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[casi] News, 4-10/6/03 (2)



News, 4-10/6/03 (2)

PROBLEMS WITH THE PRETEXT

*  Iraq Survey Group prepares to restart inspections
*  We Went Into Iraq Because We Knew We Could
*  Bush ignores UN call for inspectors
*  Blair defeats motion for inquiry into Iraqi WMDs
*  Revealed: The Secret Cabal Which Spun for Blair
*  Blow to Blair over 'mobile labs'

PROBLEMS WITH THE PAST

*  U.S. troops arrest more Ba'ath Party members
*  New mass grave found in Iraq
*  Iraq's former health chief detained by US forces since May ‹ son     
*  Saddam's last victims dug up in Iraqi grave

OLD FRIENDS

*  SCIRI's Badr brigade dismantled by U.S., will change focus
*  Kurdish paper says Hussein loyalist assisting PUK
*  Kurds want more money from U.S.
*  Committee to develop northern Iraqi airport
*  Economy in northern Iraq is hardest hit due to friendship with U.S.
*  Shi'ite, Kurds question Iraq administration plans
*  Iraqi sceptics optimistic after relaunch of political talks
*  US-led coalition at odds with Iraq Shiites as arms deadline nears     


PROBLEMS WITH THE PRETEXT

RFE/RL IRAQ REPORT Vol. 6, No. 25, 6 June 2003

*  IRAQ SURVEY GROUP PREPARES TO RESTART INSPECTIONS

U.S. Army Major General Keith Dayton briefed reporters at the Pentagon on 30
May one week before his team planned to depart for Iraq to search for
weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Dayton, currently the director of the
Defense HUMINT (human intelligence) Service at the Defense Intelligence
Agency, will head the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), which was formed from several
U.S. government agencies in what Dayton said would be a consolidation of
"the efforts of the various intelligence-collection operations currently in
Iraq under one national level headquarters." The ISG takes over from the
75th Exploitation Task Force, which has searched more than 300 of the 900
suspected WMD sites in Iraq in recent weeks.

Dayton told reporters that in addition to the search for WMD, his team will
"collect and exploit documents and media related to terrorism, war crimes,
POW [prisoner of war] and MIA [missing in action] issues, and other things
relating to the former Iraqi regime. It will interrogate and debrief
individuals, both hostile and friendly, and it will exploit captured
materiel. The goal is to put all the pieces together in what is appearing to
be a very complex jigsaw puzzle."

The team will be based in Baghdad, with an analytic center and the
media-processing center operating out of Qatar. "The main effort is going to
be in Iraq, with the headquarters in Baghdad. This collection operation will
include a joint interrogation debriefing center, a joint
materiel-exploitation center, chemical and biological intelligence-support
teams, and the ISG operation center. The main analytic effort will be
co-located with CENTCOM forward [Qatar], as will the combined
media-processing center. Furthermore, the ISG is going to have liaison
elements with CJTF-7 in Kuwait and with other U.S. government agencies
inside Iraq. And finally, the intelligence-fusion center will be here in
Washington, D.C. And all are going to be linked electronically," Dayton
said.

It's unclear however, what the ISG's plan is regarding the actual discovery
of WMD. But, what is clear, is that the U.S.-led ISG is taking a vastly
different approach towards finding WMD than the UN-led inspection regimes --
the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) and UNMOVIC -- were able to do. Rather
than carrying out hands-on inspections, the group will focus on interviewing
people connected to the WMD program and sifting through piles of documents
now available since the fall of the Hussein regime.

Dayton told reporters that while the U.S. possesses a "fixed list" of sites
that contain or are suspected of containing WMD, he said that "there will be
a decreased emphasis on fixed sites and a greater emphasis in going to
places where the intelligence community's analytic powers tell us that there
is a much more probable likelihood of finding something or finding people
who know something about what was there." He added that it might prove more
valuable for his team to interview site guards or truck drivers to obtain
information, rather than revisiting a site. His team also plans on
interviewing low-ranking officials who worked at WMD sites, while the
responsibility for interrogating the senior members of the Hussein regime
now in coalition custody will fall to another group of coalition officials.
Asked if his team would go to every site on the list, he answered that it
was unlikely.

He also told reporters that his team has not reassessed intelligence that
reported WMD at certain high-priority sites when later inspections found no
evidence of WMD. "No, I haven't done that. But I will tell you that we know
a lot more now than we did back in February or January, when these lists
were originally developed, and that we are in much better shape now, based
on interviews of a lot of people that we had never had the opportunity to
talk to, to refine what we think we're going to find and where we think
we're going to find it," he said.

Dayton's three-nation, interagency team includes former UNSCOM inspectors,
as well as some 1,300 to 1,400 personnel from the United States, United
Kingdom, and Australia. (Kathleen Ridolfo)


http://www.theday.com/eng/web/mktplace/re.aspx?reIDx=3115465B-AD86-49AD 8852
-127EE1E4D23C

*  WE WENT INTO IRAQ BECAUSE WE KNEW WE COULD
by Thomas L. Friedman
The Day, from New York Times, 5th June

The failure of the Bush team to produce any weapons of mass destruction
(WMDs) in Iraq is becoming a big, big story. But is it the real story we
should be concerned with? No. It was the wrong issue before the war, and
it's the wrong issue now.

Why? Because there were actually four reasons for this war: the real reason,
the right reason, the moral reason and the stated reason.

The "real reason" for this war, which was never stated, was that after 9/11
America needed to hit someone in the Arab-Muslim world. Afghanistan wasn't
enough. Because a terrorism bubble had built up over there, one that posed a
real threat to the open societies of the West and needed to be punctured.
This terrorism bubble said that plowing airplanes into the World Trade
Center was OK, having Muslim preachers say it was OK was OK, having
state-run newspapers call people who did such things "martyrs" was OK and
allowing Muslim charities to raise money for such "martyrs" was OK. Not only
was all this seen as OK, there was a feeling among radical Muslims that
suicide bombing would level the balance of power between the Arab world and
the West, because we had gone soft and their activists were ready to die.

The only way to puncture that bubble was for American soldiers, men and
women, to go into the heart of the Arab-Muslim world, house to house, and
make clear that we are ready to kill, and to die, to prevent our open
society from being undermined by this terrorism bubble. Smashing Saudi
Arabia or Syria would have been fine. But we hit Saddam for one simple
reason: because we could, and because he deserved it and because he was
right in the heart of that world. And don't believe the nonsense that this
had no effect. Every neighboring government ‹ and 98 percent of terrorism is
about what governments let happen ‹ got the message. If you talk to U.S. sol
diers in Iraq they will tell you this is what the war was about.

The "right reason" for this war was the need to partner with Iraqis,
post-Saddam, to build a progressive Arab regime. Because the real weapons of
mass destruction that threaten us were never Saddam's missiles. The real
weapons that threaten us are the growing number of angry, humiliated young
Arabs and Muslims, who are produced by failed or failing Arab states ‹ young
people who hate America more than they love life. Helping to build a decent
Iraq as a model for others and solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are
the necessary steps for defusing the ideas of mass destruction, which are
what really threaten us.

The "moral reason" for the war was that Saddam's regime was an engine of
mass destruction and genocide that had killed thousands of his own people,
and neighbors, and needed to be stopped.

But because the Bush team never dared to spell out the real reason for the
war, and (wrongly) felt that it could never win public or world support for
the right reasons and the moral reasons, it opted for the "stated reason":
the notion that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction that posed an
immediate threat to America. I argued before the war that Saddam posed no
such threat to America, and had no links with al-Qaida, and that we couldn't
take the nation to war "on the wings of a lie." I argued that Bush should
fight this war for the right reasons and the moral reasons. But he stuck
with this WMD argument for P.R. reasons.

Once the war was over and I saw the mass graves and the true extent of
Saddam's genocidal evil, my view was that Bush did not need to find any WMDs
to justify the war for me. I still feel that way. But I have to admit that
I've always been fighting my own war in Iraq. Bush took the country into his
war. And if it turns out that he fabricated the evidence for his war (which
I wouldn't conclude yet), that would badly damage America and be a very
serious matter.

Finding Iraq's WMDs is necessary to preserve the credibility of the Bush
team, the neocons, Tony Blair and the CIA. But rebuilding Iraq is necessary
to win the war. I won't feel one whit more secure if we find Saddam's WMDs,
because I never felt he would use them on us. But I will feel terribly
insecure if we fail to put Iraq onto a progressive path. If that doesn't
happen, the terrorism bubble will reinflate and bad things will follow.
America's future, and the future of the Mideast, rides on our building a
different Iraq.


http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/06/06/1054700387263.html

*  BUSH IGNORES UN CALL FOR INSPECTORS
by Colum Lynch at the United Nations and David Sanger aboard Air Force One
Sydney Morning Herald, 7th June

United Nations Security Council members have called on the Bush
Administration to allow UN weapons inspectors to return to Iraq to certify
whether Baghdad possessed biological and chemical weapons before the war.

But their plea was shrugged off by President George Bush, who vowed to
"reveal the truth" about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

The call for a resumption of UN inspections, which was endorsed on Thursday
by an overwhelming majority of council members, including Britain, America's
closest military ally, came as the Bush Administration faces charges by
members of Congress and some intelligence analysts that it may have
exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq to justify the invasion.

It also reflected a growing consensus in the 15-nation council that the UN
Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) should test US
and British claims that Iraq continued to develop chemical, biological and
nuclear weapons.

"The disarmament of Iraq must be verified and confirmed by UNMOVIC and the
International Atomic Energy Agency on the ground and in conjunction with the
coalition," France's UN ambassador, Jean-Marc de la Sabliere, told the
Security Council.

 In his farewell appearance before the Security Council, the chief UN
weapons inspector, Hans Blix, said Iraq's failure to account for its alleged
biological, chemical or nuclear weapons did not mean that it possessed them
- or posed an imminent threat.

"There remain long lists of items unaccounted for, but it is not justified
to jump to the conclusion that something exists just because it is
unaccounted for," he said.

Dr Blix, who retires at the end of the month, said he could not verify
claims by Mr Bush and other senior US officials that two trucks discovered
in Iraq were mobile biological weapons production plants.

But Iraq had apparently violated its obligation to declare their existence
to UN inspectors. "We will make absolutely no assessment without having seen
them."

[.....]


http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/jun2003/blai-j07.shtml

*  BLAIR DEFEATS MOTION FOR INQUIRY INTO IRAQI WMDS
by Julie Hyland
World Socialist Web, 7th June

The June 4 parliamentary debate on whether the government had deliberately
misled parliament and the British people over Iraq's possession of weapons
of mass destruction witnessed an exercise in political cowardice by the
ostensible critics of Prime Minister Tony Blair.

For days the media had been filled with security leaks confirming what the
majority of people already knew, or had suspected‹that the government had
deliberately lied about Iraq's military capabilities in order to justify its
participation in an illegal war of aggression against a poor and largely
defenceless nation.

The Labour Party demonstrated its imperviousness to the seriousness of such
charges, however, closing ranks behind the prime minister to defeat a
Liberal Democrat motion calling for an independent judicial inquiry into the
allegations and defeating it by 301 votes to 203.

In the end Blair had had a "good day", the media proclaimed, with only 11
Labour MPs supporting the opposition motion. None of them thought to
question what Blair's victory actually said about the state of official
British politics.

Last September, the British government had released a dossier purportedly
containing up to-date intelligence information on Iraq's WMDs, which claimed
Saddam Hussein would be able to launch a chemical and biological strike
against the world within 45 minutes.

Yet, after nearly two months in which British and US troops have occupied
huge swathes of Iraq, detaining and interrogating leading Ba'athist
officials and scientists, no trace has been found of any chemical and
biological weapons arsenal.

According to the Daily Mirror, coalition troops have searched 87 sites
considered "prime" areas for the manufacture of such weapons by the US and
Britain and found nothing. Nineteen of these had been identified by the US
as "highest-priority" zones, but "instead of chemical or biological weapons,
searchers uncovered a training facility for Iraq's Olympic swimming and
diving teams, a drinks distillery and a factory making car licence plates,"
the paper reported. "A feared weapons store was, in fact, a US field
artillery headquarters."

In his final report to the United Nations, delivered Monday June 2, chief
weapons inspector Hans Blix verified that a three-month search of Iraq‹cut
short by the US-led war‹had uncovered no evidence of WMDs.

Faced with such facts US officials had begun to dismiss the significance of
Iraq's military capabilities as a factor in the decision to go to war. US
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said it was possible Saddam Hussein had
destroyed any illegal weaponry prior to the war‹a statement flatly
contradicting Blair's insistence as late as March 18 that claims Iraq had
already destroyed its weapons were "palpably absurd".

Interviewed in Vanity Fair, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said the
issue of WMDs had been cited for "bureaucratic reasons", an implicit
acknowledgement that the issue had been raised solely to provide a
smokescreen for US aggression aimed at establishing its hegemony in the
Middle East and seizing control of vital oil resources.

Just as damaging to Blair's case, anonymous senior figures within Britain's
intelligence services began briefing against government. At least four
different sources were cited by the BBC as complaining that the government
had distorted intelligence material in effort to press its case for war. The
"45 minute" claim in particular had been inserted on the government's
insistence, one had said, despite unease amongst chief spies that the charge
had come from just one uncorroborated source.

Later, the Guardian newspaper ran transcripts of a conversation it said had
taken place between Britain's Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and US Secretary
of State Colin Powell in New York, just prior to the US Security Council
meeting on February 5. Correspondent Dan Plesch, from the Royal United
Services Institute think tank, claimed that according to the security source
who had given him the transcript both had expressed serious doubts about the
quality of intelligence on Iraq's banned weapons programme‹with Powell
allegedly telling Straw that he hoped the facts, when they emerged, would
not "explode in their faces".

The reports immediately reignited divisions over the war, which had seen the
government and much of the official opposition parties arraigned against the
majority of British people.

Former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who had resigned over the war, led
calls for an inquiry. The lack of any evidence supporting the government's
claims over Iraq's chemical arsenal proved that Blair had committed a
"monumental blunder" in moving so quickly to military action, he said.

Pointing out that the attorney general's legal advice to the government on
justification for the war had been based on the existence of WMDs in Iraq,
Cook noted, "If he [Saddam Hussein] did not have those weapons, then that
legal base disappears."

Former International Development Secretary Clare Short went even further.
Short had supported the government on the war, but resigned shortly
afterwards complaining that the prime minister had misled her as to future
plans for Iraq, specifically over the role of the United Nations.

In an interview with the Telegraph she said, "I have concluded that the PM
had decided to go to war in August sometime and he duped us all along. He
had decided for reasons that he alone knows to go to war over Iraq and to
create this sense of urgency and drive it: the way the intelligence was spun
was part of that drive."

Short suggested that Blair's efforts to win UN backing for military action
were a charade. The prime minister had entered a secret pact with President
George W. Bush in September 2002 to go to war in the spring, she said, and
everything that the government had done was in order to justify that
predetermined course.

In addition, the prime minister had deliberately targeted the French
government's objections to war without a UN mandate in order to build up a
war frenzy, she said.

Presenting a parliamentary motion for an independent inquiry into the
allegations. Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy said, "I suspect that
in presentational terms, Number 10 has gone for the greatest, most arresting
presentation of the facts, but that in itself may have had the very
unfortunate effect of misleading certain people."

In response, the government attempted to dismiss the charges as simply the
rantings of the usual antiwar dissenters, motivated by pique over the
government's triumph in Iraq.

Blair insisted that responsibility for the dossiers of evidence presented by
the government on Iraq's capabilities rested with the Joint Intelligence
Committee, which includes the heads of MI5, MI6, GCHQ and other senior
intelligence figures. The security leaks suggesting the government had
doctored intelligence material or expressed private misgivings as to its
veracity were the work of "rogue elements" within the security services out
to get the Labour government, Labour's John Reid told the Times newspaper.
Reid's remarks were backed up by chief whip, Hilary Armstrong, who claimed
skullduggery was afoot in the intelligence world.

Reid's intervention threatened to backfire in the government's face. It is
one thing to accuse the prime minister of being a deceitful toady of Bush,
hell-bent on dragging the country into an illegal adventure, and quite
another to impugn the motives of Britain's spies‹spooks, snoops and
assassins they may be, rogues never.

Pressed on whether‹if the government truly believed itself to be the target
of a faction of the state‹it should not immediately convene an inquiry, Reid
backtracked.

There is no doubt that elements within Britain's security services were
extremely dissatisfied with the government's presentation of intelligence
reports, especially since virtually all of them have proven worthless and
have made the British intelligence service into something of a laughing
stock. And some at least considered Blair's support for a US-led war
reckless and contrary to Britain's own interests in the Middle East.

The row points to fundamental disaffection within broader sections of the
British establishment. During Wednesday's parliamentary debate Blair had
gloated at his critics, "They said there would be thousands dead. They said
it was my Vietnam. They said that the Middle East would be in flames."

Blair implied that all of this had proved to be nonsense, but the death toll
already runs into thousands. According to the Stop the War coalition, the
number of reported civilian deaths caused by the US/UK intervention
currently stands at a minimum of 5,434 and it continues to mount‹from
unexploded ordinance bombs, the lack of basic amenities and poor
sanitation‹and most significantly from direct confrontations between the
Iraqi people and coalition forces.

Reports indicate growing social unrest, including riots, against US/UK
forces that are seen as a force of colonial occupation. Every day brings
fresh reports of British troops being returned to barracks or investigated
on charges of abusing Iraqis and US forces firing on and killing civilians
and being targeted in return.

Sections of the Labour Party fear that Iraq may yet prove to be Blair's
Vietnam. Short referred to concerns at the growing instability in Iraq,
warning, "Baghdad is a disaster. Everything is wrecked. It is completely
violent.... The whole humanitarian system can't work because it's all so
dangerous and disorderly."

As to the Middle East, a study released June 3 by the Pew Global Attitudes
project found that the war in Iraq has caused anti-American sentiment to
reach an all-time high worldwide, especially in Muslim countries.

Even Sir Max Hastings, former editor of the conservative Daily Telegraph and
a supporter of the war, was moved to complain, "The Prime Minister sent
British troops and sacrificed British lives on the basis of a deceit ... and
it stinks."

Hastings noted with concern the US administration's "new round of
sabre-rattling against Iran"‹with whom Britain has sought to cultivate
friendly relations‹especially given that it had been unable to secure any
kind of stability in Afghanistan and now Iraq.

News commentators had noted that should the prime minister prove to have
misled the country, he would have to resign. In parliament, former Labour
chancellor Dennis Healey reiterated that such a charge, if proven, was a
resigning issue.

In the end Blair was able to win the day in Parliament by making clear that
he was not the only one that stood to lose out. In a parliamentary vote
March 18, the government had comfortably won its resolution to support
British participation in the war by 412 to 149 votes, with just 52
abstentions.

That vote was taken despite the fact that it was already clear that the
entire case against Iraq was built on a tissue of lies, buttressed by
Orwellian doublespeak, in which occupation became liberation and war peace.

The issue of weapons of mass destruction was the casus belli through which
the government sought to defy popular opposition to the war and jettison
international law. Advised that the US policy of "regime change" was
illegal, and could open the government up to charges of war crimes, Blair
had to maintain that Iraq's military capability presented such a pressing
and immediate threat that a preemptive strike was necessary for world
security.

To this end, the truth was bent and even manufactured to suit the
government's political end of joining with the US war drive in an attempt to
carve out a new sphere of interest for British imperialism in the Middle
East.

Pulling the threads of the lie over WMDs, then, would cause the entire ball
to unravel‹unmasking not only the prime minister and his US allies but also
the utter perfidy of much of the Labour Party.

And if the prime minister could be held to account for his deceit over Iraq,
what about all the other lies and deceptions practiced by the government on
a daily basis?

And so parliament upheld its right to continue lying and deceiving the
British people, agreeing only that the charges over WMDs should be
investigated by two committees‹the Joint Intelligence Committee and a
cross-party Intelligence and Security Committee‹both of which will meet in
private and can be relied upon to produce a whitewash.

The issue is by no means sidelined, however. New revelations continue to
emerge daily. And though the party hierarchy can intimidate Labour MPs, few
outside parliament will feel restrained from calling the prime minister and
his coterie the liars that they are, and demanding they be held to account.


http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0608-06.htm

*  REVEALED: THE SECRET CABAL WHICH SPUN FOR BLAIR
by Neil Mackay
Sunday Herald, 8th June
 
BRITAIN ran a covert 'dirty tricks' operation designed specifically to
produce misleading intelligence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction
to give the UK a justifiable excuse to wage war on Iraq.

Operation Rockingham, established by the Defense Intelligence Staff within
the Ministry of Defense in 1991, was set up to 'cherry-pick' intelligence
proving an active Iraqi WMD program and to ignore and quash intelligence
which indicated that Saddam's stockpiles had been destroyed or wound down.

The existence of Operation Rockingham has been confirmed by Scott Ritter,
the former UN chief weapons inspector, and a US military intelligence
officer. He knew members of the Operation Rockingham team and described the
unit as 'dangerous', but insisted they were not 'rogue agents' acting
without government backing. 'This policy was coming from the very highest
levels,' he added.

'Rockingham was spinning reports and emphasizing reports that showed
non-compliance (by Iraq with UN inspections) and quashing those which showed
compliance. It was cherry picking intelligence.'

Ritter and other intelligence sources say Operation Rockingham and MI6 were
supplying skewed information to the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC)
which, Tony Blair has told the Commons, was behind the intelligence dossiers
that the government published to convince the parliament and the people of
the necessity of war against Iraq. Sources in both the British and US
intelligence community are now equating the JIC with the Office of Special
Plans (OSP) in the US Pentagon. The OSP was set up by Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld to gather intelligence which would prove the case for war.
In a staggering attack on the OSP, former CIA officer Larry Johnson told the
Sunday Herald the OSP was 'dangerous for US national security and a threat
to world peace', adding that it 'lied and manipulated intelligence to
further its agenda of removing Saddam'.

He added: 'It's a group of ideologues with pre-determined notions of truth
and reality. They take bits of intelligence to support their agenda and
ignore anything contrary. They should be eliminated.'

Johnson said that to describe Saddam as an 'imminent threat' to the West was
'laughable and idiotic'. He said many CIA officers were in 'great distress'
over the way intelligence had been treated. 'We've entered the world of
George Orwell,' Johnson added. 'I'm disgusted. The truth has to be told. We
can't allow our leaders to use bogus information to justify war.'

Many in British intelligence believe the planned parliamentary inquiry by
MPs on the Intelligence and Security Committee will pass the blame for the
use of selective intelligence to the JIC, which includes senior intelligence
figures .

Intelligence sources say this would be unfair as they claim the JIC was
following political instructions. Blair has been under sustained criticism
following allegations that intelligence on the threat from Iraq was 'sexed
up' to make it more appealing to the public.

The rebel Labour MP and Father of the House, Tam Dalyell, said he would
raise the Sunday Herald's investigation into Operation Rockingham in the
Commons on Thursday and demand an explanation from the government about
selective intelligence. Ritter has also offered to give evidence to
parliament.

Both the MoD and Downing Street refused to comment on Ritter's allegations
about Operation Rockingham, saying they did not make statements on
intelligence matters.

British and American intelligence analysts have also come forward to dispute
claims made by President Bush that two military trailers found in Iraq were
bio-weapons labs.


http://www.observer.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4686547,00.html

*  BLOW TO BLAIR OVER 'MOBILE LABS'
by Peter Beaumont and Antony Barnett
The Observer, 8th June

Tony Blair faces a fresh crisis over Iraq's alleged weapons of mass
destruction, as evidence emerges that two vehicles that he has repeatedly
claimed to be Iraqi mobile biological warfare production units are nothing
of the sort.

The intelligence agency MI6, British defence officers and technical experts
from the Porton Down microbiological research establishment have been
ordered to conduct an urgent review of the mobile facilities, following US
analysis which casts serious doubt on whether they really are germ labs.

The British review comes amid widespread doubts expressed by scientists on
both sides of the Atlantic that the trucks could have been used to make
biological weapons.

Instead The Observer has established that it is increasingly likely that the
units were designed to be used for hydrogen production to fill artillery
balloons, part of a system originally sold to Saddam by Britain in 1987.

The British review follows access by UK officials to the vehicles which were
discovered by US troops in April and May.

'We are being very careful now not to jump to any conclusions about these
vehicles,' said one source familiar with the investigation. 'On the basis of
intelligence we do believe that mobile labs do exist. What is not certain is
that these vehicles are actually them so we are being careful not to jump
the gun.'

The claim, however, that the two vehicles are mobile germ labs has been
repeated frequently by both Blair and President George Bush in recent days
in support of claims that they prove the existence of Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction.

During his whistle stop tour of the Gulf, Europe and Russia, Blair
repeatedly briefed journalists that the trailers were germ production labs
which proved that Iraq had WMD.

But chemical weapons experts, engineers, chemists and military systems
experts contacted by The Observer over the past week, say the layout and
equipment found on the trailers is entirely inconsistent with the vehicles
being mobile labs. Both US Secretary of State Colin Powell, when he
addressed the UN Security Council prior to the war, and the British
Government alleged that Saddam had such labs.

A separate investigation published by the New York Times yesterday discloses
that the trailers have now been investigated by three different teams of
Western experts, with the third and most senior group of analysts apparently
divided sharply over their function.

'I have no great confidence that it's a fermenter,' a senior analyst said of
a tank supposed to be capable of multiplying seed germs into lethal swarms.
The government's public report, he said, 'was a rushed job and looks
political'. The analyst had not seen the trailers, but reviewed evidence
from them.

Another intelligence expert who has seen the trailers told the US paper:
'Everyone has wanted to find the "smoking gun" so much that they may have
wanted to have reached this conclusion. I am very upset with the process.'

Questions over the claimed purpose of trailer for making biological weapons
include:

‹ The lack of any trace of pathogens found in the fermentation tanks.
According to experts, when weapons inspectors checked tanks in the
mid-Nineties that had been scoured to disguise their real use, traces of
pathogens were still detectable.

‹ The use of canvas sides on vehicles where technicians would be working
with dangerous germ cultures.

‹ A shortage of pumps required to create vacuum conditions required for
working with germ cultures and other processes usually associated with
making biological weapons.

‹ The lack of an autoclave for steam sterilisation, normally a prerequisite
for any kind of biological production. Its lack of availability between
production runs would threaten to let in germ contaminants, resulting in
failed weapons.

‹ The lack of any easy way for technicians to remove germ fluids from the
processing tank.

One of those expressing severe doubts about the alleged mobile germ labs is
Professor Harry Smith, who chairs the Royal Society's working party on
biological weapons.

He told The Observer 'I am concerned about the canvas sides. Ideally, you
would want airtight facilities for making something like anthrax. Not only
that, it is a very resistant organism and even if the Iraqis cleaned the
equipment, I would still expect to find some trace of it.'

His view is shared by the working group of the Federation of American
Scientists and by the CIA, which states: 'Senior Iraqi officials of the
al-Kindi Research, Testing, Development, and Engineering facility in Mosul
were shown pictures of the mobile production trailers, and they claimed that
the trailers were used to chemically produce hydrogen for artillery weather
balloons.'

Artillery balloons are essentially balloons that are sent up into the
atmosphere and relay information on wind direction and speed allowing more
accurate artillery fire. Crucially, these systems need to be mobile.

The Observer has discovered that not only did the Iraq military have such a
system at one time, but that it was actually sold to them by the British. In
1987 Marconi, now known as AMS, sold the Iraqi army an Artillery
Meteorological System or Amets for short.

Additional reporting by Solomon Hughes


PROBLEMS WITH THE PAST

RFE/RL IRAQ REPORT Vol. 6, No. 25, 6 June 2003

*  U.S. TROOPS ARREST MORE BA'ATH PARTY MEMBERS

U.S. forces arrested 15 members of the banned Ba'ath Party who had gathered
at an Iraqi police academy, ITAR-TASS reported on 31 May. Bernard Kerik, a
U.S. adviser to the Iraqi Foreign Ministry, told journalists the same day
that former Ba'ath Party functionaries had convened for the meeting. The
Ba'athists were reportedly plotting to blow up police outposts and assault
U.S. forces, the "Chicago Tribune" cited U.S. military police as saying on 1
June. "They were supposedly working on curriculum for a police force that
does not exist," he said. "They were really working on attacking police
stations and soldiers," U.S. Army Captain Steve Caruso told the daily. Among
those arrested were one major general and five brigadier generals from the
deposed Hussein regime, as well as the director of the police academy.
Reuters quoted Kerik as telling reporters that police officers at the
academy applauded the arrests, "which shows what people thought of them."
Kerik said an investigation was launched after documents written on Ba'ath
Party stationery were found at the academy. The investigation revealed that
the party was holding weekly meetings at the site. U.S. General Tommy
Franks, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, banned ousted President
Hussein's Ba'ath Party on 11 May (see "RFE/RL Iraq Report," 16 May 2003).
(Kathleen Ridolfo)


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2971464.stm

*  NEW MASS GRAVE FOUND IN IRAQ
BBC, 7th June

Another mass grave has been discovered in Iraq at Salman Pak, just south of
Baghdad, in the grounds of what used to be a sprawling military complex.

Relatives of missing people have begun excavating the site and on Saturday
morning they recovered at least five bodies.

Local residents say they helped bury more than 100 bodies at the military
complex in April and they believe many more may be hidden underground.

They say the victims were young men killed in early April, after the
American-led invasion had begun.

One body was dressed in pyjamas, another had been blindfolded, while a third
had his hands tied and had been shot in the back of the head.

Many of those looking for relatives told Reuters news agency they had not
heard of the grave until a Shia party, Daawa, which lost many of its members
to Saddam Hussein's death squads, organised a trip to the site.

Most Iraqis at the site are from Baghdad's Sadr City, a Shia slum formerly
known as Saddam City.

Many arrived with white sacks filled with cloth to carry away the remains of
the dead.

One of them, Kathim al-Darajee, says he spent 10 years at the notorious Abu
Ghraib prison and left with only one eye because the other was removed
during torture.

"I am looking for my nephew. They showed him and others on television after
they were tortured and said they were guilty of opposition to Saddam," he
said.

Beyond these freshly-dug graves lie rows and rows of furrowed earth, where
earlier victims of the regime may be buried, says the BBC's Chris Morris.

There is a huge forensic task to do here, but hardly anyone available to
help, our correspondent says.

British forensic experts are investigating grave sites, but the identity of
those buried will not be easy to establish because those searching for loved
ones are unknowingly tampering with the evidence.

"Iraq is the land of mass graves and secret prisons," said one man.

Suspected mass grave sites have been identified right across the country.

Human rights groups believe that more than a quarter of a million people
disappeared during the long rule of Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party.

MASS GRAVES IN IRAQ

Kirkuk: Kurdish officials report discovery of 2,000 bodies
Muhammad Sakran: Reports say more than 1,000 bodies found
Babylon: Children's bones reportedly among remains found
Al-Mahawil: Up to 15,000 bodies feared buried
Najaf: 72 bodies found
Basra: Grave believed to contain about 150 Shia Muslims
Abul Khasib: 40 bodies reportedly found


http://www.jordantimes.com/Sun/news/news10.htm

*  IRAQ'S FORMER HEALTH CHIEF DETAINED BY US FORCES SINCE MAY ‹ SON
Jordan Times, 7th June
      
PARIS (AFP) ‹ US forces in Iraq have detained the country's former health
minister, a Kurd who did not belong to Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, since
early May, his son told AFP Saturday.

Omid Mubarak, Iraq's health chief since the Gulf War in 1991, was called in
for questioning by US forces on May 2 and has been in custody ever since,
said his son Nardin Mubarak from Paris, where he is attending dental school.

"We are not worried," Nardin Mubarak said. "The family, including me, has
heard from him" and officials from the International Committee for the Red
Cross have visited the 64-year old.

"In fact Thursday, he told me from the place where he is being held, near
the airport, that I should worry more about my exams in France than about
his health."

"But we don't understand" why he is still in custody and "we wish that he
would be free to return to his home," Nadin Mubarak said.

Throughout the three weeks that US-led troops waged war on Iraq this year,
Omid Mubarak, a cardiologist, went from hospital to hospital in Baghdad,
treating the injured, his son said.

He was forced to stop on April 9, when Baghdad fell to US troops and
Saddam's regime crumbled.

Amid the lawlessness and looting that then engulfed the Iraqi capital,
coalition forces asked Mubarak to continue working at the battered health
ministry and he accepted, his son said.

When US forces first called Mubarak in for questioning on May 2, his family
expected the interrogation to last "two days or, at worst, two weeks. But at
the end of five weeks, he is still in custody," his son said.

The former minister does not feature on the coalition list of 55 most-wanted
members of Saddam's former regime.

"He has never been involved in politics and I think he was the only
non-Baathist member of the government," his son said.

"He has retained good relations with the opposition Kurds and thanks to him,
seriously-ill Kurds in Kurdistan (which was not under Baghdad control since
the end of the Gulf War) were able to get treatment in Baghdad," he added.

The decision for Mubarak to continue working in the country's health sector
was taken with the retired general Jay Garner as the top US administrator in
the country.

The US general was replaced in May by Paul Bremer, who has taken a tough
stance in regard to members of Saddam's regime and has banned high- and
mid-ranking Baath members from all government jobs.

Perhaps the order to release Omid Mubarak from custody has not come because
of Bremer's policy, his son said.


http://www.jordantimes.com/Mon/news/news7.htm

*  SADDAM'S LAST VICTIMS DUG UP IN IRAQI GRAVE
Jordan Times, 9th June
      
MADAEN, Iraq (AFP) ‹ One by one the last victims of Saddam Hussein's regime,
prisoners summarily shot through the head or chest as coalition forces
attacked Baghdad, are being unearthed at this mass grave.

Rotting flesh still hanging to the bones, locks of hair and striped prison
uniforms are set out on plastic sheets under the hot sun.

The stench is nauseating. The killing here was recent, unlike at most of the
mass graves uncovered so far in Iraq.

The sandy field on the banks of Diyala River was owned by the defunct
intelligence services and lies next to a military camp.

It's a slow, painstaking process carried out by volunteers surrounded by a
crowd eager for the slightest evidence of a lost father, brother, cousin or
friend.

Two more corpses are exhumed during the day.

Jassab Laibi, 54, rushed here to try to find the body of his son. Both men
were locked up in the sinister Abu Ghraib prison on the western edge of
Baghdad.

Ali, a second lieutenant, was jailed in December 2002, accused of belonging
to the banned "Free Officers" movement.

"I lost trace of him when the prison authorities took 173 prisoners from Abu
Ghraib on April 4, five days before the regime fell, supposedly to Fallujah
jail," says the father.

He himself was released from prison on April 11 when the gates were flung
open.

Among other Free Officers taken away on April 4 were Colonel Nizar Othman
Karim Al Jaf, Major Dhafer Al Hassan and second lieutenant Ahmad Abdullah,
said Laibi.

The brother of colonel Nizar agrees.

"We have searched the mass graves found in Iraq so far, but in vain," he
sighs.

A mechanical digger is breaking through the ground.

Volunteers from the Al Walaa human rights group run by the Shiite seminary
Hawza, are clawing through the soil with their bare hands or with spades.

A pair of flip-flops like those worn by Iraqi prisoners and an old shoe lie
in the sand.

"An intelligence officer called Jamal was gunned down after asking for the
execution of prisoners to be postponed at a moment when the regime was on
the run," says one local resident, who refused to give his name.

Four corpses were dug up on Saturday. Dozens more remain in the ground.

People who flocked to the site concur that about 150 people are buried in
Madaen, 30 kilometres west of Baghdad.

"There are bullet wounds in the heads and chests of the bodies," says Sattar
Sheffi from Al Walaa which is fronted by prominent Iraqi Shiite cleric
SheikhQadhem Al Fartusi.

The mass grave was found a few days after the end of the war when farmers
were alerted by the sight of dogs devouring unearthed bodies.

Residents said they covered the graves with as much earth as they could and
informed the US occupation authorities who asked them to leave the site
untouched so as not to destroy any more evidence.

Local people say they saw dozens of prisoners brought in aboard two trucks
on April 4 and then executed.

"We drew up a list of 500,000 prisoners jailed between 1985 and 2002 based
on documents found in secret service files of the old regime after the end
of the war," said Sheffi.

"We have only found the remains of 250 of them."


OLD FRIENDS

RFE/RL IRAQ REPORT Vol. 6, No. 25, 6 June 2003

*  SCIRI'S BADR BRIGADE DISMANTLED BY U.S., WILL CHANGE FOCUS

The Kurdish newspaper "Hawlati" reported on 28 May that U.S. forces had
begun disarming the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq's
(SCIRI) armed wing, the Badr Brigade, in the area of Ba'qubah, northeast of
Baghdad. According to the report, some brigade members were arrested and
interrogated "about the number and identity of the Iranians who accompanied
them [into] Iraqi territory." The report stated that "scores" of Badr
fighters were arrested and many remain in detention. The report was not
independently confirmed.

A similar report was issued on 3 June by the Voice of the Mujahidin, a
clandestine radio station reportedly affiliated with SCIRI. According to the
report, U.S. forces stormed SCIRI offices in Tal Afar, near Mosul, seizing
"the contents" of the building and arresting a number of SCIRI members who
were meeting there.

Meanwhile, SCIRI representative Hamid al-Bayati told Al-Jazeera television
in a 2 June interview that SCIRI would be reassessing its structure in light
of the downfall of the Hussein regime. "It is only natural to review SCIRI's
situation. As a matter of fact, His Eminence Ayatollah al-Sayyid Muhammad
Baqir al-Hakim, chairman of SCIRI, announced in a speech in Karbala that the
Badr Brigades will be transformed into the Badr Institution for Building and
Reconstruction," al-Bayati noted. He added that SCIRI's organizational
structure might also be changed.(Kathleen Ridolfo)


RFE/RL IRAQ REPORT Vol. 6, No. 25, 6 June 2003

*  KURDISH PAPER SAYS HUSSEIN LOYALIST ASSISTING PUK

The Kurdish independent weekly "Jamawar" claimed on 2 June that an
individual loyal to the Hussein regime is working with the Patriotic Union
of Kurdistan (PUK) in northern Iraq. Muhammad Najm al-Din Naqshbandi was
reportedly close to Watban al-Tikriti, a half brother of the deposed
president, and held a post at the Iraqi Interior Ministry. According to the
weekly, Naqshabandi now holds a position "under the banner of reorganizing
the officers of the former [Iraqi] Army." The paper suggests that he
obtained the position through PUK senior official Nawshirwan Mustafa. "He
also contacts former Kurdish officers on behalf of the PUK," the weekly
reported. (Kathleen Ridolfo)


RFE/RL IRAQ REPORT Vol. 6, No. 25, 6 June 2003

*  KURDS WANT MORE MONEY FROM U.S.

Despite receiving $30 million last week to pay the April salaries of state
workers in Iraqi Kurdistan, officials in the city of Irbil complained that
the money was significantly less than employees formerly received, "The New
York Times" reported on 4 June.

Complaints also came from Kurdish peshmerga fighters, who went unpaid. One
fighter told the daily that he had not been paid since January. "Peshmerga
prepared everything for the Americans," Fathel Abdulla said, adding: "We
liberated this area with our blood. Now they act with us like we are cheap,
not human, like some kind of servants."

The chief of staff for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in northern
Iraq, Lieutenant Colonel William Butcher, told "The New York Times" that the
salaries were simplified in order to expedite the payments. "This is an
interim salary structure developed by coalition authorities in Baghdad," he
said, adding, "It's difficult to get all the information you need from 18
different provinces and make it exactly right the first time." Butcher said
that salaries would be adjusted at a later date.

Residents of Iraqi Kurdistan were far better off economically at the outset
of Operation Iraqi Freedom than their southern Iraqi compatriots, and are
sure to feel the crunch more than those who lived in the Hussein-controlled
areas of Iraq. According to "The New York Times," a teacher before the war
earned somewhere between $120 and $410 per month. The coalition pay scale
will now provide them with a $50 monthly salary and a $30 bonus. Judges who
earned around $830 will now earn $250 per month. (Kathleen Ridolfo)


RFE/RL IRAQ REPORT Vol. 6, No. 25, 6 June 2003

*  COMMITTEE TO DEVELOP NORTHERN IRAQI AIRPORT

A committee has been set up to work on the development of a civilian airport
in Irbil, northern Iraq, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) newspaper
"Al-Ta'akhi" reported on 2 June. The committee, comprising relevant ministry
and government-agency representatives, was appointed by the Council of
Ministers, the executive branch of the Irbil-based Kurdistan Regional
Government. The committee has reportedly submitted a number of proposals to
the Council of Ministers for the revitalization of the airport. (Kathleen
Ridolfo)


http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/world/6019387.htm

*  ECONOMY IN NORTHERN IRAQ IS HARDEST HIT DUE TO FRIENDSHIP WITH U.S.
by John Sullivan
The State, 5th June

IRBIL, Iraq - (KRT) - Hakim Nurattin's landlord is fed up. After months
without being paid she's threatening to evict the middle-school physics
teacher and his wife.

"I tell her to be patient, but just today she threatened to move us out,"
said Nurattin's wife, Jamila Aziz. "She is his mother, so you understand how
desperate the situation in Irbil has become."

Even in Irbil, the main city in the part of Iraq that was an autonomous
Kurdish region and had the country's best economic conditions before the
war, the plunging value of the dollar is devastating families such as
Nurattin's and undermining U.S. control.

The Kurds who control the north were allies of the American-led forces that
overthrew Saddam Hussein, and many of them don't understand why they are
faring worse now than people in the part of Iraq that was under Saddam's
iron rule.

The problem stems from how workers are paid. In the north, they're paid in
those falling U.S. dollars. In Baghdad and other parts of southern and
central Iraq, they're paid in the local currency.

"The decline of the dollar is destroying our economy," said Saad A. Othman,
Kurdistan's minister of agriculture and irrigation. "The U.S. must
interfere."

He said the consequences of an economic depression in the north could extend
far beyond Iraq's borders.

"The people in the Middle East are all looking to Iraq as the model of
democracy because the only other democratic nation is Israel, a country many
Arabs refuse to recognize," Othman said.

U.S. officials have been reluctant to upset what they call a free market,
but said they're working to solve the problem before the allies' economy
descends into a depressionary spiral.

"We are actively looking into the issue of salaries in Iraq, including the
Kurdish region, for May and June and will make an announcement shortly,"
said Naheed Mehta, a representative of the Office of Reconstruction and
Humanitarian Assistance.

There is even talk among the Kurdish peshmerga fighters - many of whom had
fought Saddam since they could wield Kalashnikov rifles - about using the
currency of the south, which carries Saddam's photo, because the exchange
rate is much higher, about 1,200 to each U.S. dollar compared with 4 to 10
to the dollar in the north.

The Swiss dinar was the currency of all of Iraq before the Persian Gulf War
of 1991. After Saddam's forces retreated from the north, they began to print
their own money, known as the printed dinar. The north continued to use the
Swiss dinar, but couldn't print more since it has no officially recognized
government and no central bank to authorize the printing or set exchange
rates.

Because no new ones have been printed since then, Swiss dinars are in short
supply, while U.S. dollars arrive on pallets.

Trade embargoes also have caused problems. Iraq's north has a self-contained
economy untethered to the international free market, which serves to
stabilize currency. Add to that a crumbling infrastructure that puts Iraq
years behind competitors in neighboring countries, and the consequences are
severe.

Agriculture, the primary industry of the north, serves as a good example of
the problem.

Over the past 13 years of trade sanctions against Iraq, those farmers who
didn't flee to cities faced low market prices for wheat and barley, which
were in large supply under the United Nations oil-for-food program. The
program allowed the north to sell oil and use the money to purchase food.

That created a reliance on goods processed overseas, driving local food
processors out of business. Now cities such as Irbil lack the
transportation, equipment and electricity to process farm products.

For farmers who have continued to grow barley and wheat, the United States
has set a market price of $105 per metric ton of wheat. But since the dollar
has plummeted in recent weeks, farmers who expected to make enough money for
the year on their season's labor will earn just a fraction of that.

Samaid Sulaiman farms about 125 acres of rolling golden fields beneath the
Salahaddin Mountains. The 30-year-old father of four spent about 1,000
dinars on seed, gasoline and equipment rentals to plant his crop, which will
yield about 7 tons of wheat. The World Food Program will buy the crop for
$735, the going rate on the international market. The money changers will
buy his dollars at the current rate of 4 dinars per dollar. When he returns
home with the 2,940 dinars he will have to pay more than half that to the
man with the combine who harvested his crop. Add the 40 dinars in fees to
transport his grain and the 1,000 he spent to plant it, and he is left with
just 300 dinars for a season's work.

An ice cream bar costs 3 dinars. A small bag of groceries costs more than
100 dinars.

On a recent Saturday in Irbil, traders lugged flour sacks of cash and waved
handfuls of the red and green Swiss dinar. A rumor that teachers would get
paid in U.S. dollars brought people to trade dollars before an influx of
teachers trying to trade drove the rate down further.

Nihad Abdul Qadir, who has been trading money in Irbil for 13 years, said
dollars first declined here three months before the war began. Many of the
big traders speculated that the U.S. would occupy the country, lift
sanctions and spend dollars to help Iraqis. In anticipation they bought
bundles of the endangered dinar.

The price of the dollar slipped from 13 dinars to 8. The rate has declined
steadily ever since, and is dropping all the more because American
reconstruction teams spend about $1 million per day.

Qadir said Iraq needed a central bank to set the exchange rate and make the
market less susceptible to rumor.

The local government has paid salaries in dollars at an exchange rate of 10
dinars to a dollar. Now they say they will pay flat salaries, ranging from
$100 to $250 per month, as set by the U.S.-led reconstruction officials. At
the current conversion rates the salaries fall far below what the workers
were earning before the U.S. invasion.

The tidy home of Nurattin, the physics teacher, is easy to clean since they
sold all their furniture. A new refrigerator purchased before the war is
turned off because the amount of electricity they can afford will power only
one appliance at a time. Today it's the television.

"Our son sits in front of the television and watches the children play and
asks me why he is not like the other children," Jamila Aziz said. She
teaches English and makes extra money tutoring. For her colleagues without
such a commodity to offer, life is much harder. She said she was exhausted
listening to the desperate stories of her friends, who were depressed and
always hungry.

Othman, the Kurdish agriculture official, said he understood her plight.

"The people expect so much from the United States and they are
disappointed," he said.


http://biz.yahoo.com/rm/030605/iraq_barzani_2.html

*  SHI'ITE, KURDS QUESTION IRAQ ADMINISTRATION PLANS
by Wafa Amr
Yahoo, 5th June

NAJAF, Iraq, June 5 (Reuters) - Two Iraqi Shi'ite and Kurdish leaders on
Thursday questioned U.S.-British plans to set up an interim administration
in Baghdad, but said their factions had not yet decided whether to join it.

Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim, leader of the Iran-backed Supreme Council
for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), said after consultations with
Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani in the holy city of Najaf that SCIRI had yet
to decide whether to accept a position in an appointed council.

"It is premature. The issue is still under discussion," he said. "But the
Iraqis must form their own (interim) government. We do not need more than
one month to form the government."

The top U.S. administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, is due to meet seven Iraqi
political groups on Friday to discuss controversial plans to set up an
interim Iraqi administration.

SCIRI and Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) are among those groups,
most of which say they oppose Bremer's plan to appoint a 25- to 30- member
interim political council, rather than have such a body elected by a
national conference proposed earlier.

Barzani said that while he disagreed with the new plan, he would keep
talking to the U.S. led administration to find a compromise.

"Even if it was appointed, it should come after consultations between the
(U.S.-British) coalition forces and the political groups. Tomorrow we will
seek more clarifications," he said.

"We do not have any intention to clash with the coalition. We have a
difference of opinion with each other, but we are continuing the dialogue,"
Barzani said.

He also met Grand Ayatollah Ali Mohammed al-Sistani, Iraq's top Shi'ite
cleric, and another formerly London-based cleric, Mohammed Bahr al-Uloom. It
was Barzani's first trip to Najaf since 1967.

SCIRI spokesman Hamid al-Bayati said many Iraqis were "upset" with Bremer
and his ideas. "He has gone back on everything the Americans agreed with the
opposition," he said.

[.....]


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20030606/wl_mideast_afp/i
raq_politics&cid=1514&ncid=1478

*  IRAQI SCEPTICS OPTIMISTIC AFTER RELAUNCH OF POLITICAL TALKS
Yahoo, 7th June

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Critics of the US-led coalition's new plans for the
political future of Iraq (news - web sites) expressed optimism after fresh
talks with US overseer Paul Bremer on his proposals for an interim
administration.
     
Formerly exiled groups who had accused Bremer of seeking to handpick the
administration that will guide post-war Iraq's transition to a democratic
government said they detected moves to address their concerns.

"They have shifted slightly on their position in the last meeting," said the
delegate of the main Shiite Muslim group, the Supreme Assembly of the
Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

"I think we can come to a conclusion, I think we are closing the gaps,"
Hamed Bayati told reporters. "I'm optimistic."

But he refused to commit his group to taking part in the new administration,
put forward by Bremer after the US diplomat scrapped a proposed national
conference to select a full fledged Iraqi government.

"That depends on the eventual proposals by Mr Bremer and his team."

He said he had told the US overseer that SAIRI could only join a proposed
25- to 30 member political council that is to head the new administration if
it was selected by the Iraqi people.

"We expressed our view that we can't be part of an appointed council. It has
to be chosen by Iraqis through one of the mechanisms we suggested -- either
a national assembly or representatives of different parties and groups," he
said.

He said anything less would lead the volatile Middle East region, which
largely opposed the US-led war to bring down Saddam Hussein (news - web
sites), to see the result as a "puppet government."

Bayati said Iraqi delegates had received assurances from Bremer that the
political council would have real powers.

"He said it is not an advisory council. It is a political council that is
going to appoint advisers to the ministries, it is going to set up
committees, it is the face of Iraq in front of the administration and the
world."

A spokesman for the US-backed Kurdistan Democratic Party, whose leader
Massoud Barzani also attended the three-hour talks, said he had seen similar
signs of progress.

"There is progress on their side to make the interim authority an authority
more representative of Iraqis," KDP spokesman Hoshyar Zebari said.

"For example, they talked for the first time about the prerogatives of the
council and said it would appoint interim ministers directly and not just
advisors.

"They can present concrete proposals and represent Iraq in some (regional or
international) bodies."

But Zeybari stressed that the US blueprint remained too fluid for the
faction to give its final word.

"There is no decision yet. There will be further meetings but there is no
date," he said.

Both SAIRI and the KDP are members of a seven-strong leadership council,
which reacted with dismay after Bremer unveiled the new blueprint last
Sunday.

That meeting was supposed to be the last with only the seven, with future
talks embracing a much broader range of Iraqi representatives.

Bayati said 17 people had taken part in Friday's meeting, including three
women for the first time.

Other new delegates included two tribal leaders, the mayor of the mainly
Shiite province of Karbala, a religious scholar and a representative of the
Kurdish Islamic Association.

In recent weeks, the US-led occupation authority has increasingly distanced
itself from the former exiles on the leadership council, charging that they
are unrepresentative of either traditional leaders inside Iraq or the new
parties that have emerged two months after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

But Bayati said he believed that the authority would have to work in concert
with the council eventually.

"We are the only political partner for the allies because ... there is no
political body apart from this leadership council," he said.


http://www.jordantimes.com/Mon/news/news5.htm

*  US-LED COALITION AT ODDS WITH IRAQ SHIITES AS ARMS DEADLINE NEARS
Jordan Times, 9th June
      
BAGHDAD (AFP) ‹ Just one week before a deadline for Iraq's militias to lay
down their weapons, sharp differences are emerging between the US-led
coalition and the main faction of the country's Shiite Muslim majority.

In the face of a blunt warning from the coalition to disarm or face the
consequences, the Iran backed Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in
Iraq (SAIRI) insisted Sunday it was already in compliance with the new
weapons order.

SAIRI spokesman Hamed Al Bayati said the only forces which the movement
retained were lightly armed "secret cells" from its underground resistance
to Saddam Hussein's regime, which he charged would remain entirely lawful.

"The secret cells are individuals who keep their weapons in their homes. I
think the law says that people are allowed to keep weapons at their homes up
to 7.62mm calibre," Bayati said.

The coalition arms controls which come into force on June 15 after a
two-week amnesty period allow private individuals to keep light weapons in
their homes and businesses, up to and including the ubiquitous Kalashnikhov.

But separately it requires all Iraqi factions to disarm their militias,
outside the three northern provinces still held by two Kurdish former rebel
groups which fought alongside the coalition during the war.

"How can you come to the negotiating table with weapons?" a spokesman for
the US-led occupation authority asked Saturday.

The spokesman said the authority had yet to see evidence on the ground that
SAIRI had disarmed and warned that the coalition was fully prepared to take
action.

"One or two SAIRI spokesmen have said the Badr Brigade will disarm. We
welcome those statements and we look forward to seeing that.

"If they don't disarm and they violate the weapons policy, they know what
the consequences will be," he said.

Bayati expressed surprise at the spokesman's comments, insisting that its
Badr Brigades military wing, which boasted as many as 15,000 militiamen in
its war against Saddam from exile in neighbouring Iran, had already been
disarmed.

"We have no camps, we have no heavy weapons," the SAIRI spokesman said.

"We are going to keep our militia unarmed and integrate it with the new
Iraqi army, the new Iraqi police force, the new Iraqi neighbourhood watch
teams."

He said SAIRI officials had remained in constant touch with coalition
commanders about the issue, meeting with ground forces chief Lieutenant
General David McKiernan separately on Friday and then again as part of wider
group of former exiled factions on Saturday.

SAIRI is not the only group to want to see new Iraqi security forces
established with former anti-Saddam militiamen.

The liberal Iraqi National Congress, which contributed troops to the US-led
war, has also pressed for an entirely new force to replace the discredited
security services of the old regime as US troops struggle to stem postwar
lawlessness, and argues it should also include former Badr Brigade members.

But the coalition has so far focused all its efforts on vetting and
reforming Saddam's police, despite repeated revelations of the continuing
grip on it of supporters of the old regime.

SAIRI officials have charged that they are being unfairly treated by the
coalition because of Washington's obsession with their longtime Iranian
sponsors.

Despite the movement's long history of resistance to Saddam, the coalition
kept the Badr Brigades out of Iraq with threats of military action
throughout the war.

SAIRI leaders have complained of the special treatment being accorded the
Kurdish factions in northern Iraq, and accuse the US military of targeting
its members, regardless of whether they are civilians or former militiamen.

Despite repeated pleas to the coalition ground forces chief, the movement
still had no information about the fate of 20 of its members arrested over
the past month, "several" of whom had nothing to do with the Badr Brigades.

"We've asked for their release or to be told what the nature of the
accusations is," Bayati said Saturday. "There has been no formal charge made
against any of them."




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