according to a report from the region quoted on Israel Radio Monday.
Pakistani forces operating against al Qaida strongholds in the country report capturing the Egyptian national, who was formerly the head of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which operated in the past against the Egyptian regime.
Earlier Monday, the US commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan Lieutenant-General David Barno told Reuters that there is little evidence of al Qaida fighters still in Afghanistan, and that Pakistan's crackdown on al Qaida-linked operatives has made life harder for fugitives hiding in tribal areas near the Afghan - Pakistani border.
Congressional investigators examining "a semitrailer truck load" of subpoenaed documents are trying to determine whether lax monitoring at a French bank that held more than $60 billion for the U.N. oil-for-food program facilitated illicit business deals by the former Iraqi government, officials told The Associated Press.
Although BNP Paribas isn't the target of the probe involving companies and individuals in 50 countries, the documents could provide a road map to alleged corruption at the United Nations and by politicians from France, Russia, Britain, Indonesia and Persian Gulf states who have been implicated.
The three congressional panels that subpoenaed BNP Paribas documents are looking into whether the bank met minimum standards that require financial institutions to identify customers, partly to prevent money laundering. The committees are among at least five in Congress investigating allegations of U.N. corruption and reports that Iraqis skimmed billions of dollars in kickbacks through deals administered by the United Nations.
Investigators also are pressing for information from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which is responsible for regulating foreign banks operating in the United States.
"From our perspective this is a scandal of overwhelming proportions. There are so many pieces. We want to follow the money wherever it leads," said Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., chairman of the Senate Government Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
The United Nations' largest humanitarian aid program from 1996 to 2003, when it ended, oil-for-food was designed to allow the former Iraqi government to sell limited amounts of oil in exchange for humanitarian goods as an exemption from sanctions in place since 1991.
The panel hopes to hear testimony from BNP and two European contractors facing allegations in the scandal, Swiss-based Cotecna Inspection SA, and Saybolt International BV of the Netherlands. Hyde's committee also plans fresh hearings in the near future, a spokesman said.
Cotecna, a company which once employed U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's son Kojo, in 1998 began monitoring goods entering Iraq to make sure they matched a U.N.-approved list. Saybolt was brought in to monitor oil exports. Congressional investigators told AP they have subpoenaed internal documents from the two companies, which are cooperating.
The large number of documents delivered by the French bank in addition to other subpoenaed records amount to "a semitrailer truck load," a congressional investigator said.
An internal U.N. probe being led by former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker has maintained exclusive access to many U.N. documents, however.
Last week, a congressional delegation returning from a trip to Baghdad called for more U.N. cooperation. The delegation said they had viewed large numbers of documents which the interim Iraqi government has secured and is storing for its own investigation.
"There is substantial evidence" of corruption, said Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, who is leading one of the investigations at the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
An April report by the General Accounting Office, now called the Government Accountability Office (search), estimated that the Iraqi government skimmed $4.4 billion dollars through the kickbacks and an additional $5.7 billion through oil smuggling.
The oil-for-food program began in 1996 amid concerns that U.N. sanctions put in place in 1991 after the first Gulf War had led to widespread malnutrition among Iraq's 27 million people. The program is credited with nearly doubling the Iraqi population's annual food intake.
The world body, in consultation with the Iraqi government, named BNP to hold the sole escrow account. During the program, over $60 billion passed through the account.
The program ended after the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the ousting of President Saddam Hussein. In January, the Iraqi daily Al-Mada newspaper published a secret list — purportedly from the former Iraqi government — of 270 companies and individuals from over 50 countries who received vouchers for oil by the former Iraqi government.
The report led to allegations the former Iraqi government had used the vouchers as bribes. The list included prominent politicians from France, Russia, Britain, Indonesia and Gulf states as well as the executive director of the oil-for-food program, Benon Sevan, who has denied receiving vouchers.
Critics have also alleged that the Iraqi government, which had the authority under the program to approve deals to sell oil and to import humanitarian goods with the proceeds, manipulated prices to afford kickbacks from those awarded contracts. U.N. officials have admitted, for instance, that there is evidence the Iraqi government underpriced its oil on the understanding that its customers would kick back the premium.
A call from a US-based Iranian TV personality has prompted thousands of Iranians to protest for more freedoms.
People took to the streets of the capital, Tehran, and other cities on Sunday after Ahura Pirouz Khaleghi Yazdi urged protests across Iran.
The exile has predicted Iran's Islamic government will fall on 1 October.
Nobody had heard of Mr Yazdi until a few months ago when he set up a satellite channel in California to try to overthrow the Iranian government.
Since then he has become a hot topic of conversation both among disaffected Iranians and exiled opposition groups.
For several weeks he has been declaring that he intends to return to Iran on 1 October to end the rule of Islamic clerics.
He has called on the Iranian diaspora to accompany him in his so-called liberation flight and has urged his supporters inside the country to stage protests.
He is advocating peaceful means and civil disobedience.
Mr Yazdi, who seems to be about 50, apparently left Iran when he was a child - and his command of the Persian language is poor.
The pro-government press in Tehran has described him as insane.
His simplistic views about overthrowing the Islamic government singlehandedly have also angered serious exile opposition leaders who have labelled him a demagogue.
But analysts say the fact that thousands of people heeded his call and took to the streets on Sunday evening proves that Iranians are desperate for change.
The Yazdi phenomenon also shows how US-based opposition satellite TV stations are becoming an important means of putting pressure on the Iranian government.
An armed group has kidnapped an Arab-Israeli employee of CNN news network in the Gaza Strip, Al Jazeera television reported on Monday.
"Our correspondent in Gaza said an armed group has kidnapped an Arab ... who works as an assistant producer for the CNN team in Gaza," the channel said without giving further details.
CNN, owned by Time Warner Inc., could not be immediately reached for comment.
Bloodshed has worsened in the Gaza Strip ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw Israeli settlers and soldiers by the end of 2005
Russia took its case for expanding the global war against terrorism to the United Nations, proposing that the UN Security Council establish a new list of terror suspects who would be subject to extradition.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who have denounced Western countries for granting asylum to Chechen leaders Russia has linked to violence, called on the international community to reject double-standards in defining terrorists.
"Those who slaughtered children in Beslan and hijacked airplanes to attack America are creatures of the same breed," he said in a forceful speech to the UN General Assembly on Thursday.
"Harboring terrorists, their henchmen and sponsors undermines the unity and mutual trust of parties to the anti-terrorist front, serves as a justification for their actions and actually encourages them to commit similar crimes in other countries," he said.
Russia on Friday circulated a draft UN Security Council resolution that stresses the need for the 15 member nations to "cooperate fully" in tracking down the perpetrators and organizers of terrorist attacks.
The proposed text asks the committee monitoring what governments are doing to fight terrorism to consider how to create a new list of "individuals, groups and entities involved in or associated with terrorist activities."
The United States was reviewing it, said Secretary of State Colin Powell, who met with Lavrov for about 30 minutes on Thursday.
"I told him we had an open mind and wanted to look at it," Powell told The New York Times on Friday. "But they have a concern over an individual who is being asylumed here, and that's troubling.
"They want to create circumstances which would allow him to be expelled."
His reference was apparently to Ilyas Akhmadov, whom Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov named as his foreign minister while he was Chechnya's president in 1999 and who received U.S. asylum in August.
Lavrov said the world was facing a turning point and needs to recognize the "true nature of international terrorism."
"Through their actions throughout the world, the terrorists have once and for all placed themselves in opposition to civilized mankind," he said.
The militant Palestinian group Hamas said Monday an Arab country might have helped Israel assassinate one of its leaders in Damascus, an act it called "treason."
A car bomb killed Izz el-Deen al-Sheikh Khalil, 42, and wounded three others Sunday in the Az-Zahera district of Syria's capital. Israeli television quoted unidentified security sources as saying Israel was responsible.
The killing, if carried out by Israel, would be its second foray into Syria in the last year.
It was the latest blow to the leadership of an Islamist group responsible for many suicide bombings against Israel and committed to the destruction of the Jewish state.
"We were not convinced initially, this would be treason for an Arab security apparatus to be involved in this," Hamas Lebanon head Osama Hamdan said of a report in the Al-Hayat daily.
The Arabic daily said an Arab country had given the Israeli spy agency Mossad information about the movements and habits of Hamas leaders abroad.
"Now, because of what happened yesterday or through other information, there are indications that this may be case," he said.
Syria accused Israel of "terrorism" after the car bomb and Hamas vowed to retaliate.
Palestinian sources in Gaza said Khalil, who Israel deported to Lebanon in 1992, was believed to be in charge of the group's military wing outside the Palestinian territories. Hamas sources in Beirut said he was a mid-level official.
A spokesman in Gaza for Hamas said the killing was "a cowardly crime by the Zionist Mossad."
A Taliban commander killed in southern Afghanistan last week had rejoined the hardline militia after his release from Guantanamo Bay earlier this year, according to an Afghan provincial governor.
Mullah Ghafar was freed from the US prison in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba in February but soon rejoined the Taliban and led its deadly guerrilla operations in southern Afghanistan, Uruzgan governor Jan Mohammad Khan said.
"He rejoined the ousted Taliban after being released from prison. He was appointed as Taliban regional financial and operational commander for southern Afghanistan," Khan told AFP by satellite telephone.
Ghafar was shot dead with two accomplices by Afghan security forces in Uruzgan last week, officials have said.
"Ghafar was a major threat to security especially ahead of elections. His death means a lot for the security of our province," Khan said.
Since his release he had launched several attacks against Afghan and coalition forces in Uruzgan and surrounding provinces, killing an engineer working for the United Nations and at least three Afghan soldiers in separate ambushes, the governor alleged.
"He killed three Afghan soldiers in an ambush in Girishk district a couple of months ago," the governor said.
Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi denied that Ghafar was a regional Taliban commander.
"Ghafar was a good Taliban fighter but was not provincial Taliban commander, our commander for Uruzgan province is sound and alive," Hakimi told AFP, speaking by satellite phone from an undisclosed location.
"If he was a top commander why he was released from US prison in Guantanamo?"
Former US president and veteran elections monitor Jimmy Carter has said he foresees a repetition of some of the problems that plagued the 2000 US presidential elections.
Basic requirements for a fair vote are missing in Florida, he said in Monday's Washington Post.
Reforms passed in the wake of the debacle have not been implemented due to lack of funding and political disputes, Carter added.
"The disturbing fact is that a repetition of the problems of 2000 now seems likely," he said.
"Some basic international requirements for a fair election are missing in Florida," including non-partisan electoral officials and uniformity in voting procedures, he said
Florida's top election official four years ago also chaired the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign in the state, and her successor is showing "the same strong bias," Carter charged.
"A fumbling attempt has been made recently to disqualify 22,000 African Americans [likely Democrats], but only 61 Hispanics [likely Republicans], as alleged felons," he said.
Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood has also appeared eager to get independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader on this year's state ballot, "knowing that two-thirds of his votes in the previous election came at the expense" of Democrat Al Gore, Carter went on.
"She ordered Nader's name be included on absentee ballots even before the state Supreme Court ruled on the controversial issue," Carter said.
Florida governor Jeb Bush, President George Bush's brother, has "taken no steps to correct these departures from principles of fair and equal treatment or to prevent them in the future," he said.
"It is unconscionable to perpetuate fraudulent or biased electoral practices in any nation," Carter wrote.
"With reforms unlikely at this late stage of the election, perhaps the only recourse will be to focus maximum public scrutiny on the suspicious process in Florida."
KARACHI, Pakistan — Police stepped up patrols around foreign consulates and government offices in this volatile city on Monday, fearing a backlash after Pakistani forces killed a suspected top Al Qaeda operative wanted for his alleged role in the 2002 kidnapping and beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
Amjad Hussain Farooqi, also accused in two attempts on the life of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf in December 2003, died in a four-hour shootout Sunday at a house in the southern town of Nawabshah. Two or three other men, one of them an Islamic cleric, were arrested. Like Farooqi, they are all Pakistanis.
Authorities hailed the operation as a breakthrough and on Monday the investigation expanded to include the arrest of three other suspected Islamic militants, all brothers, in Sukkur, a town not far from Nawabshah. One was identified as Khalid Ansari, alleged to have ties to the Sunni Muslim group Jaish-e-Mohammed.
Police said the men were blindfolded and led away by intelligence officials as security forces using loudspeakers warned residents to stay indoors.
Fayyaz Leghari, deputy chief of police in Karachi, a hotbed for Islamic militants, said the city was on "red alert." As well as stepping up patrols around foreign consulates and key government offices, police posted more plainclothes officers at sensitive locations.
Pakistan is a key U.S. ally in the war against terrorism and has arrested more than 600 Al Qaeda suspects, including several senior figures in the terror network. Many have been handed over to U.S. authorities.
In Washington, a U.S. official who described Farooqi as a key Al Qaeda figure said the government could not yet confirm he had been killed but that appeared to be the case. Pakistani officials said they were awaiting the results of DNA tests but had little doubt the body was that of Farooqi.
Yes, my wife has been keeping the Redneck Recliner© warm playing Sims 2, and making a serious dent in my blogging time. It scares me how much she likes this game, and running around killing men in First Person Shooters. Note to Self: Start coming home early ever once in awhile.
A Paris policeman has been injured in an incident involving a son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and a high-speed car chase, French police sources say.
They say officers pursued Hannibal ? Gaddafi's Porsche after it had run several traffic lights on the Champs Elysees avenue early on Saturday.
A scuffle reportedly broke out between bodyguards and police after the car was stopped.
Two of the bodyguards were taken into custody, the sources add.
Mr Gaddafi, 28, was also detained, but immediately released because he has diplomatic immunity.
The policeman who sustained blows in the incident was reportedly given four days off work to recover.
The detained bodyguards, who had been travelling in cars behind Mr Gaddafi, were released later on Saturday, after a Libyan diplomatic delegation came to apologise, the sources say.
LONDON, England (Reuters) -- British police said on Saturday they had arrested four men under anti-terrorism legislation after a tip-off from a newspaper which said the suspects tried to buy explosives for a dirty bomb.
Three of the men were arrested in a raid on a hotel in Brent Cross, north London, on Friday and the fourth was seized later the same day at his home, also in north London.
"All four were arrested under section 41 of the Terrorism Act, on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism," London's Metropolitan police said in a statement.
They said they had been acting on information provided by the News of the World newspaper, which said one of its reporters had infiltrated a gang trying to buy radioactive material for a Saudi Arabian who it said might be linked to al Qaeda.
The tabloid newspaper said the Saudi was prepared to pay £300,000 ($540,600) for a kilogramme of "red mercury," a mysterious radioactive substance which is rumored to have been developed by Russian scientists during the Cold War.
The paper said one of its reporters made contact with an Indian-born banker and a Somali -- the head of the gang -- who wanted to buy bomb-making material for a client in the Middle East who they said supported "the Muslim cause."
An Arab state provided Israel with valuable intelligence on the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas and its leadership overseas, the London-based Arabic daily al-Hayat reported Friday.
According to the newspaper, an intelligence agency belonging to an Arab state supplied Israel with intelligence on Hamas leaders living in Beirut, Damascus, Tehran and Khartoum at the request of Mossad head Meir Dagan.
Dagan approached the unnamed Arab state with a request for information on Hamas leaders, namely Khaled Mashal, head of the organization's political bureau, following the double suicide bombing in Beersheba last month in which 16 Israelis were killed.
Hamas claimed responsibility for the Beersheba attack. Israel has threatened to assassinate Hamas leaders residing in Damascus, which prompted Mashal and a number of senior Hamas leaders to flee the Syrian capital, reportedly to Tehran, the paper reported.
The "full document" presented to the Mossad included information about Mashal and his deputy, Moussa Abou Marzouk. The information included details of their movements, places of residence, habits, behavioral features, personality traits and the type of food they like, Al-Hayat reported.
A bomb killed a Hamas official in Damascus on Sunday when it tore through his car. The Palestinian militant group blamed Israel for the death and vowed revenge.
Izz el-Deen al-Sheikh Khalil, 42, died when he started the engine and an explosive charge under the driver's seat ripped through his SUV in the Az-Zahera neighborhood of Syria's capital, witnesses said.
Palestinian sources in Gaza said Khalil was believed to be in charge of Hamas's military wing outside the Palestinian territories. Three passers-by were wounded.
Israeli officials declined comment on any possible Israeli involvement in Sunday's attack. "I don't know anything about it," acting Public Security Minister Gideon Ezra said. But he added: "I am glad."
Were Israel to have carried out the attack, it would be a rare foray into Syria -- only the second in around 30 years.
A neighbor who identified himself only as Nabil said: "He (Khalil) said good morning to us like he does every day and then walked to his car.
"He got into the car and then the phone rang. When he took the call we heard the explosion. We rushed toward his car and found him in pieces in the back seat."
The blast shattered windows in high-rise buildings and damaged a nearby car.
A spokesman in Gaza for Hamas -- a fundamentalist Islamic group bent on Israel's destruction which has carried out dozens of suicide bombings in Israel -- said the killing was "a cowardly crime by the Zionist Mossad," a reference to Israel's Mossad spy agency.
Syria's President Bashir al-Asad is in secret negotiations with Iran to secure a safe haven for a group of Iraqi nuclear scientists who were sent to Damascus before last year's war to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
Western intelligence officials believe that President Asad is desperate to get the Iraqi scientists out of his country before their presence prompts America to target Syria as part of the war on terrorism.
The issue of moving the Iraqi scientists to Iran was raised when President Asad made a visit to Teheran in July. Intelligence officials understand that the Iranians have still to respond to the Syrian leader's request.
A group of about 12 middle-ranking Iraqi nuclear technicians and their families were transported to Syria before the collapse of Saddam's regime. The transfer was arranged under a combined operation by Saddam's now defunct Special Security Organisation and Syrian Military Security, which is headed by Arif Shawqat, the Syrian president's brother-in-law.
The Iraqis, who brought with them CDs crammed with research data on Saddam's nuclear programme, were given new identities, including Syrian citizenship papers and falsified birth, education and health certificates. Since then they have been hidden away at a secret Syrian military installation where they have been conducting research on behalf of their hosts.
Growing political concern in Washington about Syria's undeclared weapons of mass destruction programmes, however, has prompted President Asad to reconsider harbouring the Iraqis.
American intelligence officials are concerned that Syria is secretly working on a number of WMD programmes.
They have also uncovered evidence that Damascus has acquired a number of gas centrifuges - probably from North Korea - that can be used to enrich uranium for a nuclear bomb.
Relations between Washington and Damascus have been strained since last year's war in Iraq, with American commanders accusing the Syrians of allowing foreign fighters to cross the border into Iraq, where they carry out terrorist attacks against coalition forces.
"The Syrians are playing a very dangerous game," a senior Western intelligence official told The Sunday Telegraph.
"The Americans already have them in their sights because they are doing next to nothing to stop foreign fighters entering Iraq. If Washington finds concrete evidence that Syria is engaged in an illegal WMD programme then it will quickly find itself targeted as part of the war on terror."
Under the terms of the deal President Asad offered the Iranians, the Iraqi scientists and their families would be transferred to Teheran together with a small amount of essential materials.
America seized on satellite pictures of a possible Iranian nuclear weapons testing site yesterday to demand that Teheran be given an ultimatum to come clean or face United Nations sanctions.
"This clearly shows the intention to develop weapons," said a senior United States official after a Washington think-tank released its analysis of images of an isolated explosives testing facility at Parchin, about 20 miles from Teheran.
But Iran dismissed the claim as "another lie" and some US officials privately distanced themselves from the accusation. British officials were also sceptical.
The International Atomic Energy Agency rejected American accusations that it had gone soft on Iran and that it was deliberately keeping quiet about Teheran's alleged refusal to admit nuclear inspectors to Parchin.
An IAEA spokesman said a report issued two weeks ago "is objective and contains all the facts in our possession".
He added that inspectors were "discussing with Iran dual use items and equipment" - implying that the IAEA is interested in visiting Parchin.
Any proof that Iran has built a facility to test parts of a nuclear weapon would amount to "smoking gun" evidence in America's campaign to prove to the world that Teheran is seeking to develop an atomic bomb.
Other Iranian nuclear facilities, such as its uranium enrichment centrifuges, are at most "dual use" - ostensibly designed as part of a civil nuclear programme but potentially military in nature.
In an analysis published on its website on Thursday, the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security said Parchin was "a logical candidate for a nuclear weapons-related site".
It identified a number of sites that could be useful in testing explosives for "implosion-type" nuclear bombs - devices in which explosives are detonated to compress a core of fissile material and start a nuclear chain reaction.
The authors said one building, identified as a high explosive testing "bunker", had parallels with a bunker once designed by Iraq to test a mock-up of a nuclear bomb.
The authors were careful to say the satellite images were "ambiguous", not least because Parchin is well known as a site for research and production of ammunition, missiles, high explosives and perhaps also chemical weapons.
Iran shares with Iraq geopolitical aspirations in the Persian Gulf in which weapons of mass destruction play a critical role. Iraq’s past drive for WMD was fueled by Saddam’s lust for power and his will to politically and militarily dominate the Gulf. Although Iraq’s behavior over the past decade captured the most international attention, Iran too has hegemonic ambitions in the Gulf. Khomeni’s revolutionary goal was to remake the region in Iran’s own self-image, governed by clerics and Islamic law. Iraq’s 1990-91 war pushed into the far background the premier security concern of the United States and the Arab Gulf states in the 1980s—that Iran would emerge as the winner of the war with Iraq to become the dominant power capable of directly threatening Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
Iran’s geographic girth lends itself to a country with large standing armed forces, but Iran’s military today is weaker than it was in the wake of the revolutionary euphoria of 1979.1 The Iranians militarily lived off the Shah’s US-provided arms and equipment to survive the Iran-Iraq War, but the war nearly exhausted their inventories and put enormous wear and tear on equipment holdings. They have managed to make due, in part, by cannibalizing American equipment to keep fewer armaments running, but these stopgap efforts are increasingly more difficult to muster to prolong the longevity of the military inventory. The Iranians also are using illicit means to bypass US restrictions on the export of military equipment to Iran.2 Iran has been hard-pressed to find direct external weapon suppliers to replace the United States. Michael Eisenstadt observes that in recent years Russia has been Iran’s main source of conventional arms, but Moscow has agreed not to conclude any new arms deals and to halt all conventional weapons transfers since September 1999.3 The Iranians have made efforts to fill the void with indigenously produced weapons, but Tehran lacks the ability to produce high-performance conventional weapons platforms.
Tehran must have shuddered when witnessing the American military slashing through Saddam’s forces in the 2003 war. Iran already had a sense of its conventional military inferiority compared to American forces. Years ago Tehran received a direct taste of that from the American re-flagging operations in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq War, when the US Navy readily destroyed much of Iran’s conventional naval capabilities, leaving Iran to harass shipping with irregular hit-and-run gunboat attacks. In the spring 2003 war, American and British forces accomplished in about a month what Iranian forces had failed to do in eight years of war with Iraq between 1980 and 1988. Tehran cannot fail to appreciate that Iranian conventional forces would have little chance of resisting a US military assault.
In Iran’s geopolitical landscape and strategic calculus, the United States looms large and its “demonization” remains a central feature of the cleric regime’s worldview. As Anoushiravan Ehteshami observes, “Iran holds an almost paranoid and conspiratorial view of the United States’ role and actions in the Middle East and sees almost every US initiative as a direct or indirect assault on Iran’s regional interests.”4 Just as George Kennan in his Cold War analysis of the Soviet Union judged that the regime in Moscow needed to politically manufacture an enemy in the United States to justify its ruthless reign at home, so do the clerics in Tehran need a political opponent in the United States on which to heap the blame and deflect public attention from their own inability to deliver political freedom, basic living standards, and an adequate economic livelihood to its people. As part and parcel of its efforts to deflect domestic criticism toward outside targets, the regime portrayed numerous student demonstrations in Iran in June and July 2003—during which Tehran felt compelled to arrest about 4,000 demonstrators—as being the result of American instigation in Iranian affairs.
American military endeavors in the greater Middle East region necessitated by 9/11 have fueled Iran’s insecurity and geopolitical sense of encirclement. As Ray Takeyh notes, “The paradox of the post-September 11 Middle East is that although Iran’s security has improved through the removal of Saddam and the Taliban in Afghanistan, its feelings of insecurity have intensified.”5 The United States used its military presence in the Persian Gulf to support operations both in Afghanistan and Iraq, even if host-country partners were reticent about publicly discussing their support, which cut against the grain of Arab public opinion. In its campaign against al Qaeda, much to Iran’s chagrin, the United States also has had hubs of military activity or transit rights in several countries in Central Asia, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikisrtan.
Iran sees WMD and ballistic missiles as means to fill the void in military and deterrent capabilities. Tehran suffered under barrages of Iraqi ballistic missiles during the Iran-Iraq War and wants to have the option of using ballistic missiles that are faster and more reliable than Iran’s air force for penetrating enemy airspaces to deliver both conventional and WMD warheads. In July 2003 Iran successfully tested the Shahab-3 missile, which achieved a range of about 1,000 km. Iran is suspected of having an unspecified number of operational Shahab missiles, which are based on North Korea’s No Dong-1 missile that is reportedly capable of carrying an 800 kg warhead. Iran also is working on a 2,000-km Shahab-4 based on Russian technology, as well as a 5,000-km Shahab-5 missile.7 These missiles probably are too inaccurate to be of much military utility if armed with conventional warheads, but they would be sufficiently accurate to deliver WMD, particularly nuclear warheads.8 According to a foreign intelligence official and a former Iranian intelligence officer, the North Koreans are working on the Shahab-4 and providing assistance on designs for a nuclear warhead.9
The destructive power of chemical and biological weapons pales in comparison to that of nuclear weapons, which, unfortunately, often are considered the coin of the realm for major-power status in international relations.10 The Iranian clerics almost certainly want nuclear weapons to compensate for conventional military shortcomings to deter potential adversaries and enhance the security of their regime: “The powerful Revolutionary Guards and military strategists are convinced that only a nuclear Iran can assume its place as a major regional power and adequately deter a possible attack from the United States or Israel, said [a] policy adviser to a senior conservative cleric, who spoke on condition of anonymity.”
The Iranians have learned that the road to nuclear weapons is best paved with ambiguity. The Israelis, Pakistanis, Indians, and apparently the North Koreans successfully acquired nuclear weapons by cloaking their research, development, procurement, and deployment efforts with cover stories that their efforts were all geared to civilian nuclear energy programs, not to be harnessed for military applications. Tehran could not have failed to notice that once these states acquired nuclear weapons mated with aircraft and missile delivery systems, they escaped—so far, at least—military preemptive and preventive action by rival states. In marked contrast, the Iraqis suffered as the result of Israeli and American preventive military actions, in part because Baghdad was not fast enough in acquiring nuclear weapons. The Israeli strike on an Iraqi nuclear research plant in 1981 and the American wars against Iraq in 1991 and 2003 might have been deterred had Iraq managed to acquire nuclear weapons.
The Iranians therefore consistently and loudly proclaim that their pursuit of nuclear power is strictly for peaceful civilian purposes. President Muhammad Khatami, for example, said in February 2003, “I assure all peace-loving individuals in the world that Iran’s efforts in the field of nuclear technology are focused on civilian application and nothing else.” The Iranians argue that they need electric power produced by nuclear plants to meet domestic energy needs and to free up oil for export and foreign currency. The Iranian claims have a hollow ring, however. Iran’s oil industry could be modernized and made more cost-efficient and productive with the expenditure of far fewer economic resources than those needed for nuclear power, to better deliver energy to the Iranian population at lower costs while increasing production for the international market.
The Iranians are working closely with the Russians, who have an $800 million contract with the Iranians to build the 1,000-megawatt light-water reactor at Bushehr.13 Although spent nuclear fuel at Bushehr could be diverted to use in nuclear weapons, Moscow has traditionally put more weight on near-term economic interests than on longer-term strategic interests in dealing with Iran. The Russians have adapted a Keynesian approach to Iran: damn the long-run strategic threat of an Iran armed with ballistic missiles tipped with nuclear warheads hostile to Russian political interests, because in the long run we’ll all be dead anyway.
There are at least seven separate insurgent groups fighting U.S. troops and nine groups carrying out the kidnapping and killings of foreigners in Iraq, according to an Iraqi newspaper.
There are three main Sunni groups, and five separate factions within them; two Baathist groups; and two Shiite insurgent organizations, according to a recent issue of the Baghdad al-Zawra in Arabic -- a weekly published by the Iraqi Journalists Association and translated into English by the CIA.
The groups are comprised of individual cells that are only loosely affiliated, a supposition endorsed by military intelligence officials in interviews with United Press International.
"The majority of these groups do not know their leadership, the sources of their financing, or who provides them with weapons," the Sunday's report stated.
A senior U.S. commander in Iraq agreed with that assessment.
"The leadership, funding, and financing is coming from the more dangerous group of terrorist organizations and Baath identified (by the report). Those groups are essential elements of control and influence," he told UPI Friday.
The newspaper identifies the Sunni groups as follows:
-- The Iraqi National Islamic Resistance, the 1920 Revolution Brigades.
It emerged for the first time on July 16, 2003. Its declared aim is to liberate Iraqi territory from foreign military and political occupation and to establish a liberated and independent Iraqi state on Islamic bases. It launches armed attacks against the U.S. forces. The attacks primarily are concentrated in the area west of Baghdad, in the regions of Abu Ghraib, Khan Dari and Fallujah. It has other activities in the governorates of Ninwi, Diyali and Anbar. The group usually takes into consideration the opinions of a number of Sunni authorities in Iraq.
The group's statements, in which it claims responsibility for its operations against the U.S. occupation, are usually distributed at the gates of the mosques after the Friday prayers.
A recent statement issued by the group on Aug. 19, 2004, explained that the group, during the period between July 27 and Aug. 7, 2004, carried out an average of 10 operations every day, which resulted in the deaths of dozens of U.S. soldiers and the destruction of dozens of U.S. armored vehicles.
The most prominent operations of the group during that period were the shooting down of a helicopter in the Abu Ghraib region on Aug. 1, 2004, and the shooting down of a Chinook helicopter near Fallujah, by the Martyr Nur-al-Din Brigade on Aug. 9, 2004.
-- The National Front for the Liberation of Iraq.
The front includes 10 resistance groups. It was formed days after the occupation of Iraq in April 2003. It consists of nationalists and Islamists. Its activities are concentrated in Irbil and Kirkuk in northern Iraq; in Fallujah, Samarra and Tikrit in central Iraq, and in Basra and Babil governorates in the south, in addition to Diyali governorate in the east.
Generally speaking, its activities are considered smaller than those of the 1920 Revolution Brigades.
-- The Iraqi Resistance Islamic Front, known as JAMI.
The front is the newest Sunni resistance group to fight the U.S. occupation. It includes a number of small resistance factions that formed a coalition. Its activities against the occupation forces are concentrated in the two governorates of Ninwi and Diyali. It announced its existence for the first time on May 30, 2004.
In its statements, JAMI warns against the Jewish conspiracies in Iraq.
According to statements issued by the front, JAMI's military wing -- the Salah-al-Din and Sayf-Allah al-Maslul Brigades -- has carried out dozens of operations against the U.S. occupation forces. The most prominent of these operations were in Ninwi governorate. These operations included the shelling of the occupation command headquarters and the semi-daily shelling of the Mosul airport. Further more, JAMI targets the members of U.S. intelligence and kills them in the al-Faysaliyah area in Mosul and also in the governorate of Diyali, where the front's al-Rantisi Brigade sniped a U.S. soldier and used mortars to shell al-Faris Airport.
-- Other small factions.
There are other factions that claim responsibility for some limited military operations against the U.S. forces. However, some of these factions have joined larger brigades that are more active and more experienced in fighting. These factions include:
Hamzah Faction -- A Sunni group that appeared for the first time on Oct. 10, 2003, in Fallujah and called for the release of a local sheik known as Sheik Jamal Nidal, who was arrested by the U.S. forces. There is no other information available about this group.
Iraqi Liberation Army -- This group first emerged on July 15, 2003. It warned the foreign countries against sending troops to Iraq and pledged to attack those troops if they were sent.
Awakening and Holy War -- A group of Arab Sunni mujahedin. It is active in Fallujah. It filmed an operation on videotape and sent the tape to Iranian television on July 7, 2003. On the tape, the group said that Saddam and the United States were two sides of the same coin. The group said that it carried out operations against the U.S. occupation in Fallujah and other cities.
The White Banners -- A group of local Arab Sunni mujahedin that is active in the Sunni triangle and probably in other areas. Originally, they were opposed to Saddam Hussein, and in alliance with the Muslim Youths and Muhammad's Army. The group criticized the bombing of the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad. So far, there is no information about their operations.
al-Haq Army -- There is not much information about this group, but it consists of Arab Sunni Muslims, has some nationalistic tendencies, and is not loyal to Saddam.
-- Baathist factions.
These factions are loyal to the Baath Party and the previous regime of Saddam Hussein. They do not constitute a proportion of the actual resistance in Iraq. Their activities are more or less restricted to financing of resistance operations. The factions that still exist secretly in the Iraqi arena include:
al-Awdah ("The Return") -- This faction is concentrated in northern Iraq -- Samarra, Tikrit, al-Dur and Mosul. It consists of members of the former intelligence apparatus.
Saddam's Fedayeen -- The faction was formed by the Saddam regime before the U.S. invasion. Now, it is rumored that many of its members have abandoned their loyalty to Saddam and have joined Islamic and national groups on the side of the 11 September Revolutionary Group and the Serpent's Head Movement.
-- The Shiite resistance groups.
Al-Sadr group -- The al-Mahdi Army is considered the only militia experiment to emerge after the occupation. In July 2003, Shiite leader Moqtada Sadr announced the formation of the al-Mahdi Army, but not as a force directed against the occupation. Within a short period, Sadr gathered between 10,000 and 15,000 well-trained youths, the majority of whom were from the poor of the Sadr City, al-Shulah, and the southern cities. The U.S. military estimated the size of the Mahdi army to be about 6,000 prior to the major battles in April and August in Najaf.
Imam Ali Bin-Abi-Talib Jihadi Brigades -- This Shiite group appeared for the first time on Oct. 12, 2003. It vowed to kill the soldiers of any country sending its troops to support the coalition forces, and threatened to transfer the battleground to the territories of such countries if they were to send troops. The group also threatened to assassinate all the members of the Interim Governing Council and any Iraqi cooperating with the coalition forces. In addition, group announced that Najaf and Karbala were the battlegrounds in which it would target the U.S. forces.
-- The factions that carry out the abductions and slayings include:
Assadullah Brigades -- The brigades said in a statement, No. 50, "The mujahedin is entitled to capture any infidel who enters Iraq, whether he works for a construction company or in any other job, because he could be warrior, and the mujahedin has the right to kill him or take him as a prisoner."
The activities of this group are concentrated in Baghdad and its suburbs. The group detained the third most senior diplomat at the Egyptian Embassy to Iraq, Muhammad Mamduh Hilmi Qutb, in July 2004 in response to statements by Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmad Nazif that Egypt was prepared to offer its security expertise to the Interim Iraqi Government. The diplomat was released after nearly a week.
Islamic Retaliation Movement -- One of the movements that adopt the course of abductions. It abducted and then released the U.S. Marine of Lebanese origin, Wasif Ali Hassoun.
Islamic Anger Brigades -- The group that abducted 15 Lebanese in June 2004 and then released them, with the exception of Husayn Ulayyan, an employee of a communications company, whom it killed.
Khalid-Bin-al-Walid Brigades and Iraq's Martyrs Brigades -- They are believed to have abducted Italian journalist Enzo Bladoni in August 2004 and killed him.
The Black Banners Group -- A battalion of the Secret Islamic Army. The group abducted three Indians, two Kenyans and an Egyptian working for a Kuwaiti company operating in Iraq. The aim was to compel the company to stop its activities in Iraq. The hostages were later released.
The Abu Musab al-Zarqawi Group.
The al-Tawhid wa al-Jihad Group.
The Islamic Army in Iraq -- A secret organization that adopts the ideology of Al-Qaida. The organization abducted Iranian Consul Feredion Jahani and the two French journalists, Georges Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot.
Ansar al-Sunnah Movement -- The movement abducted 12 Nepalese on Aug. 23, 2004 and killed them.
The last four groups are clearly intellectually close to the beliefs and thinking of al-Qaida and its leader, Osama bin Ladin.
The first case of hostage killing was that of U.S. national Nicholas Berg in May 2004, and the Abu Musab al-Zarqawi group claimed responsibility for it.
After that, the al-Tawhid wa al-Jihad Group killed South Korean Kim Il, who was working for a Korean company with a contract with the U.S. military.
Hostages slain so far include: two Italians, two U.S. nationals, two Pakistanis, one Egyptian, one Turk, one Lebanese, one Bulgarian, one South Korean and 12 Nepalese.
Thousands of protesters marched through Taiwan's capital on Saturday, urging the government to scrap a big U.S. weapons package they said would trigger an arms race with China and squeeze social welfare.
Defending the T$610.8 billion ($18.2 billion) deal, Premier Yu Shyi-kun said maintaining strong defense and a military balance with the island's arch-foe were critical to security.
"If you attack me with 100 missiles, I will at least attack you with 50. If you attack Taipei and Kaohsiung, I will attack Shanghai," Yu said in a speech before the protest.
"If we have such counter-strike capability today, Taiwan is safe," he said in comments broadcast on cable news networks.
The weapons package is made up of $4.3 billion for Patriot Advanced-Capability 3 missile defenses, $12.3 billion for eight diesel-electric submarines and $1.6 billion for 12 P-3C Orion submarine-hunting aircraft.
Protesters disagreed with Yu's comments.
"President Chen Shui-bian only likes to please the United States to protect his presidency. He wants to die, but we will not follow him," said a retired soldier, surnamed Chang.
A 40-year-old housewife surnamed Lin, said: "We don't want any war, especially since both sides are Chinese."
Holding banners reading "Our money, Your war," "Want peace, No war," the protesters ranging from veterans to unemployed workers and children, joined the march to the presidential palace.
Opposition parties, which hold a slim majority in parliament, said the island could not afford the weapons and the money should be spent on social welfare or education.
If approved by parliament, the weapons deal -- first offered by President Bush three years ago -- would be the biggest in a decade.
The military says the package will help Taiwan maintain a balance of military power with China for another 30 years, but if it falls through, China will have the capability to attack the island in the next 2 to 3 years.
President Chen said earlier this week China has 610 missiles pointed at Taiwan and was increasing its arsenal by 50 to 70 missiles every year. Last December, Chen said China had 496 missiles facing Taiwan.
Sudan says it has foiled a coup plot by backers of detained Islamist opposition leader, Hassan al-Turabi.
A statement by the Interior Ministry said members of Mr Turabi's Popular National Congress party had planned to carry out a coup after Friday prayers.
The statement said a number of arrests had been made and that the security forces were looking for the alleged coup leader al-Haj Adam Youssef.
Some 30 PNC members were held earlier this month in connection with a coup.
The PNC had earlier denied involvement in a coup to topple the government of President Omar al-Bashir.
The Interior Ministry statement said the coup plotters had planned to strike at 1400 local time (1100 GMT) on Friday in the capital, Khartoum.
On the information provided by those arrested earlier in connection with the plot, your gallant security forces moved in and with the help and blessing of Allah, arrested the high leadership of the plot," the statement said.
It added that those held confessed that they were about to "execute" the plan at the set time.
Mr Youssef - a leading PNC member - was identified as the leader of the alleged coup.
The statement also urged the people to help arrest the "fugitive criminal".
The Navy said Friday it has filed assault and other criminal charges against three more of its elite SEAL commandos in connection with probes of prisoner abuse in Iraq.
The three, whose names were not released, are in addition to four SEALs charged Sept. 2 with assault and other alleged offenses in connection with the death of a prisoner last November.
At the time of the reported abuse, all seven were members of a Sea-Air-Land, or SEAL, unit known as SEAL Team-7, a counterterrorist group that sometimes operated in Iraq with CIA officers. It is based at Coronado, Calif., and reports to the Naval Special Warfare Command (search) in San Diego.
In addition to the November 2003 death, an undisclosed number of SEALs were involved in the case of a detainee who died April 5, 2004 under suspicious circumstances at a U.S. Army logistics base near the northern city of Mosul, an Army preliminary investigation report said.
At least one of the three SEALs charged Friday is accused of involvement in the April case, said a senior defense official who discussed the case on condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing.
According to a brief portion of the Army investigation report reviewed by The Associated Press, the death occurred at Logistics Support Area Diamondback, near Mosul, and the senior defense official said the detainee was at the 67th Combat Support Hospital at Diamondback.
The individual was detained by SEALs "after a struggle," the report said. After he was interrogated by a person the report did not identify, the detainee was "allowed to sleep."
At 1:37 a.m. on April 5, the detainee was checked and "found to be unresponsive," the report said without elaborating. He was not then in the SEALs' custody, the defense official said.
An autopsy was ordered but the result was unknown when the Army report was written. The detainee's name was not mentioned.
The charges against the three SEALs are assault, aggravated assault with intent to cause death or serious bodily harm, conduct unbecoming, obstruction of justice, assault with a dangerous weapon, maltreatment of detainees, dereliction of duty and failure to report abuse to superior authorities.
All of the charges are punishable under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Cmdr. Jeff Bender, a spokesman for Naval Special Warfare Command, said he could not say which charges were filed against which of the three SEALs.
In an interview with CNN, Musharraf said he is "reasonably sure" that bin Laden is still alive.
The United States does not have to wait until Iraq "is peaceful and perfect" before it begins to withdraw military troops from that troubled country, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Friday.
Responding to questions from reporters, Rumsfeld said Washington was determined to provide security for scheduled January elections in Iraq, where nearly 140,000 American troops are now fighting a growing insurgency.
But "any implication that that place has to be peaceful and perfect before we can reduce coalition and U.S. forces, I think, would obviously be unwise," he told a press conference after meeting Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.
"Because it's never been peaceful and perfect and it isn't likely to be. It's a tough part of the world. Our goal is to invest the time and the money and the effort to help them train up Iraqis to take over those (security) responsibilities."
Rumsfeld gave no timetable for any possible drawdown of U.S. troops from the costly and controversial Iraqi deployment that has stressed America's military and taken center stage in the U.S. election battle between President Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry.
He said he was 'a man of peace' and denounced all forms of terrorism.
Spokesman for the attorney general's office, Kemas Yahya Rahman, told Reuters news agency that as well as being charged in connection with the Marriott Hotel attack, Ba'asyir would also be charged with possessing illegal explosives found during in a raid on a house in central Java last year.
The CIA said yesterday it believes the masked man videotaped beheading American hostage Eugene Armstrong was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — the ruthless terror master whose brutal campaign has catapulted him to the top of the anti-American effort in Iraq.
The horrific slayings of the innocent American contractors — Armstrong and then yesterday Jack Hensley — is the latest act of savagery attributed to Zarqawi and his followers, who are also responsible for scores of car bombings and assassinations throughout Iraq that have killed almost 2,000 people.
The tattooed, 38-year-old high-school dropout and former bar brawler-turned-Islamic fanatic is now the most wanted man in Iraq.
Sources told The Post that Task Force 121, the elite Special Forces unit that hunted down Saddam Hussein, is assigned to finding him, and U.S. military commanders have launched airstrikes almost daily against his network in the restive town of Fallujah. "We and the Iraqis are hunting Zarqawi with all intensity. We've gone after safe houses and we've actually killed people, lots of people in his network, but thus far he has escaped," National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told Post editors and reporters this week.
U.S. intelligence officials said Zarqawi, whose real name is Ahmad Fadil al-Khalayleh, is an extremely disciplined, religious man. It is that discipline that he imposes on his organization that has allowed him to flourish as the world's second most prominent terrorist after Osama bin Laden.
He reportedly lifts weights and memorizes large portions of the Koran.
He will beat underlings if he catches them reading anything else but the Muslim holy book — and yet, despite a guttural, uneducated accent, he can be extremely charming to those close to him, according to intelligence officials.
"He is a jihadist of the first degree. This is not someone you can negotiate with. This is not someone who is deterrable. He has to be fought," said Matthew Levitt, a former FBI counterterrorism agent, now with the Washington Institute for Middle East Policy.
Zarqawi avoids all forms of electronic communication and he moves constantly from safe house to safe house, protected by an elaborate network of tribal and terrorist connections. The terror leader sometimes travels to Syria and Iran, where his contacts with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terror group and the Syrian Muslim brotherhood give him access to money and weapons.
Beer for Soldiers is a crazy effort to promote good morale and good cheer. We are freedoms protectors; we know you are thankful and proud of us. We know you have wondered; how can I thank them? Well, Here’s your chance.Redneck Cap Tip: Hell Raiser Mag
It seems like all over the USA there is an old tradition in our pubs, bars, and local watering holes, one that has always made us proud of being a US Soldier. Makes no matter if you are Marine, Army, Navy, Air Force or Coast Guard, it's always the same. Here's a few scenarios; an ‘Old-Timer’, (Grand-Pappy's age) -a veteran himself back when the fighting was way more dangerous than it is today, will spot our hair cuts, sharp dress, or just the way we carry ourselves and will inquire if we are military? When we respond with a HELL YEA! - It's on! His first words after that are"Let me buy you a beer!" And we proceed to get schnockered with the tough hard-core warrior of yester-year.
Sometimes it's the college kid, who recently lost her brother to combat, she buys us one too. And she cries with us.
Sometimes it's the bar owner who thanks us continuously for protecting his family and their freedom. He buys us many beers, his token of gratitude for preserving his right to own a business in the USA.
We soldiers of America appreciate this tradition and are grateful.
Your patriotic support means the world to us! So for those of you that we will never see in the pubs, we've made it easy for you to say thank you, here.
If you approve of the job that America's troops are doing in the Middle East, and other parts of the world, you probably also believe that we deserve a cold beer. We believe so, too!
So, in keeping with the highest traditions of the USA
- buy us a beer!
Station managers at several CBS affiliates said Thursday they appear to be a target of a national e-mail campaign placing pressure on the network to oust Dan Rather as anchorman of the "CBS Evening News."
The anger stems from Rather's role in a "60 Minutes" report on President Bush's service in the National Guard. CBS has apologized for reporting on documents critical of Bush's service, widely assumed now as fakes, and appointed a panel to investigate what went wrong in the report.
Many e-mailers offer the same message: I will not watch CBS News again until Rather is gone, said Bob Lee, president and general manager of WDBJ-TV in Roanoke, Va., and head of the CBS affiliate board.
"To be honest, I'm most concerned when the e-mail is coming from a local viewer," said Gary Gardner, vice president and general manager of WINK-TV in Fort Myers, Fla.
Lee said he can't recall any other issue getting such a big response from viewers.
Station managers take such a response very seriously. They are, in effect, Rather's constituency and several said they're eager to see what former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and former Associated Press chief executive Louis D. Boccardi turn up in their probe of CBS News operations.
The campaign appears to originate from a blogger on the Web site, Rathergate.com, who is forwarding e-mails to stations around the country.
"The buck has to stop," said Mike Krempasky of Falls Church, Va., who works for a political advertising company and set up Rathergate.com, as well as the conservative-oriented Web site, Redstate.org.
"He's certainly the face of the story," he said. "He's the one who sneered at anyone who dared criticize him on the story for 10 days. He's the one who put his credibility on the line when he said he believed in the story."
Meanwhile, Rather was not commenting Thursday on a story in The New York Times, quoting sources that requested anonymity, that he was unhappy that Thornburgh was appointed as half of the two-man panel investigating CBS News. Thornburgh is a Republican former governor of Pennsylvania and was attorney general for the Reagan and first Bush administrations.
He was the attorney general when Rather conducted a memorably combative interview with Bush as he was running for president.
A Rather spokeswoman said the veteran anchor will cooperate fully in the probe.
In the same Times story, Rather was quoted as pointing out that his boss, CBS News President Andrew Heyward, was fully involved with him in the handling of the story.
President Bush, back on the campaign trail after a show of unity with Iraq's prime minister, accused his Democratic rival on Thursday of spreading a pessimism about Iraq that threatens the war effort.
"Mixed signals are the wrong signals," Bush said in a brief campaign stop that demonstrated the he was making a play for Maine despite Democratic Sen. John Kerry's earlier lead in state polls.
Bush visited Maine after meeting at the White House earlier in the day with Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. Bush had told a news conference after the meeting that he and Allawi would "stay the course" in Iraq despite a violent insurgency.
In Bangor, Bush blasted recent charges by Kerry that the Iraq war had made America less secure, and he said they amounted to a preference by the Democrat for the dictatorship of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
"You cannot lead the war on terror if you wilt when times are tough," Bush said in front of a flag-draped airport hangar. "You cannot expect the Iraqi people to stand up and do the hard work of democracy if you are pessimistic about their abilities. You cannot expect the Iraqi people to do the hard work if you say that they'd be better off with Saddam Hussein in power.
"What kind of message does it send our troops, who are risking their lives and who see firsthand the mission is hard, but know the mission is critical to our success?" he said.
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said Thursday that Iraq's Ayad Allawi was sent before Congress to put the "best face" on a Bush administration policy that has gone wrong.
Shortly after Allawi, the interim government's prime minister, gave a rosy portrayal of progress toward peace in Iraq, Kerry said the assessment contradicted Allawi's own statements as well as the reality on the ground.
"I think the prime minister is obviously contradicting his own statement of a few days ago, where he said the terrorists are pouring into the country," Kerry said. "The prime minister and the president are here obviously to put their best face on the policy, but the fact is that the CIA estimates, the reporting, the ground operations and the troops all tell a different story."
Kerry was referring to comments Allawi made Sunday on ABC's "This Week." But Allawi also expressed optimism about the mission in that appearance.
"Foreign terrorists are still pouring in, and they're trying to inflict damage on Iraq to undermine Iraq and to undermine the process, democratic process in Iraq, and, indeed, this is their last stand," Allawi said. "So they are putting a very severe fight on Iraq. We are winning. We will continue to win. We are going to prevail."
Allawi told a joint meeting of Congress Thursday that democratic elections will take place in Iraq in January as scheduled, but Kerry said that was unrealistic.
"The United States and the Iraqis have retreated from whole areas of Iraq," Kerry told reporters outside a Columbus firehouse. "There are no-go zones in Iraq today. You can't hold an election in a no-go zone."
Kerry said Bush should convene a summit of international leaders to ask for their help in Iraq. He also said the president missed an opportunity to get foreign support during two days of diplomacy at the United Nations this week.
"The president skedaddled out of New York so quickly he barely had time to talk to any leaders," Kerry said.
The Democrat's campaign also rolled out a new television ad that says while Bush "keeps telling us things are getting better in Iraq ... the facts tell a different story." "Terrorists are pouring into the country. Attacks on U.S. forces are increasing every month. A thousand American soldiers have died," the ad says.
Kerry's remarks and the ad came one day after he told The Associated Press that Bush's statement that a "handful" of people were willing to kill to stop progress in Iraq was a blunder that showed he was avoiding reality.
"George Bush retreated from Fallujah and other communities in Iraq which are now overrun with terrorists and threaten our troops," Kerry said in the brief interview Wednesday. "And even today, he blundered again saying there are only a handful of terrorists in Iraq. I think he's living in a make believe world."
Bush, campaigning in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, said: "It's hard to help a country go from tyranny to elections to peace when there are a handful of people who are willing to kill in order to stop the process. And that's what you're seeing on the TV screens."
Asked about the "handful" remark on Thursday, Bush said, "My point is that a few people, relative to the whole, are trying to stop the march of freedom." He said, "Look, I'm fully aware we're fighting former Baathists and Zarqawi network people. But by far the vast majority of people, among 25 million people, want to live in freedom."
Kerry's voice was scratchy and breaking from a cold on Wednesday. He canceled most public events for Thursday in Columbus and in Iowa to rest his voice, though his words were clear at the firehouse. The campaign said running mate John Edwards would take Kerry's place in Iowa.
US troops have sealed off the city of Samarra and called in air strikes, local officials say.
"The Americans struck last night and three bodies were brought out from the wreckage," said police chief Colonel Muhammad Fadil on Thursday.
Twenty-one cars were burnt or damaged in the air strikes, he added. US forces sealed off the city, including the crucial bridge over the Tigris.
The US military confirmed fighting around Samarra on Wednesday evening when their troops were ambushed from a mosque.
"A 1st Infantry Division patrol was attacked September 22 by anti-Iraqi forces with small arms fire and mortar fire from a mosque in Samarra at approximately 5pm (1300 GMT)," the military said, using its term for fighters.
The patrol also came under fire from a nearby building and
attack helicopters fired off missiles, but fighters continued to shoot at them. Finally aircraft dropped a bomb on the building, the military added.
Brazil has emphasized that its commitment to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty may not be open-ended, and it continues to resist access by UN inspectors to technology that can be used to make nuclear arms, diplomats said Thursday.
The diplomats, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, referred to comments made by Brazil at the general conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is currently exerting heavy pressure on Iran over the same issue.
Eduardo Campos, Brazil's minister of science and technology, told the session on Wednesday that his country had approved the treaty meant to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons on condition of a "cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date, and to the complete elimination of all atomic weapons."
The treaty calls on nuclear-armed countries to disarm as quickly as possible. Still, the diplomats, who are familiar with Brazil's nuclear program, said the IAEA was concerned about the fact that Brazil chose to emphasize the link between total nuclear disarmament and its own commitment to the treaty.
This comes at a time when Brazil is disagreeing with the agency on how to inspect its uranium enrichment program - technology that can be used to make nuclear arms.
"The IAEA has duly noted the comment," said one of the diplomats.
Although Brazil signed the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty in 1997 and said its nuclear program has purely peaceful objectives, questions about its commitment continue to simmer.
The government confirmed in June that IAEA inspectors had been denied access in February and March to centrifuges at a facility in Resende, about 100 kilometres southwest of Rio de Janeiro.
It cited the need to protect industrial secrets and said the centrifuges were, and will remain, off-limits for visual inspection.
The centrifuges are used to enrich uranium so it can be used for fuel in nuclear reactors and potentially in bombs.
Germany, Japan, Brazil and India -- the so-called G4 group --launched a joint effort for permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council after meeting on the fringes of the UN General Assembly in New York.
After meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and the Indian and Japanese prime ministers, Manmohan Singh and Junichiro Koizumi delivered a joint statement launching a united bid for permanent UN Security Council seats, arguing that expanded membership was crucial to addressing new global threats.
Such a reform of the council, which passes resolutions that are binding for the UN's 191 member states, is long overdue, both supporters and critics of the institution say. The council has had the same five permanent members with veto power -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- since the United Nations was established in the wake of World War II. Ten other nations are elected as non-permanent members for two-year rotation terms.
"All four states regard themselves as natural candidates," Fischer said after the meeting, "based on what they are doing for the UN, what they are capable of doing and also because of their regional roles."
At least one of the five current permanent members, Britain, has already voiced its support for all four bids.
Old regional animosities, however, are likely to ensure that none of the candidates enjoys an easy ride. Germany is likely to face opposition from Italy, a solid ally of the United States in Iraq, for its stance against the 2003 invasion.
Pakistan could find it hard to accept India, their nuclear-armed neighbor, while Brazil's bid might get a lukewarm reception in Mexico and Argentina, and China on Tuesday indicated reservations over Japan's candidacy, saying the UN was "not a board of directors" whose composition could be decided by "the financial contribution of its members."
The four countries also said that Africa, the poorest continent in the United Nations, "must also be represented in the permanent membership of the Security Council." African leaders are debating which country from the vast continent might get a permanent Security Council seat if one is made available. Tanzania put itself forward as a candidate for a non-permanent seat on the council, saying it would seek election before August.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe accused President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Wednesday of acting like God in riding roughshod over international law in Iraq and elsewhere.
"We are now being coerced to accept and believe that a new political-cum-religious doctrine has arisen, namely that 'There is but one political god, George W. Bush, and Tony Blair is his prophet'," the veteran African leader told the U.N. General Assembly.
"Iraq today has become a vast inferno created by blatant and completely illegal and defiant acts of aggression by the United States, Britain and their allies," he said.
In a defiant speech, Mugabe, who is subject to sanctions by the European Union and the United States for his human rights record, accused the West of manipulating international aid to punish governments such as his.
"Regrettably, we continue to see the unfortunate and futile tendency to use assistance in this area as reward for political compliance and malleability, making it unavailable to countries whose governments are deemed 'inconvenient'," he said.
Mugabe said Blair had "arrogantly and unashamedly" told the British parliament that his government was working with Zimbabwe's opposition to bring about regime change.
"Once again, the lawless nature of this man who along (with) his Washington master believes he is God-ordained to rule out world, has shown itself," he said.
Former colonial masters were in no position to teach lessons in democracy, he declared.
"Here in the United States, we remain aware of the plight of the black American of both yesterday and today, and of the semi-slave and half-citizen status that has been his burden," Mugabe added.
He asserted that Zimbabwe's economy was recovering despite international sanctions and urged the International Monetary Fund "to stop its strange mouthings, lies and fabrications about our situation."
IMF sources said on Tuesday the Fund was closing its office in Harare due to the lack of a country assistance program since 1999. The IMF began procedures last December to expel Zimbabwe.
U.S. troops stationed overseas could face courts-martial for patronizing prostitutes under a new regulation drafted by the Pentagon.
The move is part of a Defense Department effort to lessen the possibility that troops will contribute to human trafficking in areas near their overseas bases by seeking the services of women forced into prostitution.
In recent years, "women and girls are being forced into prostitution for a clientele consisting largely of military services members, government contractors and international peacekeepers" in places like South Korea and the Balkans, Rep. Christopher Smith, R-N.J., said Tuesday at a Capitol Hill forum on Pentagon anti-trafficking efforts.
Defense officials have drafted an amendment to the manual on courts-martial that would make it an offense for U.S. troops to use the services of prostitutes, said Charles Abell, a Pentagon undersecretary for personnel and readiness.
If approved, that would make it a military offense under the Uniform Code of Military Justice to have contact with a prostitute, Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, an Abell spokeswoman said later. The draft rule is open to 60 days public comment after being published in the Federal Register, she said
Gen. Leon J. LaPorte, commander of the 37,000 U.S. troops in South Korea, said another initiative started on the peninsula has been to "make on-base military life a more desirable experience, and attempt to diminish the seductive appeal of many of the less wholesome off-duty pursuits."
That effort includes offering expanded evening and weekend education programs, band concerts, late-night sports leagues and expanded chaplains' activities.
Those new rules followed accusations from human rights groups that NATO peacekeepers and civilian staff working for international organizations have fueled the growth of sexual slavery in the Balkans.
A second American citizen held hostage in Iraq has been beheaded by his kidnappers, an Islamist website said Tuesday.
Jack Hensley, abducted along with his two colleagues, American contractor Eugene Armstrong and British engineer Kenneth Bigley, was the second to be executed in the past day.
Armstrong was decapitated by the purported al Qaida-linked Tawhid and Jihad (Unity and Holy War) on Monday, as its demand for the release of Iraqi women prisoners in 48 hours had not been met.
The militant group, led by terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, said it would kill the other two if their demand continued to be neglected.
A statement posted on the website said a video footage will be released soon.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned world leaders on Tuesday that international law was being "shamelessly disregarded" and cited the U.S. abuse of prisoners in Iraq as an example of such violations.
Speaking at the high-level session of the U.N. General Assembly, Annan said "no one was above the law" whether in Sudan, Iraq, Uganda, Russia or the Middle East.
"Again and again, we see laws shamelessly disregarded -- those that ordain respect for innocent life, for civilians, for the vulnerable -- especially children," he said.
In Iraq, he said civilians were massacred in cold blood, while relief workers, journalists and others were "taken hostage and put to death in the most barbarous fashion."
"At the same time, we have seen Iraqi prisoners disgracefully abused," Annan said, referring to inmates in the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad who were photographed being brutalized by American soldiers.
"Every nation that proclaims the rule of law at home must respect it abroad. And every nation that insists on it abroad must enforce it at home," he said.
Annan, had previously called on Russia to respect the rule of law while fighting Chechen rebels, who said they carried out the Beslan attack. In his speech, he said "at times even the necessary fight against terrorism itself is allowed to encroach unnecessarily on civil liberties."
U.S. forces and Iraqi police raided the office of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in the south-central city of Najaf on Tuesday, arresting several aides and confiscating thousands of weapons, Najaf's governor said.
Gov. Adnan al-Zurufi said the raid took place next to the Imam Ali Mosque -- the Shiite shrine that was the site of a three-week standoff between U.S. troops and militia loyal to al-Sadr in August. A peace deal was negotiated with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani that would grant al-Sadr his freedom from murder charges in a bid to secure peace in war-torn Najaf.
Arrested Tuesday were al-Sadr aides Sheikh Ahmed al-Shaybani and Sayyid Hussam al-Hassani as well as some of the cleric's bodyguards.
Syrian and American troops might jointly patrol the Iraqi border to interdict foreign fighters, according to a published report.
The plan, if worked out between the two nations, would involve a "military-to-military" relationship that would be a significant change in official policy toward Syria, a country on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, a senior American official told Time magazine.
Despite its occupation of Lebanon and support for anti-Israel terror groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, Syria did not object to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. But any plan to buddy up with Syria is sure to draw fire from Israel's allies, said defense experts.
"It's difficult to envision in the real world that U.S. and Syrian troops would jointly patrol," said John Pike, a defense analyst at GlobalSecurity.org.
Instead, the diplomatic moves are most likely an effort to engage Syria and "try to avoid a situation in which we wind up shooting a bunch of Syrian soldiers while we're in hot pursuit of evildoers," Pike said.
Meanwhile..Syria has begun redeploying around 3,000 troops from the outskirts of Beirut towards the eastern Syrian-Lebanese border in an apparent attempt to ease U.S.-led international pressure over its influence on Lebanon.
Lebanese sources said on Tuesday that once completed, the two-stage redeployment would leave Syria's troops concentrated in a smaller area of Lebanon and largely restrict them to the strategic eastern Bekaa Valley near the border.
The redeployment followed mounting U.S.-led international pressure on Syria to withdraw its 17,000 troops from Lebanon and stop interfering in its neighbour's internal affairs.
But it is unlikely to loosen Syria's political grip over Lebanon where its allies remain entrenched in the Lebanese government and state bodies.
It was not immediately clear how many Syrian troops would remain in the Bekaa Valley and whether others would return home but security sources said around 3,000 soldiers would be relocating from positions around the capital.
The trial and possible execution of Saddam Hussein would discourage the die-hard remnants of the old Ba'athist regime and "show Iraq and those beyond Iraq that tyranny will not win", Iyad Allawi, the country's interim Prime Minister, said yesterday.
In a briefing with British newspaper editors, Dr Allawi said he had been shocked by the scale of Saddam's cruelty when he returned to the country after the regime's fall.
To date, investigators have uncovered 262 mass graves containing "tens of thousands" of victims.
He said that entire buses, containing the bodies of men, women and children, had been excavated.
"They had been buried alive, sitting in their seats," he claimed.
The prime minister hit out at media commentators who questioned the legitimacy of regime change in Iraq, saying that "if Saddam had had his way, he would have turned the whole region into hell".
Dr Allawi, in London for talks with Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, before flying on to New York and Washington, appealed to Russia and France - long-standing opponents of regime change - to provide economic and diplomatic support.
Russia, France and Germany had a duty to reduce the debt accumulated by the ousted regime, much of it to pay for arms used to prosecute violence against its own citizens and neighbouring states.
The emerging Iraqi state should not be shackled by the debts of a criminal regime, he insisted. Saddam's plundering of the country had been thorough, right down to the last $1 billion removed from the central bank a week before the fall of Baghdad.
He criticised France's "negative attitude", pointing in particular to that country's opposition to Nato training of Iraq's new security forces.
"I hope the French Government will help, bilaterally, through Nato and through Europe," Dr Allawi said.
Referring to Russia, he continued: "We need to close ranks. This is a fight for civilisation, progress and stability. People cannot just sit down and say: 'I am not going to have a problem.' There is no country that is going to be spared these troubles."
On Sunday, after a bloody 10 days in which Iraqi violence had claimed 300 lives, Mr Blair referred to the emergence of a "new Iraqi conflict" as foreign insurgents and remnants of the Ba'athist regime seek to thwart elections in January next year.
Dr Allawi said the violence was being prosecuted by a triple alliance - old Ba'athists who had many sins to account for; foreign insurgents; and criminals from the ranks of the 31,000 rapists, murderers and thieves who were released from jail by Saddam in the final months of his rule. The diverse motivations of those conducting the violence made negotiations impossible.
Dr Allawi refused to countenance calling off the elections in January, saying that it was entirely possible to guarantee an acceptable reduction in violence in Iraq over the next four months.
He said that by January Iraq would have 90,000 police and 100,000 national guard and national army troops. He rejected accusations that the interim regime had lost control of the security situation, and contended that although "the attacks are deadlier, they are decreasing".
He conceded that security fears and difficulties in compiling an acceptable electoral register were a problem. He said any new government could draw effective legitimacy from the participation of "between 55 and 60 per cent" of the population. Local council elections in Umm Qasr, with a population of 70,000, had yielded a 70 per cent turnout.
Mr Blair's depiction of the conflict as part of a wider struggle against international terrorism was echoed by Dr Allawi, who declared the Iraq situation "a flagship for the Middle East".
Iran defied the United Nations on Tuesday by announcing it would go on converting a large amount of raw uranium to prepare it for enrichment, a process that can be used to develop atomic bombs.
Gholamreza Aghazadeh, the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, told reporters Iran had begun converting 37 tons of raw "yellowcake" uranium to process it for use in nuclear centrifuges -- the machines that enrich uranium.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, unanimously adopted a resolution on Saturday calling on Iran to suspend all activities related to uranium enrichment. The United States, Russia and the European Union reinforced the message on Monday by urging Tehran to comply.
"Some of the amount of the 37 tons has been used. The tests have been successful but these tests have to be continued using the rest of the material," said Aghazadeh, one of Iran's vice presidents, who is attending a general conference of the Vienna-based IAEA.
One nuclear expert has said that once converted from yellowcake into uranium hexafluoride, the feed material for enrichment centrifuges, Iran would eventually be able to enrich enough uranium for up to five nuclear weapons.
Iran had told the IAEA a few weeks ago it intended to run what it described as tests of its uranium conversion facility. However, the announcement came after the IAEA board of governors passed the resolution on Saturday calling on Iran to halt all activities linked to uranium enrichment.
In a In a related Story
The United States plans to sell Israel $319 million worth of air-launched bombs, including 500 "bunker busters" able to penetrate Iran's underground nuclear facilities, Israeli security sources said on Tuesday.
The Haaretz newspaper quoted a Pentagon report as saying the planned procurement sought "to maintain Israel's qualitative advantage and advance U.S. strategic and tactical interests."
The U.S. embassy in Israel had no comment, referring queries to Washington. Israel's Defense Ministry also declined comment.
But a senior Israeli security source who confirmed the Haaretz story told Reuters: "This is not the sort of ordnance needed for the Palestinian front. Bunker busters could serve Israel against Iran, or possibly Syria."
Haaretz quoted Israeli government sources as saying the sale, including 4,500 other guided munitions, was not expected to go through until after the U.S. elections in November. Earlier this month, Haaretz said Israel sought to obtain the U.S.-made, one-ton "bunker buster" bombs for a possible future strike against arch-foe Iran's atomic development program, which the Jewish state considers a strategic threat.
"This relationship has a long history. The United States has given Israel more advanced weapons than this," a spokesman for Iran's Defense Ministry said.
"This could be psychological warfare to test us," he added.
Tehran denies hostile designs, saying its nuclear program has peaceful purposes only. This week, it rejected international calls to comply with a U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency demand that it halt all uranium-enrichment activities.
Among the nuclear facilities that Iran has declared are uranium mines near the city of Yazd, and a uranium-enrichment plant in Natanz incorporating large underground buildings that could accommodate thousands of gas centrifuges.
Western diplomats accuse Iran of having several undeclared facilities close to Tehran thought to be related to uranium enrichment, a process the United States and some other countries believe Tehran will use to produce fissile material for weapons.
VIA FOX NEWS
Heyward:
"60 Minutes Wednesday" had full confidence in the original report or it would not have aired.
However, in the wake of serious and disturbing questions that came up after the broadcast, CBS News has done extensive additional reporting in an effort to confirm the documents' authenticity. That included an interview featured on last week's edition of "60 Minutes Wednesday" with Marian Carr Knox, secretary to the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian (search), the officer named as the author of the documents; the interview with Bill Burkett to be seen tonight; and a further review of the forensic evidence on both sides of the debate.
Based on what we now know, CBS News cannot prove that the documents are authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using them in the report. We should not have used them. That was a mistake, which we deeply regret. Nothing is more important to us than our credibility and keeping faith with the millions of people who count on us for fair, accurate, reliable, and independent reporting. We will continue to work tirelessly to be worthy of that trust."
CBS News and CBS management are commissioning an independent review of the process by which the report was prepared and broadcast to help determine what actions need to be taken. The names of the people conducting the review will be announced shortly, and their findings will be made public.
Rather:
Last week, amid increasing questions about the authenticity of documents used in support of a "60 Minutes Wednesday" story about President Bush's time in the Texas Air National Guard (search), CBS News vowed to re-examine the documents in question — and their source — vigorously. And we promised that we would let the American public know what this examination turned up, whatever the outcome.
Now, after extensive additional interviews, I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically. I find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession of these papers. That, combined with some of the questions that have been raised in public and in the press, leads me to a point where — if I knew then what I know now — I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.
But we did use the documents. We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry. It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism.
Please know that nothing is more important to us than people's trust in our ability and our commitment to report fairly and truthfully.
A message posted on an Islamist Web site said Monday the militant group of al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had killed one of two Americans it was holding hostage, but the report could not be immediately verified.
The message was signed by Abu Maysarah al-Iraqi, a pseudonym for a contributor who has in the past posted messages on the Internet for the Tawhid and Jihad group, which set a 48-hour deadline Saturday to kill the two Americans and a Briton.
Russia is calling on Iran to comply with an International Atomic Energy Agency resolution demanding the suspension of all uranium enrichment activity.
A Russian foreign ministry statement Monday says Moscow backs the resolution as a way for Iran to answer all questions about the intentions of its nuclear program.
Russia is helping Iran build a nuclear reactor, despite strong pressure from the United States, which says Tehran could use it to make nuclear weapons.
An Iranian spokesman repeated today that Tehran's decision to suspend uranium enrichment was voluntary, and the program could be resumed at any time the government chooses.
On Sunday, U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said the IAEA resolution sends a clear message to Iran that it must answer questions about its nuclear activities.
Gunmen in Baghdad have killed two prominent clerics belonging to an influential Sunni Muslim group.
Muslim Scholars' Association member Sheikh Hazem Zeidi was shot dead at an isolated Sunni mosque in the Shia suburb of Sadr City on Sunday night.
Sheikh Muhammad Jadu was gunned down on his way to noon prayers in the mixed al-Baya neighbourhood on Monday.
Baghdad has witnessed several killings of clerics since the 2003 war, fuelling fears of possible Sunni-Shia conflict.
"After performing the night prayers at al-Sajjad Mosque, in Sadr City, [Sheikh Hazem] left in his car with two bodyguards," said a spokesmen for the association.
"A group of masked gunmen followed him in a private car and opened fire."
Mr Zeidi's role was to co-ordinate among Sunni clerics and other religious movements in Iraq, the association said.
He was also the imam, or prayer leader, at one of the 10 Sunni mosques reportedly located among the two million Shia inhabitants of the Sadr City slum.
"We hope it is not an organised campaign to assassinate the association's clerics," a source in the Muslim Scholars' Association is quoted as saying by Reuters news agency.
The association is a conservative group that opposes the US military presence in Iraq, but has worked for the release of foreign hostages.
CBS News is ready to admit it used fake memos in its 60 Minutes report on President George W. Bush's disputed Texas Air National Guard Service.
An official network statement is expected soon, perhaps as early as today, sources within the network say.
The statement comes after many "second-guessing" meetings within the network and a stormy meeting with news anchor Dan Rather over the weekend on whether or not to apologize to President Bush over the story which said he received special favors while serving in the Guard and avoided punishment for disobeying a direct order.
Rather went to Texas late last week to tape an interview with Bill Burkett, the former national guard official believed to be the souce for the memos. Burkett refused multiple requests for an interview as did both Rather and CBS News President Andrew Heyward.
Burkett did admit in interviews this weekend that he tried to contact the campaign of Democratic opponent John F. Kerry with "information" that he thought would help the Senator counter-attack his opponent.
Burkett has also urged Democrats to "rise up" against Bush and has said in past interviews that he saw Bush's military records destroyed.
Deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is depressed and has begged the Iraqi government for mercy, Iraq's Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said in an interview published Monday.
"He is distraught and depressed," Allawi said of Saddam, the man who was Iraq's president for 24 years and is awaiting trial for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
"Saddam and his colleagues are not the giants that the media sometimes talks about. Saddam sent us an oral message in which he begged for mercy. He said that they were working in the public interest and did not mean any harm," Allawi said in an interview with the pan Arab al-Hayat newspaper.
He also said he had survived four assassination attempts since his interim government came to power in June, the last just five days ago when his guards became suspicious of a car outside Baghdad's Green Zone compound housing the government and the U.S. and other embassies.
The car then blew up and a battle between gunmen and his guards ensued. Two non-Iraqi Arabs were arrested, he said.
Allawi would not give their nationality, but said they belonged to Islamist militant groups.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant Washington says is allied to al Qaeda, has threatened to assassinate Allawi, which he described in the interview as "despicable above all for the Iraqi people and for Iraq."
"For someone who appears to be connected with international organizations to come along and threaten Iraq's prime minister, whoever he may be, is unacceptable," Allawi said.
He reaffirmed his commitment to hold elections in the vast majority of Iraqi territories in January as planned, even if insecurity prevented them taking place in a few places.
"Those who cannot participate can take part in the next elections. But we hope to have stabilized the security situation by January," Allawi said.
A senior leader of Hamas's military wing was killed in an Israeli missile strike on his car as it drove through a Hamas stronghold in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, witnesses said.
The missile, which witnesses said was fired by an airforce drone, ripped through a car carrying a senior field commander of Hamas's Izz el-Deen al-Qassam brigades, Khaled Abu Selniya, 33. He was killed and six passersby were wounded.
Hamas vowed to avenge the death of Selniya, whom it described as a senior field commander of the group's armed wing, which has been behind scores of suicide bombings and other attacks against Israel over the past decade.
"It was a clear assassination of one of our mujahideen (Muslim fighter) ... Hamas will be able and capable of teaching the enemy a painful lesson," said Mushir al-Masri, a Hamas spokesman.
The Israeli army said in a statement that Selniya was targeted by the airforce because he played a central role in the manufacture and development of Qassam rockets which Hamas militants have fired at the nearby Israeli city of Sderot.
Selniya's mangled body was taken to a local hospital. Charred wreckage from the car was strewn across the street and windows were shattered in nearby shops.
The strike took place shortly after Hamas militants celebrated in the streets at the release of another leader of the group by Palestinian security forces.
The leader had been arrested earlier in the day and Selniya was apparently returning after visiting the man in his home in Gaza City's Sheikh Radwan neighborhood.
"There was an airforce strike on a senior Hamas terrorist who was traveling in a car," an army spokeswoman said.
Witnesses said an Israeli military drone was flying overhead when the car burst into flames. Several witnesses reported seeing a flash of light in the sky before the explosion.
A Saudi academic arrested over remarks condoning bombings has been sentenced to five years in prison.
Sayid bin Zair's was convicted for "sowing sedition and inciting disobedience to the ruler", his son said on Sunday.
The scholar, who was denied access to a lawyer, will appeal against the Riyadh court's verdict, said his son, Abd Allah, who attended the hearing on Sunday along with a handful of close relatives and a human-rights representative.
"The verdict was announced in the absence of a lawyer", who was never appointed, Abd Allah said after the more than two-hour session.
"The judge said there was no need for a lawyer according to Sharia (Islamic law)," he said.
After the verdict was read, plain-clothed police officers scuffled with members of Sayid bin Zair's family and friends who tried to approach the defendant as he was led out of the judge's quarters.
Muflih al-Qahtani, representative of the Saudi National Human Rights Association (NHRA), who was present during Sunday's session, said it had "followed the usual practice".
The Interior Ministry said in April that 54-year-old bin Zair, who is considered a hardliner, had been detained because of remarks in which he backed bombings in Riyadh that targeted Muslim and non-Muslim residents.
In a 15 April appearance on Aljazeera, the former professor of mass communications "described the terrorist acts committed by the deviant group as being directed at non-Muslims, condoning the killing of Muslims (in the process) by those who carry them out", an official said.
Iran rejected Sunday a U.N. resolution calling on it to freeze uranium enrichment activities and threatened to stop snap checks of its atomic facilities if its case were sent to the U.N. Security Council.
It said that if the Security Council went as far as punishing Tehran with sanctions, Iran might follow North Korea and pull out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty altogether.
Washington says Iran plans to use enriched uranium to make nuclear weapons, but Tehran says its nuclear program is dedicated solely to generating electricity.
The U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear watchdog, unanimously adopted a resolution Saturday calling on Iran to suspend all uranium enrichment-related activities.
"Iran will not accept any obligation regarding the suspension of uranium enrichment," chief nuclear negotiator Hassan Rohani told a news conference Sunday. "No international body can force Iran to do so."
His words chimed with the view of the Iranian parliament, which urged the government to ignore the resolution.
Although the IAEA board termed the suspension a "necessary" confidence-building measure, it observed that suspensions would be "voluntary decisions" by Iran and not obligations, enabling Tehran to tell Iranians it was not acting under U.N. pressure.
Abdul Samad Minty, head of South Africa's Council for the Non-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, told Reuters Iran was under no legal obligation to halt its enrichment plans and any decision to do so would come from Tehran's desire to create good will among skeptics and critics.
"If Iran decides at some point they do not want to suspend their program any more, they have that right," he said. South Africa, a former nuclear power, also has an enrichment program. Enriched to a low level, uranium can be used to fuel nuclear power stations like the one Iran is building at Bushehr on its south coast. Highly enriched, it can be used in bombs.
Rohani predicted a rough ride in the run-up to the next IAEA board of governors meeting on November 25.
"This is a war, we may win or we may lose," said the mid-ranking cleric, who is secretary-general of Iran's Supreme National Security Council.
"Iran has never accepted suspension through a resolution, but through political talks," Rohani said.
He said Iran would stop allowing U.N. inspectors to make short-notice visits to its atomic facilities if its dossier were sent to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions.
"If they want to send Iran to the Security Council, it is not wise, and we will stop implementing the Additional Protocol," he said.
Faced with a growing insurgency and a January deadline for national elections, American commanders in Iraq say they are preparing operations to open up rebel-held areas, especially Falluja, the restive city west of Baghdad now under control of insurgents and Islamist groups.
A senior American commander said the military intended to take back Falluja and other rebel areas by year's end. The commander did not set a date for an offensive but said that much would depend on the availability of Iraqi military and police units, which would be sent to occupy the city once the Americans took it.
The American commander suggested that operations in Falluja could begin as early as November or December, the deadline the Americans have given themselves for restoring Iraqi government control across the country.
"We need to make a decision on when the cancer of Falluja is going to be cut out," the American commander said. "We would like to end December at local control across the country."
"Falluja will be tough," he said.
At a minimum, the American commander said, local conditions would have to be secure for voting to take place in the country's 18 provincial capitals for the election to be considered legitimate. American forces have lost control over at least one provincial capital, Ramadi, in Al Anbar Province, and have only a tenuous grip over a second, Baquba, the capital of Diyala Province northeast of Baghdad. Other large cities in the region, like Samarra, are largely in the hands of insurgents.
Senior officials at the United Nations are concerned that legitimate elections might not be possible unless the security conditions here change. Violence against American forces surged last month to its highest level since the war began last year, with an average of 87 attacks per day. A string of deadly attacks in the past month continued Saturday, with a car bombing that killed at least 19 people in the northern city of Kirkuk.
At the same time, the Americans and the Iraqi interim government appear to be giving negotiations to disarm the rebels a final chance. Members of the Mujahedeen Shura, the eight-member council in control of Falluja, said they were planning to come to Baghdad on Sunday to meet with Iraqi officials to talk about disarming the rebels and opening the city to Iraqi government control.
"Although the Americans have lied many times, we are ready to start negotiations with the Iraqi government," said Hajji Qasim Muhammad Abdul Sattar, a member of the shura.
Dr. Ahmed Hardan, a Falluja doctor who will take part in the negotiations, said that at least some members on the council might be willing to strike a deal with the Americans.
Under the proposal to be discussed, Dr. Hardan said, the guerrillas would turn over their heavy weapons and allow a military force gathered from around Al Anbar Province to enter the city. That unit would replace the Falluja Brigade, the local militia set up after the fighting in April and which was composed almost entirely of insurgents and former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. It was routed by the insurgents, and the Iraqi government disbanded it this month.
An offensive on Falluja and in other cities in the Sunni triangle that have slipped out of the grip of American forces would undoubtedly test the political will of the interim government and of its prime minister, Ayad Allawi. An initial assault by American marines on Falluja was halted in April as Iraqi anger grew at the death of as many as 600 Iraqis in the fighting.
At the time, Marine commanders said that they were perhaps two days away from gaining control of the interior of the city, and that they were ordered to halt by the political leadership in Washington.
A second assault on Falluja could be expected to be at least as deadly as the first one. Witnesses from inside the city say the mujahedeen groups are preparing for a big fight, in part by burying large bombs along the main routes into the city.
But the American commander said he felt confident that things would be different this time, largely because now, unlike in April, there was a sovereign Iraqi government, and one that seemed willing to absorb the political storm that such an assault was likely to set off.
"I am rather confident we are not going to take on something as focused and important as Falluja without the endorsement and full understanding of what we are going to get ourselves into and the support of the Iraqi interim government," the American official said.
An armed group in Iraq has threatened to kill two Americans and a Briton held captive unless female prisoners in Abu Ghraib and Um Qasr prisons are released within 48 hours.
In an exclusive video aired by Aljazeera on Saturday, the captives appeared blind-folded and surrounded by hooded armed men.
The captives appeared to be giving details of who they were, but their voices could not be heard clearly. They wore normal clothes and appeared to be in good health.
The captors referred to themselves as al-Tawhid and al-Jihad group, which reportedly has links with suspected al-Qaida operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
The American and British embassies in Iraq said earlier they are making their best efforts to release the three captives.
US nationals Jack Hensley and Eugene "Jack" Armstrong and
British engineer Kenneth Bigley were seized by gunmen early on Thursday from their house in Baghdad's upscale al-Mansur district.
All three work for GSCS, a United Arab Emirates-based firm that has won several building contracts in Iraq.
Soldiers from a Fort Carson combat unit say they have been issued an ultimatum - re-enlist for three more years or be transferred to other units expected to deploy to Iraq.
Hundreds of soldiers from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team were presented with that message and a re-enlistment form in a series of assemblies last Thursday, said two soldiers who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The effort is part of a restructuring of the Army into smaller, more flexible forces that can deploy rapidly around the world.
A Fort Carson spokesman confirmed the re-enlistment drive is under way and one of the soldiers provided the form to the Rocky Mountain News. An Army spokesmen denied, however, that soldiers who don't re-enlist with the brigade were threatened.
The form, if signed, would bind the soldier to the 3rd Brigade until Dec. 31, 2007. The two soldiers said they were told that those who did not sign would be transferred out of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team.
"They said if you refuse to re-enlist with the 3rd Brigade, we'll send you down to the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which is going to Iraq for a year, and you can stay with them, or we'll send you to Korea, or to Fort Riley (in Kansas) where they're going to Iraq," said one of the soldiers, a sergeant.
The second soldier, an enlisted man who was interviewed separately, essentially echoed that view.
"They told us if we don't re-enlist, then we'd have to be reassigned. And where we're most needed is in units that are going back to Iraq in the next couple of months. So if you think you're getting out, you're not," he said.
The brigade's presentation outraged many soldiers who are close to fulfilling their obligation and are looking forward to civilian life, the sergeant said.
"We have a whole platoon who refuses to sign," he said.
Under current Army practice, members of Iraq-bound units are "stop-lossed," meaning they could be retained in the unit for an entire year in Iraq, even if their active-duty enlistment expires.
A recruiter told the sergeant that the Army would keep them "as long as they needed us."
Extending a soldier's active duty is within Army authority, since the enlistment contract carries an eight-year obligation, even if a soldier signs for only three or four years of active duty.
But some soldiers presented with the re-enlistment message last week believe they've already done their duty and should not be penalized for choosing to leave. They deployed to Iraq for a year with the 3rd Brigade last April.
"I don't want to go back to Iraq," said the sergeant. "I went through a lot of things for the Army that weren't necessary and were risky. Iraq has changed a lot of people.''
The enlisted soldier said the recruiters' message left him troubled, unable to sleep and "filled with dread."
"For me, it wasn't about going back to Iraq. It's just the fact that I'm ready to get out of the Army," he said.
WHAT THE FORM SAID
• "Elect not to extend or re-enlist and understand that the soldier will be reassigned IAW (in accordance with) the needs of the Army by Department of the Army HRC (Human Resources Command) . . . or Fort Carson G1 (Personnel Office).''
WHAT IT MEANS
• Soldiers who sign the letter are bound to the 3rd Brigade Combat Team until Dec. 31, 2007.
• Soldiers who do not sign the letter might be transferred out of the brigade and possibly to Iraq.
We will soon know more about the president's history with the Air National Guard. A federal judge has ordered the Pentagon to release some of his files on Monday. The move comes in the middle of the controversy over a "60 Minutes" story on the same topic.
Critics say the "60-Minutes" story was based on forged documents. And some are questioning the CBS's sources. But, the network stands behind the story.
The 60-Minutes story questioned whether President George W. Bush received special treatment as a member of the Texas Air National Guard. Before it aired, CBS says senior producers and news executives looked the story over. And, two of four experts who examined copies of at least some documents in question still say they're authentic.
Meantime, CNN reports one expert had reservations and CBS ignored them. And, the White House told reporters today that "CBS has know acknowledged" that the story may have been based on forgeries.
Some say there is proof the documents came from a Kinko's Copy Store in Texas that happens to be located near the home of a well known source who's had a long standing feud with the Texas National Guard. CBS won't reveal its sources or how it received the documents.
Bob Schieffer of CBS News said, "I think we have to find some way to show our viewers they are not forgeries, I don't know how we are going to do that without violating the confidentiality of sources."
News Anchor Dan Rather says the network still stands behind the "thrust" of its story. And CBS is promising an all-out effort to verify that the documents are authentic.
US warplanes launched fresh air strikes overnight around the rebel-held city of Fallujah, killing about 63 foreign fighters loyal to Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the US military said on Friday.
The strikes, along with an assault on Friday against a rebel stronghold in Baghdad, were part of a push to quell insurgency and lawlessness enough to hold a national election next January.
A US military statement said US warplanes had mounted a “precision strike” at 9:45 pm on a compound used by militants loyal to Zarqawi.
“The number of foreign fighters killed during the strike is estimated at approximately 63,” the military said.
Early on Friday, US warplanes destroyed a compound in south central Fallujah which the US military said was also used by Zarqawi’s militants. Three people were killed and another three injured when US forces launched a new air strike late on Friday, rescue workers said. An American plane dived over the city’s Dhubat district at around 9:30 pm (1730 GMT) and shortly afterwards a loud explosion rocked the area, one resident said.
US and Iraqi forces have arrested 63 suspected militants during a major security operation in central Baghdad. Amid gun battles, they sealed off the Haifa Street area in response to mortar attacks on nearby Iraqi ministries and the US and British embassies.
Iraqi police say those held include Syrians, Lebanese and Egyptians.
During the operation, a car packed with explosives rammed a police convoy in the Rashid Street district, killing three policemen and injuring 37 people.
Earlier, American troops foiled another attack when they shot at a car containing at least one suicide bomber, who drove at their checkpoint near the River Tigris.
Democratic Sen. John Kerry on Friday accused the Bush administration of hiding a plan to mobilize more National Guard and Reserve troops after the election while glossing over a worsening conflict in Iraq."He won't tell us what congressional leaders are now saying, that this administration is planning yet another substantial call-up of reservists and Guard units immediately after the election," Kerry said. "Hide it from people through the election, then make the move."
The White House called the allegation of a secret plan "completely irresponsible ... false and ridiculous." The Pentagon said troop replacements would include some from National Guard and Reserve units and those expected to be sent to Iraq had been notified.
While Bush has been campaigning as the best candidate to deter terrorists and protect the nation, his presidential rival portrayed him as out of touch with a serious and dangerous situation in Iraq.
"With all due respect to the president, has he turned on the evening news lately? Does he read the newspapers?" Kerry said. "Does he really know what's happening? Is he talking about the same war that the rest of us are talking about?"
Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, top Democrat on the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee and a former Marine who served in Vietnam, said he had learned through conversations with Pentagon officials that beginning in November, "the Bush administration plans to call up large numbers of the military Guard and Reserves, to include plans that they previously had put off to call up the Individual Ready Reserve."
Other Democrats joined Kerry in a chorus trying to drown out Bush's message on Iraq.
"It's clear that this administration didn't know what it was getting into, or else they grossly misrepresented the facts to the American people," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California. "In either case, staying the course is not an option."
Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, campaigning for Kerry in Pennsylvania, said that in spite of bleak national intelligence estimates on Iraq, Bush still "goes out misrepresenting and distorting the progress that's being made over there."
Kerry said the president was avoiding hard truths about casualties, new insurgencies and troop shortages. "He won't tell us that, day by day, we're running out of soldiers and that we're now resorted to a backdoor draft of our reservists and our National Guard."
The Bush campaign denied the assertion about secret plans.
"John Kerry's conspiracy theory of a secret troop deployment is completely irresponsible," said spokesman Steve Schmidt. "John Kerry didn't launch this attack when he spoke to the National Guard because he knows they know it is false and ridiculous."
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said of Kerry: "He's struggling to explain his incoherent positions on Iraq. He's engaging in baseless attacks."
The mother of a soldier killed in Iraq was arrested Thursday after interrupting a campaign speech by first lady Laura Bush. As police hauled her away, she shouted, "Police brutality."
Wearing a T-shirt with the message "President Bush You Killed My Son," Sue Niederer of nearby Hopewell screamed questions at the first lady as the audience tried to drown her out by chanting, "Four more years! Four more years!"
She pressed on, refused to leave and eventually police removed her from the firehouse rally.
The first lady finished her speech, praising the administration's achievements in the war on terror and the economy.
Outside, Niederer said she wanted to ask Laura Bush "Why the senators, the legislators, the congressmen, why aren't their children serving?"
She went on to blame the president for the death of her 24-year-old son, Army First Lieutenant Seth Dvorin. He was killed while trying to defuse a roadside bomb that exploded on him.
"My son was in the Army, and he was killed February third this year," she said.
As the Hamilton police and Secret Service agents surrounded her and reporters pressed her with questions, she held her ground, claiming "I had my ticket" to attend the speech by the first lady.
Police subsequently handcuffed her and she was led away to a nearby van. As she was escorted, she repeatedly shouted "Police brutality" and demanded to know her rights and the charges.
Later, she was charged with defiant trespass and released.
"President Vladimir Putin said Friday the Kremlin was preparing to take preventive action against terrorists, even as a Chechen rebel leader purportedly claimed responsibility for a series of attacks that killed hundreds of people and threatened further violence.
Putin's comments were the highest-level warning yet that Russia could take some sort of pre-emptive action against terror groups in the wake of this month's deadly school hostage-taking in Beslan. Lower-level officials have threatened anti-terror strikes abroad, and it was not immediately clear whether Putin was referring to actions only at home or outside Russia's borders.
'Now in Russia, we are seriously preparing to act preventively against terrorists,' Putin said, according to the Interfax news agency. It quoted him as saying that the steps would be 'in strict accordance with the law and norms of the constitution, relying on international law.'
Recalling the attempts to appease Adolf Hitler in the 1930s, Putin said there could be no 'bargaining' with terrorists.
'Every concession leads to a widening of their demands and multiples the losses,' Putin was quoted as saying.
'In this war there is no rear or neutral zone, and where terrorists don't meet the necessary resistance, their bases and coordination centers crop up,' Putin said."
Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev claimed responsibility on Friday for the Russian school siege in which more than 320 hostages were killed, half of them children, and threatened more attacks by any means he saw fit.
Basayev, Russia's most wanted man, expressed regret for the bloody outcome in Beslan, blaming it on the Kremlin. He made clear there would be no let-up in rebel attacks in the future in the campaign for an independent Chechnya.
"We are not bound by any circumstances, or to anybody, and we will continue to fight as is convenient and advantageous to us, and by our rules," he said in a statement.
The statement, that also gave a chilling account of his spending on attacks that have killed well over 400 people in a period of less than two weeks, appeared on rebel Web Site www.kavkazcenter.com a day after President Vladimir Putin ruled out negotiations with Chechen separatists.
Putin said the Beslan attackers were part of international terrorism.
Putin's tough stance has disappointed many Western leaders who had hoped for a rethink of Chechen policy after Beslan to end the 10-year conflict which has cost thousands of lives.
Basayev confirmed Russian suspicions his group had also masterminded suicide bomb blasts that brought down two passenger planes over Russia on August 24 killing 90 people and two other bomb attacks in Moscow.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage denounced Basayev. "He has proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that he is inhuman. Anyone who would use (the killing of) innocents for political aims is not worthy of existence in the type of society that we endorse," he told a news conference in Warsaw.
Basayev said units of his Riyadus-Salikhin group had carried out the September 1 attack on the school in southern Russia, seizing more than 1,000 hostages.
A candlelight vigil took place Wednesday night to remember U.S. war dead in Iraq during the week of the 1,000th casualty. One North Texas family whose relative -- Chad Drake -- was killed outside Baghdad on Monday, was among the mourners at Dallas City Hall Plaza.
A family friend said the vigil turned abrasive toward the family members. The friend sent an e-mail message to NBC 5 News that described the alleged treatment some vigil attendees directed at the family.
The family friend's message alleges Drake's mother was "harassed and yelled at, booed and hissed, told her son died for nothing."
Drake's mother reportedly left the event in tears.
The family attended the vigil because they thought it was meant to honor U.S. casualties. The event was organized by the Dallas Peace Center, which opposes the war.
The Drake family says they were upset about the antiwar tenor of the assembled crowd. The director of the Dallas Peace Center said the event was not intended to be an antiwar rally, but said e-mail notifications of the vigil were sent to a broad audience. Because the venue is a public place, he said, a variety of people with various views on the war in Iraq attended.
He also said the event was planned to include political overtones, but the Drake family should have been informed.
The center, however, did issue an apology to the Drake family.
"I want to be clear in issuing an apology to the mother of the recent victim of that war," Lon Burnam, of the Dallas Peace Center, said. "I can certainly understand why she would not feel comfortable in that particular venue with that particular group of people."
Peace Center officials said they believe the Drake family left before the scheduled events started, and the family might not have seen the planned ceremony.
Drake's sister told NBC 5 News that the family thought some of the crowd was hostile, so the family departed the vigil.
A Fort Riley soldier who recently returned from a second tour of duty in Iraq was killed and another soldier was critically wounded in violence that erupted at a rented home in a rural area 30 miles from the base.
Sgts. Aaron Stanley, 22, of Bismarck, North Dakota, and Eric Colvin, 23, of Papillion, Nebraska, were charged in connection with the murder Monday night of Staff Sgt. Matthew Werner, 30, of Oxnard, California, at a home west of Clay Center.
The two also were charged with attempted first-degree murder for the shooting of Spec. Christopher Hymer, 23, of Nevada, Missouri, who is in critical condition in a Wichita hospital.
Stanley already faces eight unrelated drug charges filed in June. It was Stanley's rented home where the shootings took place, and authorities believe he called police. A rifle and a handgun were found at the scene.
Authorities have not said what triggered the bloodshed.
Werner had returned to Fort Riley about a month ago for surgery on a hand injured during a game of football in Iraq. He was married and had won the Army Achievement Medal for his service.
"I hope we don't see another Iraq-type operation for a long time ... without U.N. approval and much broader support from the international community," Annan added.
As Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pressed ahead this week with his Gaza Strip evacuation plan, he grappled with a new obstacle to implementing the withdrawal: the specter of violent clashes mushrooming into a civil war.
Sharon’s cabinet approved a bill to compensate settlers who are evacuated from the narrow slice of coastal land under the withdrawal initiative, but it may prove meaningless if the prime minister doesn’t calm fears of an internecine conflict between security forces and settlers resisting the withdrawal.
A right-wing petition advocating active resistance to the withdrawal, recent telephone threats against Sharon and the head of the Disengagement Administration, and a mass demonstration combined this week to stir worries of a violent showdown over the evacuation.
The unsettling climate in the country was magnified Tuesday when Rabbi Yosef Dayan of the West Bank community of Psagot said on Israeli television that if requested he would hold a mystical kabbalah ceremony to put a death curse on Sharon — just as he did on Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin just prior to his assassination in November 1995.
Following the broadcast, there were calls for the rabbi’s arrest and a police inquiry was launched.
The fears helped to stir support for a referendum on the Gaza evacuation among both opponents and supporters. Polls show more than 70 percent of Israelis favoring the disengagement plan.
Speculation began in earnest last week about an unprecedented clash between Israeli security forces and withdrawal opponents. An influential group of right-wing intellectuals, including Netanyahu’s father, signed a petition calling on soldiers to refuse orders to evacuate some 8,000 settlers who live in the Gaza Strip. The leaflet called the planned withdrawal “ethnic cleansing” as well as a “crime against humanity.”
Just days later, tens of thousands of opponents of the withdrawal plan packed Zion Square in Jerusalem to demonstrate against the evacuation. While speakers at Sunday’s rally denounced any use of violence against soldiers, they also argued that Sharon’s decision to move forward with the withdrawal was undemocratic and illegitimate.
Settler leaders argued that it was Sharon’s bulldozer tactics rather than their own rhetoric that would be responsible if violence erupts.
“Are we causing a civil war?” Avner Shimoni, head of the Gaza Strip region, asked at the rally. “Arik, in your trampling style it is you who are teaching us how to act. We are not lambs that you can expel from this place to another.”
Protesters, who were overwhelmingly of high school and college age, carried signs that accused Sharon of “disengaging from the people.” A handful held aloft pictures of Sharon that branded him “the dictator.”
Even though rally leaders condemned the use of violence and encouraging soldiers to disobey military orders, the scenes at Zion Square whipped up memories of the incendiary atmosphere that prevailed on the eve of the assassination of Rabin. Yigal Amir, an extreme right-winger who opposed Rabin’s land-for-peace policy, shot and killed Rabin as he was leaving a peace rally in Tel Aviv.
For instance, one teen protester held aloft a yellow flag with the picture of Meir Kahane, the right-wing rabbi from Brooklyn who was banned from the Knesset for advocating the expulsion of Arabs from Israel. At the same time, leaflets were passed through the crowd arguing that passive non-violence wouldn’t be enough to face down the government.
“We must not forget there is a time to love and a time to hate,” it said.
Three Americans have been sentenced to up to 10 years in jail after being found guilty by an Afghan court on charges including torture, running a private prison and illegal detention.
Jonathan "Jack" Idema, a former U.S. Green Beret, was arrested in July along with another ex-serviceman, Brent Bennett, and documentary film-maker Edward Caraballo.
They had denied the charges and insisted they were in Afghanistan with U.S. and Afghan government sanction to help track down al Qaeda and Taliban extremists.
"I apologize that we tried to save these people," Idema told reporters immediately after the verdict.
"We should have let the Taliban murder every ... one of them," he said bitterly.
Idema and Bennett were each sentenced to 10 years in jail and Caraballo to eight. Four Afghan co-defendants received sentences ranging from one to five years.
John Edwards Tiffany, a lawyer for Idema, said they planned to appeal.
"Justice was not served today," Tiffany said. "I blame the U.S. government, the Bush administration and the Afghan legal system, which is not anywhere near where it needs to be."
Idema told the court earlier that he had been issued with a passport by a special U.S. agency that he declined to name and had a visa for Afghanistan similar to those given to special forces operatives.
Speaking under an oath he swore on the Koran -- to applause from the gallery -- Idema insisted he had been operating with official U.S. and Afghan sanction.
"I swear in the name of Allah to tell the truth and nothing but the truth," he said.
Apparently the Swift Vets' account of what John Kerry did to deserve a
Silver Star was on the money. Kerry finishing off a fleeing, injured
soldier earned him a Silver Star? The report featured below contradicts everything Kerry has said regarding the incident and should sink Kerry's boat for good. Assuming, of course, the documents are real.
...While troops conducted sweep, PCF 94 and 23 movefauimkiver
[sic] towards area from which Army advisor reported gunshots. PCF
43 remained at original ambush site to provide support for troops.
PCF 94 and 23 proceeded to VQ 984831 and then turned to return
to PCF 43 location. At VQ 984830 a B-40 rocket exploded in water
close aboard PCF 94 blowing out window frame. Both units received
heavy small arms fire and OTC aga [sic] called units to turn into fire
and charge ambush site. PCF 43 was [redact] and moved
immediately to assist. PCF 94 beached in center of ambush in front
of small path when VC sprung [sic] up from bunker 10 feet from
unit. Man ran with weapon towards hootch. Forward M-60 gunner
wounded man in leg. OinC [Kerry] jumped ashore and gave pursuit
while other units saturated area with fire and beached placing
assault parties ashore. OinC of PCF 94 chased VC inland behind
hootch and shot him while he fled capturing one B-40 rocket
launcher with round in chamber. ... [description of other units'
actions]
While PCF 43 provide [sic] mortar support, PCF 94 and 23 assault
parties reconned to VQ 985835 where 3 VC where [sic] observed
running from them out of firing range. Assault party could not five
pursuit [sic] due to proximity of mortar rounds passing overhead.
The 3 a.m. attack came soon after engineers had completed a two-month project to install two critical valves that had been damaged in an earlier blast.
Smolinsky said experts from the Air Force, the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy were examining the information and may decide soon to conduct their own tests with more sophisticated equipment on the scene.
Pakistani forces have shelled a religious school in South Waziristan they believe is sheltering al-Qaeda fighters, officials in the region say.
Tuesday morning's attack targeted the religious school of Maulana Mohammad Shafiq Mehsud in Makin, about 100km (60 miles) north of the main town of Wana.
Witnesses saw the walls of the school crumbling and say the house of the religious head was also hit by shells.
Pakistan began fresh anti-militant operations in the area last Thursday.
Officials in the Afghan border region say they believe foreign militants and local supporters are taking shelter in the mud-built compound of the seminary.
The Pakistani army says 60 militants have been killed in the area around Wana since last Thursday and 150 in total since major operations began in March.
The latest operation was initiated by the bombing last Thursday of a suspected al-Qaeda training base by Pakistani forces near Dila Khula.
Some residents of Waziristan have accused the army of targeting civilians.
However, army spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan said: "The military is hitting at precise targets."
Pakistan believes hundreds of foreign militants, including Chechens, Uzbeks and Arabs, are hiding in Waziristan, protected by some sympathetic tribesmen.
The U.S. Marine general responsible for Fallujah opposed the April attack on the city as well as the order to withdraw his troops before they had gained control of it.
Lt. Gen. James Conway, the outgoing commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Unit, told the Washington Post he resisted called for revenge after four American security workers were killed and mutilated in Fallujah March 31. Instead, civilian authorities, Coalition Provisional Chief Paul Bremer and the White House, decided to send the Marines in to capture or kill the perpetrators.
Well into the siege on the city -- after President George Bush called a meeting at Camp David with his top security advisers -- Conway was ordered to withdraw his troops.
In their place, Conway was pressed into crafting something called the Fallujah Brigade, a band of largely former Iraqi military soldiers who were supposed to keep order in the city. Fallujah became a "no go" zone for U.S. forces, although there are frequent battles on the edge of the city, and the Fallujah Brigade became a large part of the problem -- even enforcing a decree by a local sheik that anyone wearing the uniform of the U.S.- backed Iraqi National Guard would be killed.
Two ING battalion commanders were kidnapped Aug. 9. At least one of them was killed after being forced to make a videotaped confession of collaboration with the United States, and his body dumped in downtown Fallujah.
The Falluajah Brigade was officially disbanded last week, but the foundation had been laid at least a month ago. Officials from the 1st Marine Division told the replacement ING battalion commanders the brigade would be taken apart by Aug. 21, and the local police would be disbanded as well.
The plan was to clear the city of any Fallujah Brigade and police members who could be convinced to cooperate with the U.S. military and to the government in Baghdad. They were invited to join the new Iraqi army or the highway patrol, respectively. Any one who did not want to join those units was expected to turn in their uniforms, weapons and ID cards.
The intention was to turn Fallujah into a blank slate -- that is, anyone who appeared on the street with a gun or in a unifom would be considered fair game if Baghdad asked U.S. forces to go back in and clear the city.
That order has yet to be given, but the Marines situated around Fallujah have stepped up the pace of operations in the last week. News reports say at least 15 Iraqis were killed in fighting there Monday.
Most Marines interviewed believed they were within three or four days of beating back the insurgent force in town when they were pulled out by civilian authorities, who believed the operation was alienating Iraqis.
More telling is the fact that senior commanders universally said in interviews -- all of them on condition of anonymity -- if they were making the decision, they would not have gone into Fallujah at that time under those conditions.
It is a basic U.S. military tenet to choose the time and place of a battle. The streets of Fallujah may be an unavoidable and tricky battlefield, but the immediate aftermath of the March 31 killings was not the time to fight, they said.
First, that robbed them of the element of surprise. It was well known -- because it was announced from press podiums in Baghdad -- that U.S. forces were going in to find the perpetrators and bring Fallujah under control.
Second, it "taught" the insurgents that their provocative acts could draw the United States into an urban battle when they wanted it, rather than the other way around.
Third, finding the individuals whose faces were on the videotape of the contractor killings is in essence a police job. Fallujah being the tribal city that it was, it would be easy under peaceful conditions to have local police find the identities of the killers and arrest them. Hunting down a handful of men and boys is not the best use of U.S. military capabilities.
A senior Marine official told Marines just rotating into Iraq in July that U.S. forces were ordered into and out of Fallujah for political reasons, but it was "nothing to gnash your teeth about." Marines are there to follow the orders of civilian authorities.
Turkey says it will end cooperation with the US in Iraq if the Americans continue with their offensive in the northern Iraqi town of Talafar. Ankara is concerned about the plight of the large Turkmen population there, some of whom have been killed.
US and Iraqi troops last week began a major operation against Talafar - a suspected haven for foreign fighters entering Iraq from Syria.
On Friday Turkey's foreign ministry urged the US to halt the offensive.
"What is being done there is harming the civilian population, that it is wrong," Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said on Monday.
He added that if the operation continues in Talafar, "Turkey's cooperation on issues regarding Iraq will come to a total stop".
The BBC's Jonny Dymond in Ankara says an end to Turkish cooperation in Iraq could have a serious impact.
As well as supplying logistical help for the US armed forces there, Turkey is a major trade and supply route into the country.
The Turkish airbase of Incirlik has been used by the US to rotate its troops in and out of Iraq.
Our correspondent adds that it is not clear yet quite what Turkey means by ending cooperation - but the US needs Turkey enough for it to heed the minister's warning.
The Turks regards northern Iraq as part of their sphere of influence - not only because of its close ethnic and linguistic ties with Iraq's Turkmen but because of the presence of large Kurdish populations on both sides of the border.
We are so Sorry for 9-11
September 11, 2004
By Kamal Nawash (Free Muslims.org)
This September 11 marks the third unforgettable anniversary of the worst mass murder in American history.
After September 11, many in the Muslim world chose denial and hallucination rather than face up to the sad fact that Muslims perpetrated the 9-11 terrorist acts and that we have an enormous problem with extremism and support for terrorism. Many Muslims, including religious leaders, and “intellectuals” blamed 9-11 on a Jewish conspiracy and went as far as fabricating a tale that 4000 Jews did not show up for work in the World Trade Center on 9-11. Yet others blamed 9-11 on an American right wing conspiracy or the U.S. Government which allegedly wanted an excuse to invade Iraq and “steal” Iraqi oil.
After numerous admissions of guilt by Bin Laden and numerous corroborating admissions by captured top level Al-Qaida operatives, we wonder, does the Muslim leadership have the dignity and courage to apologize for 9-11? If not 9-11, will we apologize for the murder of school children in Russia? If not Russia, will we apologize for the train bombings in Madrid, Spain? If not Spain, will we apologize for suicide bombings in buses, restaurants and other public places? If not suicide bombings, will we apologize for the barbaric beheadings of human beings? If not beheadings, will we apologize for the rape and murder of thousands of innocent people in Darfour? If not Darfour, will we apologize for the blowing up of two Russian planes by Muslim women? What will we apologize for? What will it take for Muslims to realize that those who commit mass murder in the name of Islam are not just a few fringe elements? What will it take for Muslims to realize that we are facing a crisis that is more deadly than the Aids epidemic? What will it take for Muslims to realize that there is a large evil movement that is turning what was a peaceful religion into a cult?
Will Muslims wake up before it is too late? Or will we continue blaming the Jews and an imaginary Jewish conspiracy? The blaming of all Muslim problems on Jews is a cancer that is destroying Muslim society from within and it must stop.
Muslims must look inward and put a stop to many of our religious leaders who spend most of their sermons teaching hatred, intolerance and violent jihad. We should not be afraid to admit that as Muslims we have a problem with violent extremism. We should not be afraid to admit that so many of our religious leaders belong behind bars and not behind a pulpit. Only moderate Muslims can challenge and defeat extremist Muslims. We can no longer afford to be silent. If we remain silent to the extremism within our community then we should not expect anyone to listen to us when we complain of stereotyping and discrimination by non-Muslims; we should not be surprised when the world treats all of us as terrorists; we should not be surprised when we are profiled at airports. Simply put, not only do Muslims need to join the war against terror, we need to take the lead in this war.
As to apologizing, we will no longer wait for our religious leaders and “intellectuals” to do the right thing. Instead, we will start by apologizing for 9-11. We are so sorry that 3000 people were murdered in our name. We will never forget the sight of people jumping from two of the highest buildings in the world hoping against hope that if they moved their arms fast enough that they may fly and survive a certain death from burning. We are sorry for blaming 9-11 on a Jewish or right wing conspiracy. We are so sorry for the murder of more than three hundred school children and adults in Russia. We are so sorry for the murder of train passengers in Spain. We are so sorry for all the victims of suicide bombings. We are so sorry for the beheadings, abductions, rapes, violent Jihad and all the atrocities committed by Muslims around the world. We are so sorry for a religious education that raised killers rather than train people to do good in the world. We are sorry that we did not take the time to teach our children tolerance and respect for other people. We are so sorry for not rising up against the dictators who have ruled the Muslim world for decades. We are so sorry for allowing corruption to spread so fast and so deep in the Muslim world that many of our youth lost hope. We are so sorry for allowing our religious leaders to relegate women to the status of forth class citizens at best and sub-humans at worse.
We are so sorry.
Iraq's elections will go ahead as scheduled in January even if some Iraqis are unable to vote due to the security situation in the country, interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said in an interview published in the several western daily newspapers.
The Iraqi leader acknowledged that there were currently problems in his country, especially in the violence-wracked city of Fallujah, but said these would not prevent the elections being held.
In the interview, published in several British and US dailies as well as in the French paper Le Figaro, Allawi declared: "If for any reason 300,000 people cannot have an election, cannot vote because terrorists decide so, then frankly 300,000 people... is not going to alter 25 million people voting."
If the elections were prevented in the flashpoint city of Fallujah -- where US military strikes were again underway on Monday -- its inhabitants could vote later, the prime minister said.
"Militias have to disband. Criminals have to be surrendered to the government. Foreign fighters have to be surrendered and the Iraqi police and national guard have to be fully deployed in Fallujah," he added.
His government was "determined to win the war against the terrorists, and establish democracy in Iraq," said, who was appointed last June when the United States put in place an interim Iraqi administration to run the country until the elections.
The Iraqi premier also said he expected the captured former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein to go on trial before the end of the year.
He said he hoped the trial would help establish a clear distinction between members of Saddam's Baath Party who committed crimes during his rule, and those who simply joined the party because they had to. Of former Baath Party officials who did not commit crimes, he said: "We are not interested in pursuing them. They should be part of the civil society of Iraq, part of the political process."
Meanwhile at least 45 people died in a wave of bombings and battles between US troops and rebels on Sunday as the United States expressed confidence the violence would not halt the elections.
Loyalists of alleged Al-Qaeda chief in Iraq, Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, claimed attacks on the heavily fortified central Baghdad compound housing the government and the US embassy and on the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.
In Washington, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States was confident elections could be held in Iraq on schedule despite the insurgency.
"There is an insurgency raging. We see it every day, there's no question about it," Powell said on the NBC television program "Meet the Press." "This is a difficult time as this insurgency still rages and as we work to bring it under control.
"But it will be brought under control," he said. "It's not an impossible task, and when it has been brought under control you will find that the forces that keep Iraq together are stronger than the forces that would pull it apart.
"When that insurgency is put down, what the people of the world will see are Iraqis in charge of their own destiny," Powell said.
Update: U.S. offensives in rebel-held Iraqi cities in recent weeks are part of a major push to wrest them from insurgents before the end of December to allow local security forces to oversee elections, U.S. commanders said.
The battle plan, drawn up last month, focuses on the major trouble spots -- Tal Afar, Samarra, Falluja, Ramadi and parts of Baghdad -- but is nationwide in scale and has economic as well as military aspects, according to senior military officials.
"The overriding strategy is to gain local security control in all the cities throughout Iraq by the end of December," U.S. Air Force Brigadier General Erv Lessel, the deputy director of operations in Iraq, told Reuters in an interview.
"That local control has to do with getting capable Iraqi security forces -- police backed up by Iraqi National Guards -- and competent local authorities in control of the cities so that life can go on, so that reconstruction can continue, so that elections can take place."
General George Casey, the commander of the U.S.-led multinational force in Iraq, drew up the plan after consultation with local commanders and shaped it to reflect demands in the U.N. Security Council's last resolution on Iraq.
"Part of our charter under the U.N. resolution is to provide a secure environment to allow the political process to go forward, to allow elections to take place in the December-January timeframe," Lessel said.
In recent weeks, U.S.-led forces have engaged in all-out battles or carried out airstrikes in or around several restive cities, including Najaf, Falluja, Ramadi, Tal Afar and Baghdad. For several weeks there has been a standoff around Samarra.
Seventeen months after U.S.-led forces ousted Saddam Hussein, many pockets of the country are outside their control.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said last week he doubted elections could be held as planned before the end of January if the current level of violence continues.
When co-announcer John Madden marveled at the seesawing of the score - "This is what you call a flip-flop," he said - Michaels retorted: "You're in the right state for that."
A huge explosion in North Korea last week was a deliberate blast to pave the way for a hydro-electric dam, Pyongyang said Monday.
Washington and Seoul have said the explosion was unlikely to have been a nuclear weapons test. South Korean media said an accident at an underground munitions depot or a weapons factory was a likely explanation for possibly two blasts.
A British minister visiting Pyongyang said late Monday that the North Korean authorities had agreed to allow foreign envoys to visit the scene and see for themselves.
South Korea's financial markets, which can react sharply to developments in the North, had ignored the blast reports, which came as diplomats were seeking to persuade Pyongyang to return this month to six-party talks on its nuclear weapons programs.
"It was no nuclear explosion or an accident. It was a deliberate controlled detonation to demolish a mountain in the far north of the country," a BBC correspondent in Pyongyang with British Foreign Office minister Bill Rammell quoted North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun as saying.
Britain's Press Association gave similar details in a pool report and China's Xinhua news agency quoted a North Korean Foreign Ministry official as giving the same explanation.
Paek, who was providing the first North Korean word on the explosion, said it was part of a construction project to build a hydro-electric dam in the remote mountainous region of Ryanggang on the Chinese border.
The BBC said that when Paek was asked why North Korea had not explained earlier about the blasts he told Rammell Pyongyang had not done so because all foreign journalists were liars.
Later in the day, Rammell, the most senior British official to visit the North, told accompanying journalists that Pyongyang had agreed to let Western diplomats visit the site of the blast.
A group of prominent Jewish rabbis have asked the Israeli army not to flinch from killing Palestinian civilians in the context of the ongoing military campaign against armed groups resisting the occupation.
In a letter to the Israeli defence minister, Shaul Mofaz, published on Tuesday, the rabbis said killing enemy civilians is "normal" during the time of war and that the Israeli occupation army should never hesitate to kill non-Jewish civilians in order to save Jewish lives.
There is no war in the world in which it is possible to delineate entirely between the population and the enemy army, neither in the US war in Iraq, the Russian war in Chechnya, nor in Israel's war with its enemies," the rabbis said.
The rabbis quoted a Talmudic edict, or religious ruling, stating that "our lives come first".
"The Christian preaching of 'turning the other cheek' doesn't concern us, and we will not be impressed by those who prefer the lives of our enemies to our lives," they said.
Incidentally, a few months ago a prominent rabbi in the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arbaa near Hebron issued an edict stating that non-Jewish civilians may be killed to save Jewish lives, soldiers and civilians alike.
The rabbi, Dov Lior, argued that non-Jewish lives had no sanctity, especially during the time of war.
Lior has publicly praised and eulogised Baruch Goldstein, an American Jewish settler who in 1994 mowed down 29 Arab worshippers who were praying at Hebron's Ibrahimi Mosque.
Calling Goldstein a "great saint", he said a "thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew's fingernail".
Earlier this year, Lior enthusiastically supported the killing of Palestinian civilians in Rafah in southern Gaza, saying that "it is very clear in light of the Torah that Jewish lives are more important than non-Jewish lives".
In formulating their theological positions, Lior and other like-minded rabbis rely on an old Talmudic maxim which states that it is a mitzvah (imperative religious duty) to kill enemy civilians in war time.
The same rabbis also often quote Torah verses in which God is shown instructing the ancient Israelites to annihilate the Canaanites in ancient Palestine.
Since the outbreak of al-Aqsa Intifada in September 2000, the Israeli army and paramilitary Jewish groups have killed as many as 3500 Palestinians, the bulk of them civilians, including more than 600 children and minors.
During the same period, Palestinian fighters have killed nearly a thousand Israeli soldiers, settlers and civilians.
President Horst Köhler of Germany on Sunday tapped seething resentment among East Germans and fueled tensions inside the country over the financial costs of reunification after he said it was no longer realistic to expect the Eastern states to have the same living standards as those in the West.
His remarks, made a week before East Germans go to the polls to elect regional governments in the states of Brandenburg and Saxony, are likely to be exploited by the far-right parties as well as the Party of Democratic Socialists, or PDS, created out of the former East German Communist Party.
Lothar Bisky has a complaint. A retired professor in the former East German state of Brandenburg, he earned less than professors in West Germany did — and he'll get a smaller pension, too. But Bisky has a loud megaphone: today he's the chairman of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), the heir to the former East German Communist Party. "All this discrimination harms the dignity of the people," he says — and his message resonates among voters in eastern Germany. With two state elections in the east this Sunday, the PDS is expected to perform better than at any time since German reunification in 1990.
More than two-thirds of PDS members are over 60, filled with nostalgia for the old East German regime. In fact, a worrisome "ostalgia" infects both east and west. According to a new survey in Stern magazine, 24% of voters in western Germany would like to see the Berlin Wall put back up. Bisky says his party's appeal can move west: "I want a socialist party in the Federal Republic of Germany." If opposition to Schröder continues to grow, Bisky's wish just may come true.
Wittenberge, an hour's train journey north-west of Berlin, is frequently cited as an example of how dismally the 14-year-old reunification project of east and west Germany has failed.
And it is no exception, but typical of hundreds of towns and cities across the states of eastern Germany in a similar condition and whose citizens are being swept up in a growing mood of discontent.
For the past six weeks tens of thousands of east Germans have been gathering in town centres for weekly "Monday Demos", a reference to the demonstrations that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall 15 years ago. Their complaint: even before they have benefited from capitalism, the reforms being implemented by the government of Chancellor Gerhard Schroder - particularly plans to scale back benefits for the long-term jobless - will disadvantage them still further.
"The people here feel like they are a failed social experiment," says Gerd Pickel, from the comparative sociology department at the Europa University Viadrina in Frankfurt an der Oder. He says an alarming 75 per cent of east Germans consider themselves to be second-class citizens.
"As long as there is no parity in living standards between east and west, there will be no such thing as German unity," he insists. "We could easily be waiting another 10, 20, or even 50 years for the differences to disappear."
Among west Germans, disgruntlement is also growing. In addition to income tax, all Germans pay 5.5 per cent of their wages in the form of a Solidarity Tax towards subsidies to fund the east. Now that many Germans are feeling the pinch due to the country's chronic economic woes, many are asking: "Why?"
"Is the east ungrateful?" the mass tabloid Bild recently asked, citing a poll which showed that 76 per cent of east Germans thought that life under communism was not that bad after all. It listed pollution, deaths at the Berlin Wall, the 14-year wait to buy a car, in order to remind many of how miserable life had been. The animosity was shown in a survey this week in which one in five Germans - 25 per cent of westerners and 12 per cent of easterners - said they wanted the Berlin Wall to be rebuilt.
Not everyone is doing so badly in east Germany. The discount drink halls and second hand shops are among the most visited places in many towns. The removal men are also doing a roaring trade.
The owner of Wittenberge's only removal company, Detlef Benecke, 42, has seen his business rise four-fold since 1990 thanks to the number of people leaving.
"It's somehow sickening to do so well out of people's misfortune," he says, pointing to the array of cars and motorbikes he has parked in his drive, and the new kitchen and jacuzzi he has just installed. "But it's not of my making. It's the west Germans' fault - they lived too comfortably for too long and now we've got to pay for it, even though we never benefited from it." A supporter of the far-Right DVU, he has thought long and hard about a solution. His own will be to migrate to Russia if work ever dried up.
But for his country he has a more drastic idea: "I tell you, what we need is a little Adolf Hitler who would bash a few heads together and ensure that Germany - east and west - had a common future and that no German would feel like a second-class citizen."
"The Party of Democratic Socialism is following a populist course, by playing on fears," said Oskar Niedermayer, a political scientist at Berlin's Free University. The PDS is also expected to beat the Social Democrats into second place in another poll next weekend in the east German state of Saxony.
Equally alarming for Germany's national political elite is that the current string of state elections could also mark a resurgence of the nation's extreme right, which has also been making its presence felt at the Monday demonstrations and feeding off the sense of fury unleashed by the welfare cuts.
While the right-wing German People's Union is expected to make a strong showing in Brandenburg, the National Democrat Party, Germany's oldest rightist party (NPD), is tipped to garner about 7 per cent in the Saxony poll. This week the NPD scored its best state election result since the late 1960s in the west German state of Saarland.
"Have a good trip home," declares one NPD poster with a picture of Turks carrying bags over their shoulders walking toward a minaret.
Apart from opposing foreigners, gays and pot-smokers, the NPD candidate in Saxony, Holger Apfel, has called for recreating Germany in its old borders before 1945.
"Iraqi police and the Iraqi Intervention Force found hundreds of illegal weapons hidden in secret rooms in the Najaf office of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr on Sept. 9, according to a statement released by Multinational Force Iraq today on behalf of Iraq's interior ministry.
As part of their mission to clear the city of armed members of Sadr's militia and to remove weapons and ammunition caches, the Iraqi security forces searched Sadr's office, close to the Imam Ali shrine, the statement said. During the search, which took place with the Najaf governor's approval, the statement continued, Iraqi troops noticed fresh plaster on a wall in Sadr's office.
After breaking through the false wall, the soldiers found a secret hallway and rooms filled with mortars, rockets, machine guns and other weapons hidden from authorities when the militia vacated the city, the statement said.
Included in the secret cache were more than 10 mortar tubes, more than 145 mortar rounds, a dozen rockets, numerous anti-tank weapons including rocket- propelled grenade launchers, a heavy machine gun, an anti-aircraft gun, automatic rifles, mines, various other explosives and communications equipment, the statement said.
Hundreds of Pakistanis who fought alongside the Taliban against U.S-led forces after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States were released from an Afghan jail Sunday after nearly three years as prisoners of war.
The 368 prisoners, the last of more than 2,500 Pakistanis captured during the overthrow of the Taliban, were being driven by bus 155 miles to the Pakistani town of Peshawar for screening by Pakistani authorities.
"We are glad that their ordeal is finally over," said Pakistani embassy third secretary Zafar Ali Khan. "We have been trying to get access to them for a long time. We believe there has been no need to have kept them for so long in Afghan jails."
The prisoners, ranging in age from 22 to 60, were captured as the Taliban disintegrated in the face of the U.S.-led invasion that drove the Islamic fundamentalists from power in November 2001.
Many had been drawn to Afghanistan from madrassahs, or religious schools, in Pakistan, attracted by the puritanical brand of Islam that the Taliban espoused.
"The mullahs in my area said that as Muslims we should go to Afghanistan to fight a jihad," 22-year-old Amir Khan, from Peshawar, told Reuters.
"I can not deny this was my intention. I arrived in Afghanistan in October. I spent three days in Kabul and then went to Mazar-i-Sharif. I was captured the day after I arrived there."
Like many of his comrades, Khan said he had received no military training and insisted he was a religious student who had been "misled" by the mullahs.
"They sold us," he said. "We learned later that for every 10 mujahideen (holy warriors) that they sent, they would receive 5,000 rupees ($100)." Mohammed Afriqi, a 30-year-old from Pakistan's rugged North West Frontier Province, said he was among a group of 50 that surrendered to forces of Abdul Rashid Dostum in November 2001.
"They treated us very badly," he said. "Of those I was with, there are only about 20 left."
A former Texas Air National Guard officer whom CBS News relied on to support the authenticity of memos about President George W. Bush's military service said that he never saw the memos before the show aired and that he doesn't now believe they are authentic.
Retired Maj. Gen. Bobby Hodges of Arlington, Texas, who was a Texas Air Guard lieutenant colonel at the time of Bush's service, also said one of the memos' references to undue pressure to "sugar-coat" Bush's evaluations rings false. He said the colonel that supposedly applied that pressure did not interfere in Guard affairs after his retirement, 18 months before the date on the disputed memo.
A CBS spokeswoman said that, despite Hodges' remarks, CBS' "60 Minutes" stands by the program aired Wednesday.
"We believed Col. Hodges the first time we spoke to him. We believe the documents are genuine. We stand by our story and will continue to report on it," Sandy Genelius said.
Hodges' comments come amid other questions about the authenticity of four memos that "60 Minutes" relied on to show the president received special treatment as a pilot in the early '70s, failed to carry out a superior's order to undergo a physical exam and was suspended from flying for failing to meet Air National Guard standards.
Typography experts have also raised questions about the memos, stirring a vigorous debate about whether they were written on computers not available in the early 1970s.
In an interview Friday, CBS anchorman Dan Rather said "60 Minutes" had been working on the story of Bush's time in the Texas Air National Guard for four to five years. But, Hodges said, the network called him Monday evening, two days before the broadcast, and said they had "just received" four memos written by Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, Bush's commander at Ellington Air Force Base in Houston.
Rather agreed that the quotes were read to Hodges.
"We wanted to take the documents to him and do an interview, and he declined to do that," he said, calling Hodges' statements at the time "impressive" support of the documents' authenticity.
A big explosion rocked a northern province of North Korea near the border with China last week, South Korea's Yonhap news agency is reporting.
The blast is said to have happened last Thursday, as North Korea marked the 56th anniversary of its founding.
Yonhap quoted a diplomatic source in Seoul as saying a large mushroom cloud was spotted in Yanggang province.
South Korea's Unification Minister has reportedly played down the possibility that it was a nuclear weapons test.
Diplomatic officials in Washington are also quoted as saying the nature of the blast is unclear.
In April, an explosion at a railway station in North Korea killed more than 150 people - but Pyongyang only admitted the incident three days later.
The diplomatic source in Seoul said the mushroom cloud, with a radius of 3.5-4 kms (2.2-2.5 miles), was spotted in Yanggang province's Kimhyungjik county.
The blast could be seen from a satellite, an unnamed official in Beijing was quoted by Yonhap as saying.
Unification Minister Chung Dong-young - Seoul's top negotiator with North Korea - said South Korea was trying to get confirmation of the explosion and its effects.
"We have received an unsubstantiated report on traces of an explosion in North Korea," he told reporters.
The New York Times reported on its Web site Saturday that US President George W. Bush and his top advisers have received intelligence reports describing a confusing series of actions by North Korea that some experts believe could indicate the country is preparing to conduct its first nuclear weapons test.
Update: A Chinese source familiar with North Korea revealed Sunday that a major explosion took place Thursday in Kim Hyong-jik County, Ryanggang Province.
The source said, ¡°I know there was an extremely large explosion in Kim Hyong-jik County, which is near the Sino-Korean border, on Sept. 9, North Korea¡¯s foundation day.¡±
He added, ¡°I heard talk that the explosion was even bigger than the one that took place during the Ryongchon Station accident... Evidence of the explosion was detected by satellite, and I understand the U.S. and other surrounding nations are paying attention to the incident.¡±
In relation to this, another source connected to North Korea said, ¡°I heard rumors of a large explosion taking place in North Korea¡¯s Ryanggang Province, which is close to the border with China.¡±
An official from a certain surrounding nation who resides in Beijing said, ¡°There is a rumor that a large explosion took place in Ryanggang Province, and interested nations are working to uncover the exact scale and cause of the explosion.¡±
Kim Hyong-jik Country, where the explosion is known to have taken place. is across the Yalu River from Jilin Province, China, and South Korean intelligence authorities understand that a base for Daepodong 1 and 2 missiles was located at the town of Yongjo-ri, in a mountainous region of the province.
A woman purporting to be Amy Barnes, daughter of former Texas Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes, said Thursday that her father had fabricated claims that he used his influence to get President Bush into the Texas Air National Guard 36 years ago.
In a phone call to WBAP's Mark Davis radio show in Dallas, Texas, Ms. Barnes told guest host Monica Crowley that her father was an "opportunist" who had lied about Bush's Guard record during a "60 Minutes II" broadcast Tuesday night.
BARNES: I love my father very much, but he's doing this for purely political reasons. He is a big Kerry fund-raiser and he is writing a book also. And [the Bush story] is what he's leading the book off with. ... He denied this to me in 2000 that he did get Bush out [of Vietnam service]. Now he's saying he did.
CROWLEY: Did he tell you, Amy – and I'm glad I have you on the line with me – did your father tell you that he was prepared to do this on behalf of John Kerry – go after President Bush like this?
BARNES: He told me he was going to do it. In fact, I talked to him a couple of months ago. He told me he was writing the book. He told me that he was going to be talking about this. And he knows that I – we have very diverse political opinions. He knows my opinions and we get into this debate every time I see him. But, you know, he said that he was going to be talking about it.
CROWLEY: Now you're saying, Amy, that he has had two separate stories on President Bush's Guard duty during the Vietnam era?
BARNES: Yes, yes. This came out in 2000 and I asked him then, at the time, if he [helped get Bush into the Guard]. He said: "No, absolutely not. I did not do that."
CROWLEY: So, I hate to put you in this position, but I will ask you, do you think your father, Ben Barnes who was on "60 Minutes II" with Dan Rather last night – do you believe that he lied on the air to the American people last night about President Bush?
BARNES: Yes, I do. I absolutely do. And I think he's doing he's doing it for purely political, opportunistic reasons – trying to get John Kerry elected and trying to make Bush look like the bad person. ... Like I said, he's going to be trying to promote his book that he's got coming out.
The billion dollar question on the third anniversary of 9/11: Where is Osama bin Laden?
In the past few weeks there have been a flurry of reports. Russian press reported that the al-Qaeda chief is in US custody, Collin Powell saying he is on the run and a Pakistani minister indicating that the Osama is dead.
A sensational NNN report on Saturday said Pakistan Information Minister Sheikh Rashid while addressing a Meet the Press at Karachi Press Club on the eve of third anniversary of September 11, 2001, said Osama bin Laden may have died while on the run. He, however, pointed out that around 200-300 foreign militants were hiding in Wana who are "master planners" as they had got enough training in Afghanistan.
Earlier this week, a Russian site, Profindpages.com, reported that Pakistani security forces have captured Osama bin Laden.
He was captured not far from Chitral in the Northern part of Pakistan (between Chitral and Peshawar), in the first week of August. the site said.
Two "top al-Qaeda operatives" are being held in Pakistan and one of them is is believed to be Osama.
The capture of the "Big Fish" will not be officially announced until sometime next month, in what is sure to be "Headline" news throughout the world, the site said quoting US sources.
Osama bin Laden has not been seen for some time and there have been many reports of his death since the 9/11 attack, although recordings of his voice have been reported quite recently.
Whilst his capture would certainly put and end to a long running hunt and mystery, it would also raise a few questions as to why this has not already been announced. Although the US government have played down bin Laden's present importance in al-Qaeda, there can be no denying that he is still the man they have wanted to catch for almost three years.
The trail has gone cold in the hunt for suspected Sept. 11 mastermind Osama bin Laden three years after the audacious attacks, but the al-Qaeda chief and his No. 2 are still orchestrating strikes like the recent suicide car bombing of a U.S. security firm in Kabul, a top American commander said Saturday.
Maj. Gen. Eric Olson told The Associated Press the military had not intercepted any radio traffic or instructions from either bin Laden or his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri. But he said the involvement of well-trained foreign fighters in attacks near the Pakistani border convinced him that the fugitive leaders were pulling the strings.
"What we see are their techniques and their tactics here in Afghanistan, so I think it is reasonable to assume that the senior leaders are involved in directing those operations," Olson, the operational commander of U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, said in an interview.
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said on Friday President Bush's failure to fight for a renewal of the ban on assault weapons would make it easier for groups like al Qaeda to get the lethal guns.
Campaigning in Missouri, where he trails Bush in opinion polls less than two months before the Nov. 2 election, Kerry said as a hunter and outdoorsman he would never try to change the Second Amendment to the Constitution giving Americans the right to bear arms.
Under a 10-year ban enacted in 1994, weapons such as AK-47s, TEC-9s, and Uzis were outlawed, as were high capacity ammunition magazines holding more than 10 rounds. That law expires on Monday and Congress does not plan to extend it.
Kerry rebuked Bush and others for "talking about the war on terror, trying to scare Americans." Vice President Dick Cheney said this week if the Democrat were elected the United States could be hit by another attack like the on one Sept. 11, 2001.
Citing the 9/11 commission and other reports, Kerry said an al Qaeda training manual recovered in Afghanistan included a chapter urging followers to "come to America and buy assault weapons."
"I don't think we need to make the job of terrorists any easier," the Massachusetts senator said.
An Iraqi rebel group has seized four Iraqi policemen in Najaf and threatened to kill them unless police agree to stop hunting insurgents and pressuring rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, Al Jazeera television said Friday.
"They accused them (police) of pursuing the Mujahideen (fighters) and harassing Moqtada al-Sadr. They demanded a stop to these practices and a statement to this effect within 72 hours, or they will kill the hostages," it said, showing video images of the policemen sent to the channel.
Al Jazeera said the kidnappers called themselves the "Joint Forces to Stop Agents and Spies," a previously unknown group.
The radical cleric, who draws support from impoverished Shi'ite Muslims, has launched two bloody uprisings this year in the holy city of Najaf against Iraq's interim government and U.S.-led forces.
Earlier this month, he called on his Mehdi Army militia to honor a cease-fire and said he intended to field candidates for elections scheduled for January.
Iraq's U.S.-backed government is fighting to quell an insurgency which has escalated in recent months as numerous groups have taken hostages, usually foreigners.
Update:
In Najaf, about 1,000 protesters marched through the old quarter Friday to demand that Muqtada al-Sadr and his aides leave the city, which has been ravaged by fighting between the radical cleric's followers and U.S. and Iraqi troops.
Chanting, "Muqtada, the trash, is a leader of looters," the demonstrators walked past buildings hit by three weeks of fighting and insisted that al-Sadr's office be shut down. Iraqi soldiers kept the protesters from marching to al-Sadr's office.
They also demanded that the Iraqi government investigate the practices of a religious court that al-Sadr's office operated and punish those in charge of it.
The court, which worked separately from Iraq's legal system, ordered arrests and handed out punishments. It stopped functioning after al-Sadr's followers relinquished the control they had in areas here as part of a peace agreement to end the violence.
Sheik Ali Smeisim, an aide to al-Sadr, said the demonstration was an attempt to create tension.
"We were expecting such things," he said. "Whenever there is a chance for peaceful solutions, some people hold protests to escalate the situation."
Another government source told Aljazeera that al-Huthi's body had been found after clashes with government forces.
These appeared to support charges by Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe and Kerry that Bush had been "AWOL" and had failed to meet his Guard commitments.
Bouffard said the CBS documents appear to have been copied about 10 times in the state he saw them. Nevertheless, he states, "All the documents have been created on the same printer. And the proportional spacing and the common characteristics of numbers like 4 and 7 and letters like lower case c and upper case G are beyond the capabilities of any of the typewriter impact specimens I have in my collection. The centering of headings is also beyond the capabilities of any typewriter I know of."
Recognized as a distinct people since the 17th cent., the Chechens were the most active opponents of Russia's conquest (1818–1917) of the Caucasus. They fought bitterly during an unsuccessful 1850s rebellion led by Imam Shamyl. The Bolsheviks seized the region in 1918 but were dislodged in 1919 by counterrevolutionary forces under Gen. A. I. Denikin.
After Soviet rule was reestablished, the area was included in 1921 in the Mountain People's Republic. The Chechen Autonomous Region was created in 1922, and in 1934 it became part of the Chechen-Ingush Region, made a republic in 1936. After Chechen and Ingush units collaborated with the invading Germans during World War II, many residents were deported (1944) to Central Asia. Deportees were repatriated in 1956, and the republic was reestablished in 1957.
In 1991, as the Soviet Union disintegrated, the Chechen-dominated parliament of the republic declared independence as the Republic of Ichkeria, soon better known as Chechnya. In June, 1992, Russia granted Ingush inhabitants their own republic (Ingushetia) in the western fifth of the territory.
Tensions between the Russian government and that of Chechen president Dzhokhar Dudayev escalated into warfare in late 1994, as Russian troops arrived to crush the separatist movement. Grozny was devastated in the fighting, and tens of thousands died. Russian forces regained control of many areas in 1995, but separatist guerrillas controlled much of the mountainous south and committed spectacular terrorist actions in other parts of Russia. Fighting continued through 1996, when Dudayev was killed and succeeded by Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev. The Russians withdrew, essentially admitting defeat, following a cease-fire that left Chechnya with de facto autonomy.
Aslan Maskhadov, chief of staff of the Chechen forces, was elected president early in 1997 but appeared to have little control over the republic. In 1999, Islamic law was established. Terrorism, including a series of bombings in Moscow, erupted again, and after Islamic militants invaded neighboring Dagestan from Chechnya, Russian forces bombed and invaded Chechnya, capturing Grozny and forcing the rebels into mountain strongholds. The rebels have continued to mount guerrilla attacks on Russian forces, as well as terror attacks in Moscow and other Russian cities outside Chechnya. Both sides have been accused of brutality and terrorizing noncombatants. In Mar., 2003, voters approved a new constitution for Chechnya, and in October Akhmad Kadyrov was elected president, but the election was generally regarded as neither free nor fair. Both the constitution and the president were backed by Russian government. Kadyrov was assassinated in May, 2004. Prime Minister Sergei Abramov became interim president, and an election was scheduled for August.
There's another possibility. It's a horrifying one, but I don't think it's totally farfetched.
What if Putin decides to nuke Grozny?
Posted by Steven Den Beste at September 7, 2004 04:15 AM
Here are the texts of four memos indicating George W. Bush was suspended from flying during the Vietnam war because he failed to meet Texas Air National Guard standards and did not take his annual flight physical as required. Copies of the memos were provided by the White House.
111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron
P.O. Box 34567
Houston, Texas 77034
04 May 1972
MEMORANDUM FOR 1st Lt. George W. Bush, 5000 Longmont .8,
Houston, Texas 77027
SUBJECT: Annual Physical Examination (Flight)
1. You are ordered to report to commander, 111 F.L.S., Ellington AFB, not later than (NLT) 14 May, 1972 to conduct annual physical examination (flight)IAW AFM 35-13.
2. Report to 111th F.L.S. administrative officer for schedule of appointment and additional instructions. Examination will be conducted in duty status.
(Signature)
JERRY B. KILLIAN
Lt. Colonel
Commander
———
19 May 1972
Memo to File
SUBJECT: Discussion with Bush, 1st Lt. Bush
1. Phone call from Bush. Discussed options of how Bush can get out of coming to drill from now through November. I told him he could do ET for three months or transfer. Says he wants to transfer to Alabama to any unit he can get in to. Says that he is working on another campaign for his dad.
2. Physical. We talked about him getting his flight physical situation fixed before his date. Says he will do that in Alabama if he stays in a flight status. He has this campaign to do and other things that will follow and may not have the time. I advised him of our investment in him and his commitment. He’s been working with staff to come up with options and identified a unit that may accept him. I told him I had to have written acceptance before he would be transferred, but think he’s also talking to someone upstairs.
(Unsigned)
———
111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron
P. 0. Box 34567
Houston, Texas 77034
01 August 1972
MEMORANDUM FOR RECORD
SUBJECT: Bush, George W. 1st Lt. 3244754FG
Suspension of Flight status
1. On this date I ordered that 1st Lt. Bush be suspended from flight status due to failure to perform to USAF/TexANG standards and failure to meet annual physical examination (flight) as ordered.
2. I conveyed my verbal orders to commander; 147th Ftr Intrcp Gp with request for orders for suspension and convening of a flight review board IAW AFM 35-13.
3. I recommended transfer of this officer to the 9921st Air Reserve Squadron in May and forwarded his AF Form 1288 to 147th Ftr Intrcp Gp headquarters. The transfer was not allowed. Officer has made no attempt to meet his training certification or flight physical. Officer expresses desire to transfer out of state including assignment to non-flying billets.
4. On recommendation of Harris, I also suggested that we fill this critical billet with a more seasoned pilot from the list of qualified Vietnam pilots that have rotated. Recommendations were received but not confirmed.
(Signature)
JERRY B. KILLIAN
Lt. Colonel
———
18 August 1973
Memo to File
SUBJECT: CYA
1. Staudt has obviously pressured Hodges more about Bush. I’m having trouble running interference and doing my job. Harris gave me a message today from Grp regarding Bush’s OETR and Staudt is pushing to sugar coat it. Bush wasn’t here during rating period and I don’t have any feedback from 187th in Alabama. I will not rate. Austin is not happy today either.
2. Harris took the call from Grp today, I’ll backdate but won’t rate. Harris agrees.
(unsigned)
A Tallahassee judge has sided with the Florida Democratic Party in knocking Reform Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader from the state ballot.
A second hearing will take place this afternoon before Leon County Circuit Judge Kevin Davey, who Wednesday night issued a temporary injunction barring state officials from telling county elections supervisors to include Nader's name on the ballot.
Secretary of State Glenda Hood had planned to certify ballots for the 67 counties today.
"This is just round one of what is certain to be a multi-round fight," Mark Herron, attorney for Florida Democrats, said Thursday.
Davey's ruling came after attorneys for the Democratic Party and an independent group of voters argued that the Reform Party is not a viable party.
They also challenged whether the party's nomination last month of Nader and running mate Peter Comejo met Florida's law for getting on the ballot.
"It's a bizarre ruling, with no due process and not based on reality at all," said Kevin Zeese, Reform Party spokesman, adding that the party's nominating convention not only took place but also was nationally televised.
Zeese said Nader is currently on the ballot as a presidential candidate in 23 states and expects to ultimately appear on 45 state ballots.
Florida Democrats have been wary of Nader, whose presence on the 2000 ballot drew 97,421 votes and may have cost Democrat Al Gore the presidency.
Many think most of those Nader votes, otherwise, would have gone to Gore. President Bush won Florida by 537-votes after the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in and ended 36 days of legal wrangling.
In today's hearing, Davey is expected take more testimony from attorneys for both sides, and possibly determine whether to recommend the case for trial.
Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, said mujahedeen, or holy fighters, have taken control of much of Afghanistan and driven U.S. forces into the "trenches," according to a tape aired on Al-Jazeera TV Friday.
Wearing a white turban, the bespectacled Egyptian surgeon said "southern and eastern Afghanistan have completely become an open field for the mujahedeen."
"As for the Americans, they are now lying in their trenches, refusing to come out to meet the mujahedeen, despite the provocation of attacks, hits and carjacking."
"Putin is blamed for ... many planned actions to discredit the lawful national-liberation struggle of the Chechen people against foreign aggression, including the organization of the bloody war against children and adults in Beslan," it said.
The military says most of the dead were Chechen, Uzbek and Arab militants with suspected al-Qaeda and Taleban links.
Experts said the explosion was almost certainly the work of a suicide bomber, while witnesses reported a small van hitting a road marker in front of the embassy just before the blast.
A London-based Chechen rebel representative said Wednesday that Russia's threats to attack terrorists around the world amount to a warning to European countries that Russian forces could carry out assassinations on their soil.
Akhmed Zakayev, an envoy for rebel leader and former Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov, said such a strike by Russian forces would create a dangerous precedent.
"It is a warning to other European countries that Russia may come and carry out an assassination on your soil at any moment," he said.
Earlier Wednesday, Col. Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, chief of the Russian General Staff, warned that Russia's military will strike "terrorist bases in any region of the world." The threat came in the aftermath of the school hostage crisis in southern Russia that ended in the deaths of more than 300 people.
"I think these are probably not empty threats. In fact they have already shown in practice that that is the way they do things," Zakayev said through an interpreter in London.
Russian officials have accused Maskhadov and other Chechen rebel leaders of masterminding the attack. According to aides, Maskhadov has denied any involvement in last week's school siege.
Russian officials are also seeking Zakayev's extradition from London, where he has been granted political asylum.
Authorities also offered a $10 million reward for information leading to the capture of Maskhadov and another rebel leader, Shamil Basayev.
"It is a very disturbing signal they are sending for all civilized countries," Zakayev said. He added that it's especially worrying for Chechens who speak freely about their dissatisfaction with Russian President Vladimir Putin's policies.
"To Putin, that makes them international terrorists," he said.
In February, Chechen rebel leader Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev was killed in a car bombing in the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar. Two Russian agents were convicted for the bombing. Russia has denied involvement in the assassination.
"I just know that until the war in Chechnya is over, nobody is safe from the fate that befell Yandarbiyev," Zakayev said.
But stunned mission scientists fell silent as they watched live aerial pictures of the capsule spinning out of control and crashing into the desert floor.
Witnesses reported an intense tank and artillery barrage in the southern Shuhada district and industrial zone. US warplanes also bombarded the eastern corridor of the city late on Tuesday evening, residents told Reuters.
A rightist German party known for agitating against foreigners and Jews narrowly failed to win seats in state parliament elections last weekend - but experts warn the far-right is likely to sweep to victory in two upcoming polls later this month.
The National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) stunned observers by winning 4 percent in the western Saar state election Sunday.
Germany's proportional representation electoral system - which requires a party get at least 5 percent to enter parliament - means the NPD will not be represented in the state's Landtag.
But the upswing for Germany's oldest rightist party, which is widely viewed as the best organized and most dangerous in the country's far-right field, has many people nervous.
Unlike other rightist parties, the NPD has close ties to violent neo-Nazis and skinheads who are estimated by the Verfassungschutz, Germany's domestic security agency, to number 13,000 nationwide.
Boosted by its success, the NPD is now campaigning hard in eastern Saxony state which holds elections in 19 September. Another far-right party, the German People's Union (DVU) is running in neighboring Brandenburg state which votes the same day.
Both parties have backed protests over the German government's planned cuts to unemployment benefits and they provide an alternative for people who can't bring themselves to vote for the former East German communists.
Indeed, the NPD preaches what it terms "social-revolutionary nationalism" and voter surveys in the Saar show it drew former supporters of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats (SPD) from either the working class or the ranks of the unemployed.
The "Blogging soldier in Mosul" obviously has been shut-up by the US army, and been brought home for questioning by "the new sheriff in town". The same president, by the way, who is bombing Iraqi children to horrible burns. It's so
ironic that you put up Guernica on your site, Picasso's painting that illustrates just those horrors the US is inflicting on innocent civilans as I write and you read. Even more ironic, this is the same painting Bush and company decided was too stark a background in then UN, when Powell was serving the WMD-lies of Bush, Cheney, Perle, Feith, Liddy, Rice, Rumsfeld, Armitage and Wolfoblitz. So they had it covered over, to stop people from being remnded what the war-lust of those people would lead to.
The US of now is a threat to itself and the world. The first I can live with.
Sincerely, Bjorn.
The footage showed one masked man placing his foot over a book on the ground that apparently held a detonator. "Do not bring in the children here yet," one man was heard yelling in accented Russian as another continued to connect the wires.Several hundred people appeared to be sitting quietly on the ground. Some had already taken off their tops and others were fanning themselves with books.
A British soldier accused of killing an Iraqi civilian has been released on bail after appeared in London's Bow Street Magistrates' court on Tuesday.
Kevin Williams, 21, a trooper from the 2nd Royal Tank Regiment,was told to surrender his passport, remain at his barracks in Yorkshire, northern England, and report daily to Royal military police. He was not permitted to leave except by permission of an officer.
Williams, the first British soldier to face a murder indictmentin connection with British troops' presence in Iraq, was expected to appear before London's Central Criminal Court on Sept. 28.
Williams was arrested on Tuesday morning by the Metropolitan Police on charge of unlawful killing by shooting of Hassan Said during the course of an arrest in last August in south-eastern Iraq.
Williams' case was referred to the police by the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, who said the trooper's case could not be tried by court martial after his charges were dismissed by the soldier's commanding officer.
The British government has already launched 131 investigations into deaths and injuries of Iraqis allegedly caused by British troops in Iraq.
Detectives were asked to look into the case by the Attorney General.
The 21-year-old British soldier has appeared in court charged with the murder of an Iraqi civilian. Trooper Kevin Lee Williams, of the 2nd Royal Tank Regiment, was granted conditional bail in a hearing at Bow Street Magistrates' Court in London.
The charge relates to Hassan Said, an Iraqi citizen who died in Ad-Dayr, in south-eastern Iraq, on 3 August 2003.
The soldier spoke only to confirm his name and his address was not read out in court.
He appeared in court dressed in a dark blue suit and open-necked blue shirt.
Mr Williams must reside at Knightsbridge barracks in central London on Tuesday night and thereafter at Catterick Garrison, North Yorkshire, as part of his bail conditions.
He is also not permitted to leave except by permission of an officer.
Mr Williams must report daily to the Royal Military Police post at Catterick barracks, surrender his passport and undergo an examination carried out by two medical practitioners.
He is due to appear at the Old Bailey on 28 September.
Metropolitan Police detectives arrested the soldier on Tuesday morning.
The case was referred to the CPS by the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith.
He said: "This case, which involves an alleged unlawful killing by shooting of an Iraqi citizen during the course of an arrest, was brought to my attention after charges were dismissed by the soldier's commanding officer.
"This meant the case could not be tried by court martial. I referred it to the CPS who asked the Metropolitan Police for assistance in collecting further evidence."
Lawyers for the dead man's family say Mr Said was carrying a licensed handgun when he was approached by British soldiers investigating an altercation between the drivers of two cars.
Mr Said, who was a married lawyer with nine children, died on the way to hospital from gunshot wounds to his chest.
A police statement said: "Earlier this year the Attorney General, via the CPS, asked the Metropolitan Police to investigate the death of Mr Said.
An investigation was launched by the Met's Homicide Command, which is part of the Specialist Crime Directorate."
So far, the government says it has paid more than £142,000 in compensation to settle 106 cases of death, injury and property damage in Iraq.
The Ministry of Defence is investigating more than 130 other cases.
Lawyers representing the families of six Iraqis went to the High Court earlier this year to challenge the government's decision not to hold an independent inquiry into their deaths.
Two High Court judges must decide whether the Human Rights Act 1998 applies to the British troops in south east Iraq during the period of occupation and, if so, whether there should be an independent inquiry to investigate the alleged post-war deaths of a total of 37 Iraqi civilians.
A key negotiator from the school siege in Beslan, south Russia, has said shooting by armed civilians provoked the final slaughter of the hostages.
Ruslan Aushev told the Novaya Gazeta newspaper that the civilians had opened fire at the school after an explosion sent children streaming out.
The shooting by the irregulars - described by Mr Aushev as an "idiotic third force" - started a chain reaction, he said.
Armed men had inserted themselves among the security forces surrounding the school. Some are believed to have been fathers of hostages inside.
When shooting erupted, the rescue HQ tried in vain to persuade the attackers that it was not the security forces attacking.
"The official [security] forces were not shooting, the captors were not shooting and we were yelling at each other: 'Who's doing the shooting?'" said the former Ingush leader.
"Then those in the school said 'Right, that's it, it's time to let off the bombs'. They thought they were being stormed! ...It was only then the order to storm the building was given."
The first official Russian statement on the end of the siege said the commandos had been "prevented from acting effectively at some stage".
Security sources have told Russian media that seven members of the elite Alpha unit and three members of fellow crack unit Vympel were killed in the fighting, and a total of 26 commandos wounded.
Reports say the commandos were at a similar school 30 km from Beslan, in training for a rescue operation, when news of the fighting broke and they arrived 40 minutes late, when any element of surprise had been lost.
Planning their Revenge:
The three men stood hunched beneath a bus shelter in the pouring rain as the road became a logjam of funeral processions. Giorgi, Aslan and Oleg, all in their late teens, knew some of the dead being wheeled past them to their graves.
As the sheer scale of the loss inflicted on Beslan became apparent, their anger began to find its focus: the neighbouring republic of Ingushetia, which was locked in a bloody war with their region, North Ossetia, 13 years ago.
Some of the 32 militants who carried out the school attack were Ingush, investigators have said.
Aslan said: "Of course there will be revenge. People have to take their revenge - it's their right."
His two friends nodded in agreement, as if accepting further bloodshed as an inevitable part of mourning for the dead. In the North Caucasus blood feuds in which relatives kill their loved one's murderer are common.
Yet Aslan said any revenge attacks would probably not be targeted at specific relatives of the militants. "It will probably be just attacks against normal Ingush people. The Ingush have already all left the [nearby] Prigorodny region. They are moving out.
"I won't do anything on my own - that'd be pointless. But if my people get into a war, I shall fight." Again, his two friends nodded at another inevitability.
He added: "Why don't you meet Osama Bin Laden, invite him to Brussels or to the White House and engage in talks, ask him what he wants and give it to him so he leaves you in peace?