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.