Unannounced visit: Condoleezza Rice arrived under very heavy security to meet Iraqi leaders
Rice Makes Surprise Visit to Iraq Amid Escalating Violence
By Neil MacDonald
Baghdad
15 May 2005
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On a surprise visit to Iraq, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says that country is emerging from a long nightmare of tyranny into freedom. On her trip, she met with key government figures, including President Jalal Talabani. Ms. Rice said the political process is the answer for the Iraqi people.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made an unannounced, and heavily guarded, visit to Iraq, where she met Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and key officials in his recently formed cabinet.
After the meeting, Secretary Rice spoke about the need for Iraq's constitutional process to include all of the country's main ethnic and religious groups.
"We are impressed that the government is inclusive… there is a need for the constitutional process to be inclusive," she said.
Secretary Rice and Mr. Jaafari also talked about the need for ongoing support from the international community, as well as about the need to equip and train Iraqi security forces as quickly as possible.
She pointed out that only one year has passed since Iraqis regained their sovereignty, and only weeks since the formation of an elected government.
Ms. Rice said that Iraq could not be fixed overnight, but that progress was being made. "I think we are all impressed with the progress Iraqi security forces are making," said Ms. Rice.
She refused to set a timetable for the withdrawal of the U.S. led coalition's troops.
Her first stop was the northern city of Salahuddin, followed by a meeting with Kurdish Democratic Party leader Massoud Barzani at his mountain headquarters.
The one-day trip was Ms. Rice's first visit to Iraq since her appointment as the U.S. government's top diplomat.
Previously, she accompanied President Bush on a visit for Thanksgiving in 2003. The former National Security Advisor was one of the main policymakers behind the U.S.-led invasion.
She is the first senior U.S. official to visit Iraq since Mr. Jaafari's government was sworn in.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice listens while Iraqi PM Ibrahim al-Jafaari speaks at a press conference in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone in Iraq
Her visit came as U.S. Marines wrapped up a week-long offensive against insurgents along the Syrian border. Operation Matador left about 125 insurgents dead, and secured an area known as the main route into Iraq used by foreign fighters, including suicide bombers.
Iraq has witnessed a surge of militant attacks since April 28, when the government was announced.
As the U.S. offensive ended, followers of Jordanian militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi reportedly released Anbar provincial governor Raja Nawaf, who was taken captive prior to Operation Matador. The governor's family said he was released without conditions.
But elsewhere in Iraq, bombings and drive-by shootings continued, killing a high-ranking Shiite cleric and a Ministry of Industry official.
Police, meanwhile, said they had found the bodies of 34 men, shot dead execution-style. Police said the bodies were found at three different locations within less than 24 hours.
An Afghan man picks up a copy of the holy Koran to recite at the Pul-i- Khishti mosque in Kabul May 15, 2005. Photo by Ahmad Masood/Reuters
Newsweek says Koran desecration report is wrong
Sun May 15, 2005 08:29 PM ET
By David Morgan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Newsweek magazine said on Sunday it erred in a May 9 report that U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran at Guantanamo Bay, and apologized to the victims of deadly Muslim protests sparked by the article.
Editor Mark Whitaker said the magazine inaccurately reported that U.S. military investigators had confirmed that personnel at the detention facility in Cuba had flushed the Muslim holy book down the toilet.
The report sparked angry and violent protests across the Muslim world from Afghanistan, where 16 were killed and more than 100 injured, to Pakistan to Indonesia to Gaza. In the past week it was condemned in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Malaysia and by the Arab League.
On Sunday, Afghan Muslim clerics threatened to call for a holy war against the United States.
"We regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst," Whitaker wrote in the magazine's latest issue, due to appear on U.S. newsstands on Monday.
The weekly news magazine said in its May 23 edition that the information had come from a "knowledgeable government source" who told Newsweek that a military report on abuse at Guantanamo Bay said interrogators flushed at least one copy of the Koran down a toilet in a bid to make detainees talk.
But Newsweek said the source later told the magazine he could not be certain he had seen an account of the Koran incident in the military report and that it might have been in other investigative documents or drafts.
Whitaker told Reuters that Newsweek did not know if the reported toilet incident involving the Koran ever occurred. "As to whether anything like this happened, we just don't know," he said in an interview. "We're not saying it absolutely happened but we can't say that it absolutely didn't happen either."
INCIDENT UNDER INVESTIGATION
The acknowledgment by the magazine came amid heightened scrutiny of the U.S. media, which has seen a rash of news organizations fire reporters and admit that stories were fabricated or plagiarized.
The Pentagon told the magazine the report was wrong last Friday, saying it had investigated earlier allegations of Koran desecration from detainees and found them "not credible."
Newsweek reported that Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita reacted angrily when the magazine asked about the source's continued assertion that he had read about the Koran incident in an investigative report. "People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said. How could he be credible now?" DiRita told Newsweek. The May 9 report, which appeared as a brief item by Michael Isikoff and John Barry in the magazine's "Periscope" section, had a huge international impact, sparking the protests from Muslims who consider the Koran the literal word of God and treat each book with deep reverence.
Desecration of the Koran is punishable by death in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Newsweek, which said opponents of the Afghan government including remnants of the Taliban had used its report to fan unrest in the country, said it was not contemplating disciplinary action against staff.
"This was reported very carefully, with great sensitivity and concern, and we'll continue to report on it," said Newsweek Managing Editor Jon Meacham. "We have tried to be transparent about exactly what happened, and we leave it to the readers to judge us."
U.S. officials opened an investigation but maintained that members of the Guantanamo security force were sensitive to the religious beliefs and practices of the detainees in U.S. custody.
U.S. national security adviser Stephen Hadley earlier on Sunday stressed the report had not been confirmed. "If it turns out to be true, obviously we will take action against those responsible," Hadley said on CNN's "Late Edition."
Newsweek's Whitaker said that when the magazine first heard of the Koran allegation from its source, staff approached two Defense Department officials. One declined to comment, while the other challenged a different aspect of the May 9 story but did not dispute the Koran charge.
The magazine said other news organizations had already aired charges of Koran desecration based "only on the testimony of detainees."
"We believed our story was newsworthy because a U.S. official said government investigators turned up this evidence. So we published the item," Whitaker said.
"Our original source later said he couldn't be certain about reading of the alleged Koran incident in the report we cited," he wrote.