Posted on 01/06/2004 12:32:49 AM PST by kattracks
The US Army pledged to pull down a symbolic barbed wire fence around Saddam Hussein's birthplace in a move aimed at easing tensions with Iraqis as the White House reaffirmed its commitment to Iraq's territorial integrity after a transfer of power scheduled for June."We are strongly committed to the territorial integrity of Iraq," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters aboard Air Force One.
"The Iraqi people will be the ones who will make the decisions" within the framework of a November 15 agreement on the transfer of power, and issues related to federalism will be decided "within that framework," he said.
The New York Times reported Monday that the United States and Iraqi provisional authorities had reached agreement in principle about granting the Kurds semi-autonomy, at least in the short term.
Responding to that report, State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said the matter was not one for the United States to decide.
"The structure of a future Iraqi state, including federalist elements, is a constitutional issue for the Iraqis to decide," he said.
But a senior State Department official appeared to confirm the Times story by brushing aside concerns that Turkey and other of Iraq's neighbors, notably Syria, might have of that arrangement.
"You will have a self-governing region in the north with some autonomy, but it's not that big a deal, it's still Iraq," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Meanwhile, US occupation troops pressed on with efforts to quell unrest across the violence-wracked nation, swooping on political premises of its Kurdish allies in the ethnically troubled northern city of Kirkuk and detaining a senior official.
More international help in restoring order looked to be on its way as Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi pledged assistance ahead of a likely deployment of 1,000 non-combat troops and Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski inspected 332 paratroopers bound for Iraq.
Kwasniewski said NATO should decide at its next summit in Turkey in June on whether it is prepared to play a greater role in Iraq.
"I think that it will be the right time to expect decisions on this question, Yes or No," Kwasniewski told a news conference in Poland.
Romania, which is to join the Western alliance later this year, proposed to supply the new Iraqi army with artillery ammunition and Kalashnikov rifles "at competitive prices," Decebal Ilina, state secretary for Romania's arms industry, said.
A US officer told a weekly meeting of sheikhs in northern Tikrit that the US army would soon remove barbed wire erected October 31, 2003 around the nearby Owja village, birthplace of Saddam.
"In the next weeks we'll hire a contractor and take down the wire," said Lieutenant Colonel Steve Russell.
Russell said security was being relaxed because people in the town, once a hotbed of support for Saddam, were now cooperating more with the occupying forces, and because many anti-coalition fighters in the area had been captured.
The announcement came a day after Russell, head of the battalion which patrols Tikrit, took to the streets to plead for calm, telling locals his troops were not involved in the shooting deaths of four Iraqi civilians.
Local police said US soldiers in a convoy had sprayed a car with gunfire, killing four people on Saturday.
In other operations around Tikrit, the US military captured 36 people in a series of raids, 15 of whom were suspected of being members of a key cell in Saddam's regime.
More attempts to smooth the US presence in Iraq were underway at an airbase near another northern town, Mosul, where senior figures in Saddam's once-powerful Baath party gathered to denounce attacks against the coalition.
In a ceremony at the Tall Afar base, former high ranking Baath officials also handed over weapons as part of a US scheme to rehabilitate former leaders of the Baath, now synonymous with the tyranny of Saddam's rule.
"From the beginning we did not fight coalition forces," said former Baathist Ali Hussein Jamil, one of 60 ex-Baath members hoping to win back their old public sector jobs.
Also Monday in Mosul one policeman was shot dead, local police said, but the motive for the killing was not known.
In Baghdad, despondent soldiers from the once proud Iraqi army staged protests on the eve of the Army Day holiday to demand cash from the US-led coalition which defeated them on the battlefield and consigned them to unemployment.
Some 100 former officers and lower ranks, many dressed in tattered and shabby clothing, rallied outside the Baghdad headquarters of the coalition authorities to vent anger about lack of support from Iraq's new leadership.
"They should pay us, it is their job. They take our oil, so they must give us our money," said Hassan Kader Kazae, a 38-year-old ex-first lieutenant, as a crowd of his former comrades-in-arms chanted their demands.
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