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Thread 4. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1084291/posts |
Posted on 02/05/2004 8:31:17 PM PST by Mossad1967
Edited on 02/09/2004 3:20:18 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
SANAA, Yemen, Jan. 24 (UPI) -- A purported statement by al-Qaida in Yemen warned Saturday of a "major strike" soon in the United States.
The statement, distributed by the Yemeni Tagamoo Party for Reforms, said: "A major strike, a big event will take place in America soon," reminiscent of the Sept. 11 attacks.
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A senior U.S. officer said Monday it appeared all the attackers wounded or killed in a weekend raid in Fallujah were Iraqis, despite initial reports that foreigners including Lebanese and Iranians were involved.
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt acknowledged that initial reports spoke of foreigners having taken part in the Saturday attack, in which 25 people were killed in simultaneous attacks on the police station and the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps compound.
Iraqi authorities said two attackers were captured and at least four were killed.
"The reports that we've gotten from the 82nd (Airborne Division) indicate that they were all Iraqi citizens," Kimmitt said of the killed and captured attackers.
He said the final report could have a different finding "but right now the sensing of the commander on the ground was these were all Iraqi citizens."
He said there were indications that the attack may have been staged to free four Iraqis held for firing at an Iraqi civil defense bus.
On Sunday, U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer repeated claims that foreign fighters were involved in the Fallujah attack.
"There were foreigners apparently involved," Bremer said on ABC's "This Week." "We're still looking into that to try to find out what the implications are."
However, U.S. military officials said privately they doubted the attack was carried out by foreign fighters or al-Qaida terrorists but rather by veterans of Saddam Hussein's army.
FALLUJAH, Iraq (AFP) - A group claiming to represent Islamist insurgents in the rebel town of Fallujah called for a halt to all attacks against the Iraqi police and army after a weekend assault killed 23 policemen. The "Mujahedeen (holy warriors) of Fallujah" said it has decided "to stop all attacks against policeman and the (Iraqi) army until there is a new order," in leaflets circulated in the town, 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Baghdad.
"We the fighters of Fallujah vow we do not have any ties to the operation carried out by the rabble without faith or honour that sullied our reputation," the group said.
It denied any connection to the raid on the Fallujah police station and a paramilitary base Saturday that also saw 72 prisoners freed from jail.
By JIM KRANE, Associated Press Writer
KARBALA, Iraq - The top U.S. administrator in Iraq suggested Monday he would block any interim constitution that would make Islam the chief source of law, as some members of the Iraqi Governing Council have sought.
L. Paul Bremer said the current draft of the constitution would make Islam the state religion of Iraq and "a source of inspiration for the law" — as opposed to the main source.
Many Iraqi women have expressed fears that the rights they hold under Iraq's longtime secular system would be rolled back in the interim constitution being written by U.S.-picked Iraqi leaders and their advisers, many of them Americans. U.S. lawmakers have urged the White House to prevent Islamic restrictions on Iraqi women.
Asked what would happen if Iraqi leaders wrote into the constitution that Islamic sharia law is the principal basis of the law, Bremer suggested he would wield his veto. "Our position is clear. It can't be law until I sign it," he said.
Bremer must sign into law all measures passed by the 25-member council, including the interim constitution. Iraq's powerful Shiite clergy, however, has demanded the document be approved by an elected legislature. Under U.S. plans, a permanent constitution would not be drawn up and voted on until 2005.
Bremer used the inauguration ceremony at a women's center in the southern city of Karbala to argue for more than "token" women's representation in the transitional government due to take power June 30.
"I think it is very important that women be represented in all the political bodies," Bremer said.
"Women are the majority in this country, in this area probably a substantial majority," he said, referring to the Saddam Hussein's 1991 purges of Shiite Muslim men. Those killings left the holy city of Karbala and other Shiite cities dotted with mass graves and brimming with thousands of widows.
Bremer and an entourage of reporters flew from Baghdad into this Shiite holy city in a pair of U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopters. He toured a women's center renovated by U.S. and seized Iraqi funds, pausing to chat with women and girls who were sewing curtains and surfing the Internet.
In a speech to about 100 women — most dressed in flowing black abayas and some with tattooed chins — Bremer cited a 2003 United Nations report that found that productivity in Arab countries was being strangled because women had been kept out of the work force. Bremer suggested that women's participation did not run counter to Muslim values.
"Women who can read and write and understand mathematics are not prevented from being good mothers. Quite the opposite," Bremer told the gathering. "No son is better off because his mother and sisters cannot read."
Nawal Jabar, 44, whose husband was killed in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, said she joined the women's center to learn a trade.
"Either my mother or my brother has supported me from time to time since my husband died," Jabar said. "It's a very bad situation. But I am hoping I can get a job here so that I can support my kids."
Enshrining women's rights in a constitution could be difficult. U.S. observers have predicted liberal reforms introduced in the transitional law could well be rolled back in a future constitution. Bremer acknowledged that U.S. influence on an Iraqi constitution would fade after the June 30 handover.
"There will be a sovereign government here in June. The Iraqis then will then have responsibility for their own country," Bremer said. "There's a real hunger for democracy in this country. It may not look like American democracy, but there's a real hunger for it and we're encouraging that."
There are three women on the Governing Council.
Mohsen Abdel-Hamid, the current council president and a member of a committee drafting the interim constitution, has proposed making Islamic sharia law the "principal basis" of legislation.
The phrasing could have broad effects on secular Iraq. In particular, it would likely make moot much of Iraq's 1959 Law of Personal Status, which grants uniform rights to husband and wife to divorce and inheritance, and governs related issues like child support.
Under most interpretations of Islamic law, women's rights to seek divorce are strictly limited and they only receive half the inheritance of men. Islamic law also allows for polygamy and often permits marriage of girls at a younger age than secular law.
In December, the council passed a decision abolishing the 1959 law and allowing each of the main religious groups to apply its own tradition — including Islamic law. Many Iraqi women expressed alarm at the decision, and Bremer has not signed it into law.
Earlier this month, 45 members of the U.S. House of Representatives signed a letter to President Bush urging him to preserve women's rights.
"It would be a tragedy beyond words if Iraqi women lost the rights they had under Saddam Hussein, especially when the purpose of our mission in Iraq was to make life better for the Iraqi people," the letter read.
By MARI YAMAGUCHI, Associated Press Writer
TOKYO - Japanese agents raided key facilities of a doomsday cult Monday, searching for evidence of a terror plot before a verdict in the trial of the group's guru for a 1995 nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subways.
About 200 investigators poured into the Tokyo headquarters and 10 other centers of the Aum Shinrikyo cult in the latest raid on the group, which now calls itself Aleph. Investigators did not immediately detain any suspects Monday.
The raids come ahead of the Feb. 27 verdict in the murder trial of Shoko Asahara, who is accused of masterminding the Tokyo attack that killed 12 people and sickened thousands, and a series of other murders. He faces the death penalty if convicted.
The group has shown signs of greater devotion to Asahara in recent months, raising concerns it could mount a terror attack around the time of his ruling, a Public Security Intelligence Agency official said on condition of anonymity.
Agents also want to pin down the whereabouts of group leaders, the official said.
Despite a police crackdown after the March 1995 gas attack, the cult has regrouped in recent years and now has 1,650 members in Japan and 300 in Russia. The group remains under surveillance by the intelligence agency.
At its height, Aum Shinrikyo had 10,000 members in Japan and 30,000 in Russia.
The cult had a chemical and biological weapons program and produced the sarin gas used in the Tokyo attack. Asahara is also accused of killing wayward disciples and ordering the deaths of an anti-cult lawyer and his family.
So far, 11 of Asahara's followers have been sentenced to death in connection with several cult attacks. None has yet been executed.
Feb 16, 2004
By Zafir Jamaal, JUS
After rumors of the presence of Osama Bin Laden in the province of NWFP, four FBI agents have arrived in Kohat, Pakistan. One of the agents is a female. The agents have taken residence in government rest houses and the workers have been replaced by Pakistani intelligence agencies who have taken posts as the “butlers” for these agents. These FBI agents are rumored to be here to assess the possibility of a large-scale operation in Karam and Aurakzai agencies in the tribal area of Pakistan to search for Osama Bin Laden.
In the province of Paktia, a Taliban attack has resulted in the deaths of three Afghan soldiers and wounded two others. The attack took place near Gardez when a check post of Afghan army was attacked Friday. The soldiers eventually abandoned their post and the Taliban burned it to the ground.
Taliban have also started to take operations against the strategic assets of coalition forces and have destroyed a supply container in Gardez. The supplies inside the shipping container were completely destroyed.
In Khost, a bomb blast near a police check post Friday killed two Afghan soldiers and wounded nine others, including 5 soldiers.
Eight people were killed in attacks on the district headquarter of Sarobi, Paktika and Kabul. The attack on Sarobi was carried out by same attackers who had fired up to 21 rockets on the Khost Airport. The attack on Sarobi district government also wounded five others people.
A rocket attack in Kabul also on Friday targeted the residential compound housing of high ranking government officials of the Karzai regime and in the attack 3 officials and one child were killed.
In Logar, Taliban Mujahideen ambushed a coalition convoy, causing panic in the ranks but no casualties were reported. (JUS)
Lets hope it is the lattrer
Monday, February 16, 2004 Posted: 8:37 AM EST (1337 GMT)
Police blamed New People's Army (NPA) rebels for the attack.
MANILA, Philippines (Reuters) -- Communist New People's Army (NPA) rebels have ambushed a police patrol, killing eight of them in the central Philippine island of Masbate, police said.
The attack Monday came two days after peace negotiators from the government and the rebels concluded talks in Oslo to find a lasting political settlement to more than three decades of armed insurgency that has killed more than 40,000 people.
Police spokesman Joel Goltiao said soldiers and police were verifying reports on Monday that a village chief in Milagros town was also killed in rebel fire.
"Eight policemen were killed when their jeep hit a landmine," Goltiao told reporters. He said a rebel was also killed in the brief gunbattle.
He said soldiers and police were in pursuit of the rebels.
Peace negotiations had stalled for nearly three years after NPA guerrillas, which the U.S. government and several Western European nations have listed as a foreign terrorist organization, assassinated local politicians in 2001.
The communist guerrillas stepped up armed activities just as peace negotiators were wrapping up discussions in Oslo, agreeing to resume talks next month in China.
Two rebels were killed and three army troopers were wounded when 50 rebels stormed an army outpost on Sunday in the central Philippine region, the military said.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, seeking a fresh six-year term in May elections, has been negotiating separately with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front to end three decades of Muslim separatist rebellion in the south.
The capture of a top terrorist in the Kurdish highlands may have exposed al-Qaeda's aspirations in Iraq—and has fired up the hunt for the group's regional commander
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