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Posted on 02/24/2004 3:19:05 AM PST by Revel
Edited on 05/26/2004 5:19:43 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
A majority of people living in the two countries bordering the United States and in five major European countries say they think the war in Iraq increased the threat of terrorism in the world, Associated Press polls found. (AP Graphic)
AP: Europeans Say Iraq War Raised Threat
Thu Mar 4, 4:53 PM ET
By WILL LESTER, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - A majority of people living in the two countries bordering the United States and in five major European countries say they think the war in Iraq increased the threat of terrorism in the world, Associated Press polls found.
In the United States, people were evenly divided on whether the war has increased or decreased the terror threat.
The AP polls were conducted by Ipsos, an international polling firm, in Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Germany, Mexico, Spain and the United States.
While a majority in each of the countries polled except the United States said the terrorism threat was greater now, fewer than one in 10 in any of the European countries said the terror threat had been decreased by the war.
In Canada and France, just over half felt it had been increased, whereas in Germany, three-fourths thought the Iraq war has made the terror problem worse.
Concern about terrorism was very high in Italy and Germany, where about seven in 10 said they were very worried or somewhat worried, and especially in Spain, 85 percent, where residents also have to contend with domestic terrorism by Basque separatists. The high levels of concern about terrorism are probably linked to the recent history of terror in those countries, one public opinion analyst said.
"Italy and Germany were the countries most heavily affected by terrorism during the 1970s," said Christian Holst, director of opinion research at Ipsos Germany. "This kind of sticks in people's memories the older they are, the more they remember, and the higher the level of fear is."
Fewer than half in Canada said they were worried about terrorism, a finding that didn't surprise Darrell Bricker, president of public affairs polling of Ipsos-Reid in Canada.
"Our experience with terrorism tends to be on the news and south of the border, not here," Bricker said.
Events in the Mideast are increasing terror concerns in many countries, the polls found. A majority in each country, including the United States, said they felt the situation between Israel and the Palestinians has made the terror threat around the world worse.
General negative feelings about the Iraq war contribute to fears of "either defeated Iraqis or terrorists who use the Iraq war as a pretext to commit attacks," Holst said.
The polls found that people living in all the countries except the United States have an unfavorable view of the role that President Bush plays in world affairs. Only in the United States did a majority, 57 percent, have a positive view of the role played by the U.S. president.
Just over half in Mexico and Italy had a negative view of Bush's role. In Britain, the closest U.S. ally in the war in Iraq, and in Canada, two-thirds have a negative view. Mexico shut up and keep and take care of your own citizens.
Sam McGuire, director of opinion research at Ipsos UK, said Bush's low ratings in Britain are notable, given that country's close alliance with the United States. Britain traditionally has been seen as the United States' "staunchest European ally on world affairs," he said, and long has been a buffer between the United State and Europe.
Three-fourths of those in Spain and more than four in five in France and Germany had a negative view of Bush's role in world affairs.
"Bush has a lot of work to do if he wants to be popular in France," said Edouard LeCerf, director of opinion research for Ipsos France. Chirac is not popular in the US, so why would our President GWB care whether or not he is popular in France. Someone inform Edo do-wad no one cares about france but france.
People in the different countries had a more mixed reaction about whether Britain and the United States should have gone to war in Iraq, if it turns out no weapons of mass destruction are found.
Of the eight countries polled, a majority in five countries the United States, Canada Mexico, Italy and Britain say that even if no weapons of mass destruction are found in Iraq, there were other reasons to justify the war.
The AP-Ipsos polls of 930 to just over 1,000 adults in each country were taken Feb. 12-21 and have margins of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
___
On the Net:
Ipsos-Public Affairs http://www.ipsos.com/ap
Reported all in the same day al-Zarqawi is dead and his mother died.
Al-Qaeda suspect Zarqawi's mother dies in Jordan: family
Thu Mar 4, 5:26 AM ET
AMMAN (AFP) - The mother of Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, suspected of links to Al-Qaeda and of masterminding the massive suicide bombings in Iraq this week, has died at her home in Jordan, a daughter told AFP.
"My mother passed away on Sunday and has been buried. God has called her back to him," Zarqawi's sister said Thursday.
The woman, who would not give her name, defended her brother against US accusations that he orchestrated a series of bombings in Iraq's holy city of Karbala and the capital Baghdad Tuesday that killed at least 170 people.
"He is innocent," she said. "It is impossible for him to be linked with attacks that have any religious connotation."
After the coordinated attacks, US Central Command chief General John Abizaid said Washington has "clear intelligence" tying Zarqawi to the bombings and to the former Iraqi intelligence services.
Washington, which also holds Zarqawi to be a top chemical and biological weapons expert for Al-Qaeda and leader of an Iraqi affiliate of the terror group, recently doubled to 10 million dollars a bounty posted on him in October.
Zarqawi's mother, Omm Sayel, 60, lived with her six daughters and two sons in a modest house in the town of Zarka, 25 kilometers (16 miles) northeast of Amman.
She has been keeping to her bed, suffering from a heart condition and high-blood pressure.
The family has repeatedly said it has not heard from Zarqawi, whose real name is Fadel Nazzal al-Khalayleh, for a long time.
Thu Mar 4, 3:46 PM ET
BAGHDAD (AFP) - Fears of fresh violence in Iraq ran high, as nine Iraqis were killed a day before the war-torn country's leaders were due to sign a temporary constitution marking a milestone on the road to democracy.
"Tomorrow could be a key target (for an attack)," said a senior official of the US-led coalition, referring to the signing ceremony that will be attended by the 25 members of Iraq's US-picked interim Governing Council.
A podium stands ready for leaders from Iraq's diverse religious and ethnic groups to sign into law a temporary constitution on Friday for the country's immediate future once the coalition hands back sovereignty on June 30.
But this week has seen a complex coordinated attack on Shiite Muslim shrines on Tuesday that killed more than 170 people and a number of rocket strikes in Baghdad, including one not far from where the signing will take place.
Three Iraqis were killed and five injured in one such attack late Thursday, when a rocket slammed into a car in southwest Baghdad, not far from a US military base.
In the northern city of Mosul, three policemen and two civilians were killed in a rocket and automatic rifle attack, police said.
Another Iraqi police officer was killed and two others seriously wounded in the northern city of Kirkuk when gunmen attacked their patrol, police said.
In Basra, in relatively quiet southern Iraq, police arrested five people travelling in a car packed with explosives and who admitted planning to blow it up in the centre of the southern city, a local official said.
Amid criticism from Shiite clerics that US-led occupation forces are not doing enough to protect civilians, Washington said it would spend 60 million dollars on beefing up the Iraqi security presence along Iraq's porous borders.
"We are adding hundreds of vehicles and doubling border police staffing in selected areas," said US overseer Paul Bremer on Wednesday.
The bombings in the Shiite holy city of Karbala and at a Baghdad mosque, which also left more than 500 wounded, were the worst attacks in Iraq since the fall of dictator Saddam Hussein last April.
US officials have named Jordanian Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network as prime suspects, accusing them of trying to ignite a war between Shiites and Sunnis.
Tuesday's carnage could have been much worse, had US and Iraqi forces not foiled a third planned attack in Basra and thwarted plans to hit several prominent Shiite figures.
"We remain concerned about all leaders inside of Iraq being targeted," said a senior coalition official.
"It is not a particular religion or ethnicity that is being targeted, it is the leaders that are trying to build a new Iraq," the official told reporters.
"What the terrorists have demonstrated to us in their actions ... is what they most fear is a free, democratic, sovereign, united Iraq," he said.
Indeed, Friday's ceremony is to usher in the new temporary constitution, which was drawn up under the watchful eye of US officials after days and nights of political wrangling.
The text is one of the Middle East's most progressive political charters.
It lays out the framework for a new administration under one president, two deputies, a prime minister and a cabinet of ministers. They will rule over a federal state with two official languages -- Arabic and Kurdish.
Comprising more than 60 articles, the basic law will enshrine once-neglected values such as freedom of speech and religion, once it takes effect.
Meanwhile in Karbala, where a suicide bomber, bombs planted in pushcarts and mortars fired from afar killed over 100 people, a Polish coalition spokesman said seven suspected Al-Qaeda members were arrested well before the attacks.
Tensions in the city remain high. A Sudanese man was arrested Thursday on suspicion of involvement in an unspecified attack and shots were fired to disperse a large crowd that had gathered.
Thu Mar 4, 6:43 PM ET
JEREMY HAINSWORTH
VANCOUVER (CP) - Arguments on using a confidential FBI (news - web sites) memo to question an Air India witness's credibility were under a publication ban Thursday as the judge assessed the threat the memo poses to the man.
Prosecutor Richard Cairns had asked Wednesday for the hearing to be held in secret. Justice Ian Bruce Josephson was told the prosecution had inadvertently disclosed a secret FBI memo to accused bomber Ajaib Singh Bagri's lawyers.
Cairns said the sensitive information about the witness who became an FBI informant contained in the Sept. 27, 1985, telex was supposed to be blacked out in the copy provided to Bagri's legal team.
Cairns reiterated that request Thursday.
"Any revelation of this material would put this witness in serious harm," he said
"It's virtually impossible to explore this issue unless it's in camera."
"Any leaks of the information in the memo could have dire consequences," Cairns said.
"The interests of the witness should be paramount," he added.
While keeping the court open, arguments on the memo were put under a temporary ban.
Josephson decided he would silently read sensitive material pointed out to him.
And, he said, if other information was even more sensitive, it would be dealt with in camera.
On Monday, the witness the memo discusses told Josephson that Bagri had confessed to involvement in two 1985 bombings that killed 331 people.
"'We did this,"' the man said Bagri told him during a meeting outside a New Jersey gas station a few weeks after the 1985 bombings.
Bagri and co-accused Ripudaman Singh Malik are charged with conspiracy and murder in two bombings on June 23, 1985.
The first blast at Tokyo's Narita Airport killed two baggage handlers. Less than an hour later, Air India Flight 182 exploded off the coast of Ireland, killing all 329 aboard.
Thu Mar 4, 3:24 AM ET
BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Brunei - Oil-rich Brunei has jailed without trial two retired senior army and police intelligence officers and a businessman for leaking government secrets, some of them posted on the Internet.
The retired policeman, Nordin bin Haji Mohamad Noor, was also accused of treason for spying after allegedly transferring classified documents to an unidentified foreign country, the government said in a statement.
Noordin, retired army Maj. Muslim bin Awang Tengah, and businessman Awang Abdul Razak bin Awang Damit, were stripped of their military and civilian titles and were being held under internal security laws that allow for detention without trial under terms renewable every two years.
The scandal was the biggest since Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah's younger brother, Prince Jefri, nearly bankrupted this tiny country in the late 1990s through failed investments and lavish infrastructure projects that lost some $7 billion.
Muslim allegedly leaked government documents and secrets, which Awang Abdul Razak, son of a local bus company owner, posted on a Hong Kong-based Web site, www.bruclass.com.
"Their actions, which were of subversive nature, are detrimental to the country's stability and security," said the statement, released late Wednesday by the Internal Security Department.
Government officials told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity that the men were believed to have been detained sometime in January.
They were accused of inciting hatred against the government of the Sultan, absolute monarch of this remote enclave of 350,000 people on the island of Borneo and one of the richest men in the world.
The security and financial activities of the Bruneian government are closely held in the Sultan's hands and few details reach the public. The statement announcing the arrests was carried in local media without elaboration.
The country has an unofficial policy that criticizing the monarchy, Islam and the ethnic Malay origins of the majority are off-limits.
The offending Web site postings were signed with the pseudonym Maja Pahit a former empire centered on what is now Indonesia and appeared to have been based on tightly held information on Brunei's administration and military.
On Thursday, the postings were still up, but some had been edited or completely eliminated. What remained was a collection of detailed complaints, mostly about incompetent bureaucracy and economic mismanagement.
Brunei has been spared the Islamic extremism and terror activities that have troubled neighboring Malaysia and Indonesia.
Doh!
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