These are the archives for the week ending 26th January 2007
US sends second carrier to threaten Iran
A second U.S. aircraft carrier strike group now steaming toward the Middle East is Washington's way of warning Iran to back down in its attempts to dominate the region, a top U.S. diplomat said Tuesday.
Nicholas Burns, U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs, ruled out direct negotiations with Iran and said a rapprochement between Washington and Tehran was "not possible" until Iran halts uranium enrichment.
"The Middle East isn't a region to be dominated by Iran. The Gulf isn't a body of water to be controlled by Iran. That's why we've seen the United States station two carrier battle groups in the region," Burns said.
Associated Press, 23/1/07
US crackdown in Baghdad begins
More than 600 members of Iraq’s Mahdi Army are in detention awaiting prosecution, the US military announced in a statement late on Monday – the latest indication that operations against the radical Shia militia have been stepped up and that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has withdrawn political protection from the group.
Mr Maliki may have decided that he needed to move against the militia to avoid losing US support and to avoid further alienating Iraq’s Sunni Arab neighbours, or because he feels that his support among the Shia has been strengthened after the execution of Saddam Hussein.
Reaction from the Sadrists’ political branch has been surprisingly muted, with parliamentarians on Sunday ending a two-month long boycott of the government even though a key Sadrist spokesman had been arrested the day before.
The Sadrists’ apparent acquiescence to the dismantling of their military wing however might not last, if Sunni insurgents succeed in striking at Shia civilian targets. Many Shia consider Mahdi Army roadblocks, and Mahdi Army strikes against Sunni insurgent mosques, to be their best defence against the car bombers who have killed thousands over the past few years.
Financial Times 23/1/07
Worldwide distrust of US deepens
Global opinion of U.S. foreign policy has sharply deteriorated in the past two years, according to a BBC poll released on the eve of President Bush's annual State of the Union address.
Nearly three-quarters of those polled in 25 countries disapprove of U.S. policies toward Iraq, and more than two-thirds said the U.S. military presence in the Middle East does more harm than good. Nearly half of those polled in Europe, Africa, Asia, South America and the Middle East said the United States is now playing a mainly negative role in the world.
The BBC survey found that a majority of those polled hold negative views on U.S. policies on a wide range of issues. Sixty-seven percent disapproved of U.S. handling of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Sixty-five percent disliked the U.S. stance on last summer's military conflict between Israel and the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, 60 percent opposed U.S. policies on Iran's nuclear program, 56 percent opposed Washington's position on global climate change and 54 percent disapproved of U.S. policies toward North Korea.
Washington Post, 23/1/07
Bloodiest attack this year
A suicide bomber crashed his car into a central Baghdad market crowded with Shiites just seconds after another car bomb tore through the stalls where vendors were hawking DVDs and used clothing, leaving 88 dead Monday in the bloodiest attack in two months.
The bombings, along with a double bombing that killed 12 people in the town of Khalis, battered Shiites during one of their holiest festivals. The attacks were the latest in a renewed campaign of insurgent violence in advance of a U.S.-Iraqi security operation.
In all, 137 people were killed or found dead across Iraq, including a teacher who was gunned down as she was on her way to work at a girls' school in a mainly Sunni area of Baghdad. The toll also included the bullet-riddled bodies of at least 30 people, apparent victims of death squads largely run by Shiite militias.
Houston Chronicle, 22/1/07
Any Baghdad success may be short-lived
The battle for Baghdad will start in mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods chosen by military strategists as being the least likely to offer stiff resistance, raising the odds of early success, according to military planners and officials familiar with the thinking of the incoming Iraq commander, Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus.
But that could be followed by a sharp increase in violence as insurgents learn U.S. and Iraqi tactics, military officials said. By April or early May, American planners hope that the levels of violence will begin to go down. But they also fear that this is the point at which the campaign could begin to go quietly sour. Insurgents and militias will have had time to study the new U.S. approaches and determine where the points of vulnerability exist.
Retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson, who has advised top U.S. officials on insurgencies predicted that Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias will "wait out the surge, falling upon the Iraqi security forces when the Americans start leaving, causing a Tet-like effect where the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train."
Washington Post, 23/1/07
Official: Guantanamo undermines rule of law
The United States is undermining international law by unilaterally rejecting demands to grant detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp protection against mistreatment and torture, an influential committee of British MPs has warned.
The Foreign Affairs Committee claims the US is threatening the future of the Geneva Conventions by refusing to recognise the terror suspects interned at the camp as "military combatants" and give them the rights due under the international agreements.
The all-party group issued the warning as part of a critical verdict on conditions after a groundbreaking visit to Guantanamo Bay last September. They added their weight to claims that suspected terrorists interned at the camp have been subjected to physical and mental abuse amounting to torture by their American captors.
Scotland on Sunday, 21/1/07
UK spies on Mecca pilgrims
The intelligence agencies are monitoring every Muslim who travels from Britain to Mecca on pilgrimage in a wider effort to piece together intelligence on suspected Al-Qaeda terrorist activity.
A senior Whitehall official has disclosed that the operation targeting trips to the holy city in Saudi Arabia by more than 100,000 British Muslims is part of a trawl by MI5 and MI6 for information about movements of suspected terrorists. It follows evidence that British Islamic terrorists have visited the city before carrying out attacks in Britain and abroad.
The importance of the intelligence operation was one of the reasons given by spy chiefs for maintaining ties with Saudi Arabia when the Saudi government was threatening to break off intelligence ties over a bribery investigation by the Serious Fraud Office into BAE, Britain’s prime defence contractor.
Sunday Times, 21/1/07
Doctors plea to Tony Blair
The desperate plight of children who are dying in Iraqi hospitals for the lack of simple equipment that in some cases can cost as little as 95p is revealed today in a letter signed by nearly 100 eminent doctors.
They are backed by a group of international lawyers, who say the conditions in hospitals revealed in their letter amount to a breach of the Geneva conventions that require Britain and the US as occupying forces to protect human life.
In a direct appeal to Tony Blair, the doctors describe desperate shortages causing "hundreds" of children to die in hospitals. "Sick or injured children who could otherwise be treated by simple means are left to die in hundreds because they do not have access to basic medicines or other resources," the doctors say. "Children who have lost hands, feet and limbs are left without prostheses. Children with grave psychological distress are left untreated," they add.
They say babies are being ventilated with a plastic tube in their noses and dying for want of an oxygen mask, while other babies are dying because of the lack of a phial of vitamin K or sterile needles, all costing about 95p. Hospitals have little hope of stopping fatal infections spreading from baby to baby because of the lack of surgical gloves, which cost about 3.5p a pair.
The doctors say the UK, as one of the occupying powers under UN resolution 1483, has to comply with the Geneva and Hague conventions that require the UK and the US to "maintain order and to look after the medical needs of the population". But, the doctors say: "This they failed to do and the knock-on effect of this failure is affecting Iraqi children's hospitals with increasing ferocity."
They call on the UK to account properly for the $33bn (£16.7bn) in the development fund for Iraq which should have supplied the means for hospitals to treat children properly. They say more than half of the money - $14bn - is believed to have vanished through corruption, theft and payments to mercenaries.
Independent 19/1/07
Britain knew of secret prisons
The British foreign secretary admitted Friday that her government was aware of a secret CIA prison network before President Bush acknowledged its existence in September. Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett made the admission in a written response to a parliamentary question.
Associated Press, 19/1/07
Al Sadr ends two-month boycott
The political movement of radical Shia cleric Moqtada Al Sadr said it would end a two-month boycott of parliament on Sunday, signalling a smoothing of tensions with its Shia allies in the US-backed government.
The Mehdi Army, a militia loyal to Sadr, has been identified by Washington as the biggest threat to security in Iraq and Shia Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki has been under pressure to crack down on it. His dependence on Sadr’s political movement has made that difficult.
The Sadrists are a key ally of Maliki but announced a boycott late last year to press their demand for a withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and to protest against a meeting between Maliki and US President George W. Bush.
Khaleeja Times 21/1/07
Deadly day for US in Iraq
A U.S. Black Hawk helicopter crashed Saturday afternoon northeast of the capital, killing all 12 American soldiers on board, and at least 12 service members soldiers died in other parts of the country, officials said. The deaths made the day one of the deadliest for U.S. service members in Iraq since the war began.
The incidents came as the Bush administration was extending the tours of some troops in Iraq and sending additional ones for a build up that has met strong resistance in Congress. The administration has billed the increase as a key step toward securing the viability of Iraq's young government and bringing down the level of violence.
Washington Post 21/1/07
Blair ducks Iraq debate
The prime minister is to shun the first major debate on Iraq held in parliament since 2004. Tony Blair has said he will not attend the Commons session, although it is taking place straight after prime minister’s questions on Wednesday.
His decision has been sharply criticised by the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives, who believe he has a duty to open the debate on behalf of the government. Instead, he has asked Margaret Beckett, the foreign secretary, to take the lead.
Sunday Times, 21/1/07
Britain in Iraq throughout 2007
Britain's senior representative in Iraq said British forces will remain in Iraq through 2007 and perhaps into 2008 if the Baghdad government asks for continued help.
"Do I see ourselves being here throughout 2007? Yes," said Army Lt. Gen. Graeme Lamb, deputy commander of Multi-National Force-Iraq.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair on January 10 said British operations aimed at preparing to hand over security in Basra to Iraqi authorities could be completed in the next few weeks. L mb, however, said Shi'ite militias were "making inroads" in Basra in southern Iraq, where the bulk of the British force operates.
Sydney Morning Herald, 20/1/07
Cost of war goes over $500 billion
The steadily rising cost of the Iraq war will reach about $8.4 billion a month this year, Pentagon spokesmen said Thursday, as the price of replacing lost, destroyed and aging equipment mounts.
The Pentagon has been estimating last year's costs for the increasingly unpopular war at about $8 billion a month. It rose from a monthly "burn rate" of about $4.4 billion during the first year of fighting in fiscal 2003.
Since fiscal 2001, Congress has approved $503 billion to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other aspects of the U.S. "global war on terrorism".
Los Angeles Times, 19/1/07
US arrests al-Sadr aide
U.S. and Iraqi forces swooped into a mosque complex in east Baghdad on Friday and detained a top aide to radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, the latest in a series of operations aimed at eviscerating the leadership of the Mahdi Army militia.
The raid drew immediate criticism from the Iraqi government, which complained it had not been consulted. An aide to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who owes his job as Iraqi leader to al-Sadr's backing, said the operation was not part of a coming joint U.S.-Iraq security drive.
"There was no coordination with the Iraqi political leadership and this arrest was not part of the new security plan," Sadiq al-Rikabi, the al-Maliki adviser, told Al-Arabiya television. "Coordination with the Iraqi political leadership is needed before conducting such operations that draw popular reactions."
CBS News, 20/1/07
Iraq rejects UN report over gay rights
Iraq's government on Thursday strongly criticized a U.N. report on human rights that put its civilian death toll in 2006 at 34,452, saying it is "superficial" and discussed subjects that are taboo in Iraqi society such as homosexuality.
The government did not reject the casualty figure but said the U.N. Assistance Mission report was "not professional or neutral as we would expect from the missions of the international organization. The report was superficial in dealing with several points," spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said.
"There was information in the report that we cannot accept here in Iraq. The report, for example, spoke about the phenomenon of homosexuality and giving them their rights," al-Dabbagh said. "Such statements are not suitable to the Iraqi society. This is rejected."
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 18/1/07