[Gucho]

Iraqis Vow to Meet Constitution Deadline


Sheikh Humam al-Hammoudi, the head of the Iraqi constitutional drafting committee, speaks at a news conference in Baghdad July 20, 2005. Hammoudi, trying to calm fears that insurgent pressure on Sunni Arab participants might derail the process, said that Iraq's constitution will be ready before a mid-August deadline. (Faleh Kheiber/Reuters)

Wednesday, July 20, 2005 7:05 PM PDT

By BASSEM MROUE

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Framers of Iraq's new constitution said Wednesday they will meet an August deadline despite a move by Sunni Arabs to suspend work after the killings of two colleagues. Some Shiites are pushing a proposal that could erode women's rights.

Vast gulfs remain among the positions of Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni members on key issues, including Iraq's identity as an Arab nation, the role of Islam and federalism, some committee members said privately.

Shiites want a greater role for Islam in civil law _ a proposal that could erode women's rights in such matters as marriage, divorce and inheritance.

Under Islamic law, a woman inherits half of what a man would. Men also have the power when it comes to initiating divorces. Iraq has been operating under a secular 1959 civil status law that treated every person according to his sect.

"We reject the changes ... because some Islamic parties want to kidnap the rights of women in Iraq," said Yanar Mohammed, head of Women's Freedom in Iraq Movement. "We reject such attempts because women should be full citizens with full rights, not semi-human beings."

However, Mariam al-Rayyes, a Shiite member, said Islam will be the state religion and a "main source" for legislation in the constitution.

"It gives women all rights and freedoms as long as they don't contradict with our values," she said. "Concerning marriage, inheritance and divorce, this is civil status laws. That should not contradict with religious values."

Also Wednesday, Iraqis observed a government-sponsored moment of silence to honor victims of suicide attacks last week, the nation's first such memorial. Less than three hours before the noon ceremony, a suicide bomber blew himself outside an army recruiting center in central Baghdad, killing at least 10 people, police said. The center has been targeted multiple times, with a July 10 attack killing 25 and wounding 47.

The chairman of the committee drafting the new constitution told reporters that subcommittees dealing with specific articles would finish their work within the next two days and submit their reports for review.

Humam Hammoudi, a Shiite cleric, said he was confident the committee would finish the final draft by the end of the month so that parliament could meet an Aug. 15 deadline for approving it. The document then goes to a referendum by mid-October.

His optimism came despite a move by 12 Sunni Arab members to suspend participation in the committee to protest poor security after the assassination of two fellow Sunnis helping draft the constitution.

Committee member Mijbil Issa and committee adviser Dhamin Hussein al-Obeidi were gunned down Tuesday as they left a restaurant in Baghdad's Karradah district. A bodyguard also was killed.

Issa was among 15 Sunni Arabs appointed to the committee last month; Sunnis form the core of Iraq's insurgency, and giving them a greater voice in preparing the constitution was seen as key to wooing them away from violence.

But two Sunnis quit the committee due to insurgent threats. Kamal Hamdoun, a Sunni member, said the 12 remaining members would meet Thursday with Sunni leaders to decide what to do. "Our membership has been suspended temporarily until tomorrow when we meet the committee that chose us," he said. "We don't have security."

At a funeral service for Issa on Wednesday, a hard-line Sunni cleric said the Sunnis agreed to participate in drafting the charter "under pressure from others," presumably including the United States.

"A constitution cannot be written under (U.S.) occupation," Harith al-Dhari said. "This is what Sunnis got from joining the constitution committee. Their members are being killed."

State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said concerns about the security of the Sunnis were understandable but that "we all look forward to the work of the committee continuing."

The three minutes of silence Wednesday honored the nearly 100 victims of a massive suicide bombing in Musayyib last Saturday and nearly 30 others, including 18 children and teens, who died July 13 in a suicide attack in Baghdad.

Observance was sporadic. State-run Iraqiya Television showed traffic at a standstill in parts of central Baghdad and along a main street in southern Basra. But officials in Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, said they were never notified of the commemoration.

In Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, more than half of the 41-member provincial council suspended participation in meetings Wednesday to protest the deteriorating security situation and poor public services.

Elsewhere, explosions were reported at two oil pipelines in central Iraq, police said. A blast early Wednesday hit a pipeline nine miles south of Samarra, linking the Beiji and Dora refineries; an explosion also occurred Tuesday at a crude oil storage depot 25 miles south of Baghdad, police said. Such attacks often mean more electricity shortages for Baghdad's 6.5 million people.

A service of the Associated Press(AP)

[Gucho]

Pace confirmed as next chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff


General Peter Pace (AFP/File/Brendan Smialowski)

By Leo Shane III - Stars and Stripes European edition

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

WASHINGTON — The Senate has confirmed Gen. Peter Pace as the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the first Marine to hold that position.

Pace, 59, will assume the role in September, when current chairman Gen. Richard Myers is scheduled to step down. Myers has served in the post since September 2001.

Pace currently serves as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs and previously served as commander in chief of U.S. Southern Command. He was also a rifle platoon leader and an assistant operations officer during the Vietnam War.

He has served with the Marines for 37 years.

During his confirmation hearing last month, Pace said his priorities will be winning the war on terrorism and continuing the military’s transformation into a quicker, more efficient force.

“The foundation of our success in the armed forces is our people — and our focus will remain on recruiting, training and developing our best and brightest to continue to deliver to the American people the finest fighting force in the world,” he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“We must ensure we take care of these incredible soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and their families by ensuring we have effective programs to support their professional, physical and financial well-being.”

The nomination announcement came last week as lawmakers also approved Adm. Edmund P. Giambastiani Jr. to be vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Giambastiani, 57, is currently commander of the U.S. Joint Forces Command.

Both men are natives of New York state. Pace was born in Brooklyn, while Giambastiani grew up in Canastota.

[Gucho]

Army looking into use of lifesaving lung device that lacks FDA approval


Dr. Thomas Bein, center, and Philipp Alois, right, co-inventors of the Novalung internventional lung assist, talk recently in Regensburg, Germany, with Col. Mike Davis, then-commander of the operations group for the Combat Maneuver Training Center in Hohenfels. (Ben Murray / S&S)

By Ben Murray - Stars and Stripes European edition

Thursday, July 21, 2005

Spurred by American military doctors’ success with an experimental artificial lung on soldiers wounded in Iraq, officials at the top levels of the Army’s medical command are now investigating U.S. use of the new device, Army officials said this week.

Three American troops have survived severe lung trauma caused by bomb blasts with the help of the machine — called an interventional lung assist, or ILA — said Marie Shaw, Landstuhl Regional Medical Center spokeswoman.

Following those reports, Army administrators as high as the branch’s surgeon general’s office have turned their attention to the device, said Cynthia Vaughn, a spokeswoman for the Army Medical Department, or AMEDD.

Manufactured by the German company Novalung, the device is a gas exchange mechanism so new that it hasn’t been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, a stipulation that prompted AMEDD’s inquiry — though the Army won’t say exactly what it’s looking for.

“The Army Medical Department is currently investigating the issue of use of the Nova Lung [sic],” Vaughn wrote in a recent e-mail to Stars and Stripes.

But AMEDD declines to clarify exactly what it is investigating. Vaughn’s office would not comment on whether it is specifically investigating American doctors for using the unauthorized device.

“As the investigation is ongoing, it is inappropriate to comment further,” Vaughn wrote July 12 and repeated in a phone conversation Monday.

Regardless of the purpose of the investigation, sources both inside and outside the military say the Army has been collecting information on the Novalung ILA in recent weeks, possibly for an expedited process to approve it for military use.

Regensburg, Germany-based Dr. Thomas Bein, a co-inventor of the ILA, said Tuesday that Army officials contacted him within the last two weeks for a copy of his recent research on the ILA, a study chronicling its use on 90 patients from 1996 to 2004.

A spokesman for the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, or USAMRMC — a subordinate organization of AMEDD responsible for researching and acquiring medical technology for the Army — also said his agency is coordinating discussions with Novalung.

“The Army was in discussions with the FDA and the manufacturer of Novalung to provide information to the FDA,” said Chuck Dasey, a USAMRMC public affairs officer.

For its part, the FDA cannot comment on specific companies or devices, only that it can work with the Department of Defense to “respond to special situations” to get a medical resource approved, agency spokeswoman Julie Zawisza said.

“We have procedures that would allow for the expedited review and approval of a product to meet a pressing public health need or emergency, including a state of war,” Zawisza wrote in an e-mail to Stars and Stripes.

The rules against comment also bar the agency from confirming whether it has granted conditional permission for use of the Novalung in emergency circumstances, Zawisza said.

Commercially, a proposal for FDA approval is being drafted, said a spokesman for Novalung’s administrative offices in the United States.

Approval of the Novalung is something both Bein and the parents of one soldier kept alive by the Novalung ILA have said they would welcome.

Roughly the size and shape of several CD cases stacked together, the device keeps people alive by performing the work of the lungs when they are too damaged to function properly.

Compact and transportable, the ILA is used by inserting a pair of heavy-gauge needles into the major blood vessels in a patient’s legs, allowing his heartbeat to push blood through a complicated membrane that filters carbon dioxide out of the blood and infuses cells with oxygen. The blood is then circulated back into the body through the other leg.

For patients like 22-year-old Sgt. Chang Wong, wounded in a bombing in Iraq this May and now recovering at a medical facility in the States, the Novalung ILA was a “miracle,” his father said last month.

[Gucho]

British Seeking Cleric's Top Aide in Connection With July 7 Attack


Abu Hamza al-Masri, center, at a prayer service in February 2003 at his mosque in London. He faces extradition to the United States. (Sion Touhig/Polaris)

By DON VAN NATTA Jr.

Published: July 21, 2005

LONDON, July 20 - The police investigating the terrorist bombings here have begun a worldwide hunt for a former aide to one of Britain's most militant Islamic clerics who they believe may have played a key role in the July 7 attacks, according to British, European and American intelligence and law enforcement officials.

The man, identified as Haroon Rashid Aswat, 31, originally from Dewsbury in north-central England, was a senior aide to Abu Hamza al-Masri, the blind, one-armed militant cleric who preached at the Finsbury Park mosque in north London until his arrest in April 2004. Mr. Masri, who urged young men to wage jihad in Afghanistan, Iraq and beyond, is now facing extradition to the United States to face terrorism-related charges.

Several intelligence and law enforcement officials said they believed that Mr. Aswat was also involved in a plan to set up a training camp for Al Qaeda in Oregon six years ago.

A theory now being pursued by Scotland Yard is that Mr. Aswat provided the four British bombers with support for the coordinated attacks in London's public transportation system, killing 56 people and wounding 700, several senior intelligence and law enforcement officials said Wednesday night.

Those officials declined to say what specifically made them believe that Mr. Aswat was linked to the bombers, all of whom died in the attacks.

One official noted that Mr. Aswat was raised in Dewsbury, the same area where Mohammad Sidique Khan, 30, one of the four bombers, lived. On Wednesday, Mr. Aswat's family said he had not lived at the family's home near Dewsbury for 10 years.

Mr. Aswat's whereabouts are unknown, but several senior investigators said they were almost certain that he was not in Britain now.

Officials say he is of Pakistani descent, like three of the four bombers, but his family's neighbors said the family was from Gujarat, India.

"Nobody's tying him in or making him the mastermind yet," a senior American official said. "There's no real substantiation yet. But people are looking at some of his confederates and connections, and saying that it's a possibility."

An American official and two European officials said Mr. Aswat spent several weeks in Bly, Ore., in late 1999 and early 2000, trying to help several associates establish a Qaeda training camp there. Although he was not identified by name in court papers in the Oregon case, several American officials said he was an unindicted co-conspirator in the indictment of James Ujaama, who pleaded guilty to aiding the Taliban. Mr. Ujaama, 39, is now the leading witness in the United States terrorism indictment of Mr. Masri, American officials said.

Two American officials cautioned it was not fully confirmed that the Mr. Aswat being sought was the same man implicated in the Oregon case.

Mr. Aswat is believed to have met Osama bin Laden sometime in the late 1990's, senior investigators said. He trained at Qaeda-run camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan, they said.

In recent days, Mr. Aswat has emerged as a suspect of intense interest to investigators searching for a principal plotter behind the London bombings, according to interviews with 10 officials. Scotland Yard says it believes that the four British bombers had logistical, financial and technical support from several accomplices, and Mr. Aswat had the ability to provide that kind of leadership, two senior American officials and two European officials said.

The hunt for Mr. Aswat was especially evident this week in Pakistan, where a senior government official said two men with names similar to Mr. Aswat's were arrested and released when neither proved to be the man they were looking for.

Another Pakistani intelligence official said Mr. Aswat had been under criminal investigation in Britain since 1999, but British officials declined to comment on that. The Metropolitan Police have said previously that a man on Britain's security "watch list" entered England by ferry two weeks before the July 7 bombing attacks and then left either the morning of the bombings, or the night before from Heathrow Airport, officials have said. Officials declined to say Wednesday whether Mr. Aswat was that man.

Several senior European and American officials said it was reported that Mr. Aswat died during an American bombing raid in Afghanistan in late 2001, but investigators now say that he is still alive.

British investigators have told Pakistani officials that Mr. Aswat visited Pakistan in 2003, according to a close aide to President Pervez Musharraf. The aide said no record had yet been found indicating that Mr. Aswat entered Pakistan.

More than 200 suspected militants have been picked up in recent days in a crackdown on Pakistani militant groups that officials insisted is unrelated to the London bombings. As part of the crackdown, General Musharraf is scheduled to deliver a nationally televised address on Thursday evening. In response, an alliance of Islamist political parties has scheduled nationwide protests on Friday.

Pakistani investigators said they were continuing to track the movements of three London bombers - all British citizens of Pakistani descent - who visited Pakistan in 2004. Shehzad Tanweer, 22, and Mr. Khan arrived at the Karachi airport in November 2004, and left in February 2005, officials said. The third, Hasib Mir Hussain, 18, arrived in July 2004 and left in August 2004.

A Pakistani intelligence official said Mr. Tanweer spent December 2004 and January 2005 living in the house of his uncle near the eastern city of Faisalabad. The intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the investigation, said that no evidence had been found that Mr. Tanweer had met with members of extremist groups in Faisalabad, but that he could have met them in Karachi or another city.

The Pakistani official said investigators were looking into how the men were able to move around the country and whether a network of militant groups or religious schools, known as madrasas, aided their movements.

At Mr. Aswat's family house in Batley, near Dewsbury, on Wednesday night, his family handed out a written statement to reporters, saying: "We are being besieged by members of the press who are saying they will not go away until they have a story. THERE IS NO STORY THAT WE CAN PROVIDE. We are being asked about Haroon Rashid Aswat. He has not lived at this house, and we have not had contact with him for many years. We ask the press to go away, and we ask the police to make sure our privacy is not invaded further and this harassment stops."

A man who identified himself as Mr. Aswat's brother, who brought Pepsi and peanuts to reporters, said his brother had not lived at the house for 10 years.

Investigators said Mr. Aswat had worked on the Web site of the Finsbury Park mosque, helping to make Mr. Masri's preachings available to a wide audience.

American prosecutors want to bring Mr. Masri to the United States from England to face charges stemming from the attempt to establish the training camp in Oregon. His extradition trial began on July 5, and was continuing on the morning of the bombings in London.

In addition to the charges related to the Oregon camp, Mr. Masri, 47, is also charged in the United States with advising a group of militants who took 16 tourists, including two Americans, hostage in 1998. Four of the captives were killed and others were wounded when Yemeni security forces mounted a rescue operation.

Among the radicals who were exposed to Mr. Masri's preaching at the mosque were Richard C. Reid, the so-called shoe bomber who was sentenced to life in prison for trying to blow up a Paris-to-Miami flight in December 2001.

In addition to the hunt for Mr. Aswat, British investigators are also looking into the possibility that at least two of the four bombers had links to the networks uncovered by Operation Crevice, a wide British investigation in the spring of 2004 that led to the arrest of eight British men of Pakistani origin who were charged under the terrorism laws with possessing 1,300 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, which can be used in making bombs. Five men are to stand trial on those charges in September. A Canadian man of Pakistani origin was also arrested.

"I don't rule out the possibility that we'll find in the near future a link between the Crevice Operation and the men involved in the London bombings," said a senior investigator working closely with Scotland Yard. "It's not impossible, but this is theoretical still. I think we could find in Pakistan is the core for the Crevice operation, and I think we can find in Pakistan the core for the London bombings."