A U.S. Marine from the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment monitors a grove of palm trees and fields near the Euphrates River in Haditha, Iraq, on Friday Oct. 7, 2005. (AP Photo/Antonio Castaneda)
Posted on 10/09/2005 4:17:42 PM PDT by Gucho
October 10, 2005
By Danny McGrory and Stewart Tendler
ISLAMIC terrorist suspects arrested in a series of raids at the weekend are believed to be members of a group recruiting young Muslims in Britain to fight coalition troops in Iraq.
The men, most of whom are thought to be Iraqi refugees living in the UK, are suspected of having ties to a group linked to alQaeda. The group is reported to have been plotting a wave of car bomb attacks across Britain and Europe.
The arrests follow concern at the increasing numbers of “jihadis” who are being sent from Britain to join insurgent groups abroad.
The men arrested on Saturday in Croydon, Derby and Wolverhampton are believed to have been linked to a group that has been under surveillance for some weeks.
Undercover officers have been investigating the group’s finances, smuggling routes and reported links with known terror leaders such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has orchestrated scores of bomb attacks against US and British soldiers in Iraq and the murders of western hostages such as Ken Bigley.
Security sources claim that police have intercepted information hinting that further atrocities were being planned for London and other UK cities using cars packed with explosives. The intended targets have not been revealed.
During the raids three men were arrested in Croydon, four in Wolverhampton and three in Derby. They can be held for up to 14 days under current legislation.
Forensic teams are still searching properties in the Midlands and London after specialist teams blew off doors and windows to seize the men in carefully synchronised raids.
Neighbours in the Moseley Village area of Wolverhampton described how up to 20 young men at a time would stay in the two-bedroom, semi-detached house in Lewis Avenue that was raided by armed police and MI5 officers.
Last night a Scotland Yard spokesman said the ten men, aged between 20 and 30, were arrested on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism under the Terrorism Act (2000).
Al-Zarqawi has boasted that British volunteers fighting with his al-Qaeda Organisation of Holy War in Iraq have helped to kill US troops like “moles and flies”.
At least three Britons are said to have been killed in recent months during US-led bombings of insurgent strongholds, and one UK-based militant died in a suicide attack on a military checkpoint.
More than 50 UK based extremists are estimated to have been killed in eight countries, which experts say is more than from the rest of the countries of western Europe put together. This number does not include the four British-born suicide bombers who died in the July 7 attacks in London. At least another ten men from here were ready to die in terror operations but have been either arrested or their attacks failed.
Police and community leaders have been appealing to local Muslim populations to report any suspicious behaviour following the attacks on London’s transport system.
Undercover teams have also been monitoring some Islamic youth groups and radical preachers who are suspected of playing a key role in radicalising young men to join jihadi groups in Kashmir, Chechnya and Afghanistan as well as Iraq.
Using their British or European passports, these men can still easily cross borders posing as students, volunteer aid workers or travellers going to visit family. Intelligence agencies say many recruits have slipped into Iraq through its long, porous border with Syria.
MI5 believe that up to 70 young Muslim men have in the past two years travelled from Britain to join the insurgency against coalition forces based in Iraq. The underground network to get these men into Iraq is so sophisticated that recruits from Europe are reportedly coming to Britain to join this international brigade of jihadis.
Their numbers are not crucial to the likes of al-Zarqawi, but their propaganda value is enormous. So too are the finances these UK-based recruitment groups can provide.
Senior police officers still cannot agree on the numbers who went to camps run by al-Qaeda. Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, the recently retired Metropolitan Police Commissioner, put the figure at 2,000. His successor, Sir Ian Blair, claims it is nearer 200.
Sunday October 09, 2005 - 6:28pm
By QASSIM ABDUL ZAHRA
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - With U.S. mediation, Shiite Muslim and Kurdish officials negotiated with Sunni Arab leaders Sunday over possible last-minute additions to Iraq's proposed constitution, trying to win Sunni support ahead of next weekend's crucial referendum. But the sides remained far apart over basic issues - including the federalism that Shiites and Kurds insist on, but that Sunnis fear will lead to the country's eventual break-up. And copies of the constitution were already being passed out to the public.
Though major attacks in the insurgent campaign to disrupt the referendum have waned in recent days, violence killed 13 Iraqis Sunday.
In one attack, masked gunmen in police commando uniforms burst into a school in the northern town of Samarra, pulled a Shiite teacher out of his classroom and shot him dead in the hallway as students watched from their desks, police said. A suicide car bomb killed a woman and a child in the southern city of Basra.
A U.S. Marine was killed by a roadside bomb in the town of Ramadi, west of Baghdad, on Saturday, the military announced. It was the ninth American death during a series of offensives waged in western Iraq seeking to knock al-Qaida militants and other insurgents off balance and prevent attacks during Saturday's national vote on the constitution.
The death brought to 1,953 the number of U.S. military personnel who have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
Interior Minister Bayan Jabr said the number of foreign militants involved in Iraq's insurgency had fallen to around 900, from as many as 3,000 three months ago.
Their ranks have fallen because of deaths inflicted by U.S. and Iraqi military offensives - but also because al-Qaida in Iraq has started sending fighters to other Arab nations to build terror networks there, Jabr said in an interview with the Arab daily Sharq al-Awsat.
As Sunni-led insurgents staged attacks to discourage Iraqis from voting in the referendum, the government launched a campaign to persuade Iraqis to go to the polls despite the threats - and despite calls by some Sunni Arab leaders for a boycott.
"We think (a boycott) would weaken Iraq because the only way that Iraq can recover is done by concentrating on the political process, writing the constitution and participating in it," government spokesman Laith Kubba said. "Any act that calls for violence or boycotting would deviate the country from its course."
Many Sunni Arab leaders are calling on their followers to turn out in force to vote in the referendum - but to vote "no" to defeat a draft they say will break Iraqi into pieces, with Shiite and Kurdish mini-states in the north and south and the Sunni minority left poor and weak in a central zone.
Though a minority, Sunnis can defeat the charter if they garner a two-thirds "no" vote in any three of Iraq's 18 provinces - and they have the potential to make that threshold in four provinces. But turnout is key, since they must outweigh Shiite and Kurdish populations in some of those areas.
Even with copies of the official text of the constitution being distributed to voters to consider before the polls, all sides were debating last-minute changes in a bid to swing some Sunnis to a "yes" vote. Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani met with Sunni Arab leaders Saturday and Sunday trying to convince them on the changes, officials from all sides said.
U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad "has a central role in the talks," said Kurdish legislator Mahmoud Othman, though he would not say if Khalizad was actually attending the meetings.
U.S. officials could not immediately be reached for comment, but have confirmed in recent weeks that Khalilzad was involved in discussions over last-minute "tweaks" to the charter.
The United States is eager to see the passage of the constitution, since its rejection would prolong Iraq's political instability for months - and could hamper the U.S. military's plans to start pulling out some troops next year.
But there appeared to be too wide a gulf to get Sunni leaders to drop their opposition. While Shiite and Kurdish parties were willing to make some cosmetic additions to the draft, they rejected what they called central changes sought by Sunnis, particularly ones aimed at reducing the strong powers the charter gives to regional administrations over the central government.
"In general, there is no problem with making additions because it doesn't contradict the principles of the constitution. But the amendments the Sunnis are demanding ... are basic changes in these issues that absolutely won't be accepted," Sheik Jalaleddin al-Saghir, an official in the Shiite-led United Iraqi Alliance, which dominates the government, told The Associated Press.
The Sunnis want changes to articles outlining the purging of members of Saddam Hussein 's former Baath Party - most of whose major figures were Sunnis - and others allowing provinces to join together into "regions" under a single administration that would have considerable powers.
"We don't want a federal system. It shouldn't be a system of regions, it's a system of provinces," Saleh al-Mutlaq, a prominent Sunni politician, said. He said the Sunnis want the articles on de-Baathification rewritten to "not single out the Baath Party."
Shiite and Kurdish parties staunchly support the federalism provisions. Many of the same issues brought up by Sunnis were the subject of rancorous debate during the drafting of the constitution, which ended with the Shiites and Kurds approving the draft for the referendum over Sunni opposition.
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Sunday, October 9, 2005
Four Britons wounded in suspected suicide bombing in Afghanistan
US Marine killed during offensive in Iraq
(AP)
9 October 2005
BAGHDAD - A US Marine was killed by a roadside bomb during a US-Iraqi military offensive in western Iraq, the military said on Sunday.
The killing occurred on Saturday in the city of Ramadi, 115 kilometers west of Baghdad, where about 500 US and 400 Iraqi troops were conducting the “Mountaineer” offensive aimed at insurgents before Iraq’s Oct. 15 constitutional referendum, the US military said.
The identity of the Marine, who was assigned to the 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward), was withheld, pending notification of next of kin.
The death brought to 1,953 the number of US service members who have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
By MATT MOORE - Associated Press Writer
10/10/2005 - 5 minutes ago
FRANKFURT, Germany - The runways that once helped feed a blockaded Berlin, bade Elvis farewell after his Army service and provided the first glimpse of freedom for hostages returning from Iran now stand empty.
A hub of U.S. military activity for decades, Rhein-Main Air Base is being given back to Germany and its logistical functions taken over by bases at Ramstein and Spangdahlem. Ceremonies set for Monday will mark the handover, which will take until the end of the year.
"The mission has moved," said U.S. Air Force Col. Tom Schnee, who is overseeing the shutdown. "We're all set for the symbolic closure."
Since 1945, the air base has played a role in nearly every major conflict for the U.S. military, from ferrying troops to Europe and abroad, to providing support for the 1990 Gulf War, and again in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The pilots who flew nonstop during the Berlin Airlift took off from the runways of Rhein-Main. For Marines injured in the 1982 bombing of their barracks in Lebanon that killed 242, the base was the first glimpse of home away from home. In January 1981, the 52 Americans held hostage for 444 days in Iran flew to Rhein-Main aboard C-9 Nightingales.
"It was a key base, the gateway to Europe for about 60 years," said Dr. Earl Moore, a Dallas physician who was a U.S. Navy aviator during the Berlin Airlift from 1947-48 and flew from Rhein-Main to West Berlin most days and nights. The Soviet Union cut off ground traffic in an attempt to starve the Allies out of Berlin in the first stand off of the Cold War.
Moore recalled having to sleep in cold, wooden barracks with no running water except for the first floor, barracks that used to house Nazi SS troopers.
"It was the diamond in the rough out of which we flew 24 hours a day for about a year-and-half to save those 2 million people in Berlin," he told The Associated Press this week. "We were on the far side of the field and we had to gun the engines just to get the planes out of the mud and onto the taxi-way."
As time passed, though, the field was improved and the runways, taxi-ways and buildings were modernized and heated.
"The aircraft stopped flying in and out of here on Sept. 30. Now, we have 50 days to vacate the 196 buildings," said Air Force Col. Brad Denison, a Vacaville, Calif., native and commander of the 469th Air Base Group, which is overseeing the closing of the facility.
The closure also marks a passing for Frankfurt, the financial center of Germany and Europe.
American soldiers and airmen brought jazz, cheap cigarettes, hot dogs and other Americana to the city immediately after World War II, and were a part of the Friday and Saturday night bar scene in the city's Sachsenhausen district.
A young Elvis Presley flew from Rhein-Main back to the U.S. when his Army service ended.
"I can close my eyes today and hear all those engines waiting to take off," said Moore, the Navy aviator and Berlin airlift veteran. "There goes the gateway to Europe."
Oct 9, 2005
PARIS (Reuters) - French police briefly evacuated tourists from the Eiffel Tower on Sunday following an anonymous bomb threat that proved to be a false alarm, police said.
A spokeswoman for Paris police said the famous landmark was evacuated around 1330 GMT after a caller said there was a bomb. The public was allowed back some 90 minutes later.
It was not immediately clear how many people had been on the 324-meter (1,063 ft) structure at the time of the alert.
Around six million people a year climb the Eiffel Tower, a symbol of the French capital that was built in 1889 for the International Exhibition of Paris commemorating the centenary of the French Revolution.
The tower weighs 10,100 tonnes and was the world's largest building until 1930.
Copyright 2005 Reuters
French police briefly evacuated tourists from the Eiffel Tower on Sunday following an anonymous bomb threat that proved to be a false alarm, police said. Members of the special police force RAID are seen taking aim at suspects from the foot of the Eiffel Tower during an exercise in Paris October 8, 2005. (REUTERS/Charles Platiau)
October 09, 2005
HUSSEINIYA, Iraq -- Local residents and leaders gathered for a groundbreaking ceremony for a new courthouse Oct. 2.
A crowd gathered around a square marked off by stakes and ribbon as Sheik Mohan Al Amiri and Judge Abdul Hussain Jabar Mohamed dug into the earth, symbolically starting construction on the courthouse project.
Mohamed said the new building will house a civil court that will deal with marriages, wills and other matters.
The facility will make these services more convenient for the residents of Husseiniya, who previously had to travel into Baghdad to resolve these issues.
"This is important for the law and justice in this area," Mohamed said. "With all our elements, we are going to secure this area.
"This is going to be the seed for great things to come," he added.
Iraqi contractors and construction workers will build the courthouse in the city northwest of Baghdad.
Al Amiri also sees the courthouse as a resource for the surrounding area.
"We hope that we'll reach the other areas too, because the other areas need this, " he said.
By Spc. Matthew Wester - 3/1 AD PAO
ADDITIONAL PHOTO:
Sheik Mohan Al Amiri breaks ground on a courthouse construction project in Husseiniya, Iraq Oct. 1. The new building will house a civil court that will deal with marriages, wills and other civil matters. The facility will make these services more convenient for the residents of Husseiniya, who previously had to travel into Baghdad to resolve these issues. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Matthew Wester, 3/1 AD PAO)
By Hoa Nguyen - Staff Writer
October 9, 2005
On an April Sunday in Mosul, Iraq, a vehicle carrying a suicide bomber came racing toward Lt. Nate Raymond's platoon, exploding and injuring several soldiers inside an armored vehicle.
Raymond didn't hesitate.
"I organized a perimeter around the vehicle," said the 24-year-old Greenwich native.
The other Strykers surrounded the hit one, providing cover so the injured soldiers could be evacuated. His actions during that attack as well as other combat situations earned him a Bronze Star Medal, which will be awarded at a battalion ceremony later this month at his base in Fort Lewis, Wash.
A Bronze Star Medal, which is given for meritorious service in the face of an enemy of the United States, is not only a first for Raymond but a first for a Greenwich family with a long military tradition, including a grandfather who was a colonel and a great-grandfather who served as an Army dentist in World War I.
"It's the first one in the family," said Raymond's 52-year-old father, Richard, who served in the military reserves. "We're certainly very proud of him and pleased that he's been recognized and very glad that he's home safe."
Nate Raymond, who served as rifle platoon leader of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, returned to Fort Lewis on Sept. 26, after spending eight months in Mosul.
"It was pretty intense," he said. "There was a fair amount of fighting for the first four or five months in Mosul and then after that it quieted down a little bit."
Raymond, who attended Brunswick School before graduating from the United States Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., said the urban warfare waged in Iraq was unlike the past U.S. conflicts de-scribed in books.
"For soldiers and leaders heading over there, the biggest thing to realize is that this war is unlike one we've ever fought because there's no doctrine about how we fight the enemy," he said. "There's really no such thing for the urban warfare that we're seeing now."
Hit-and-run attacks and suicide bombs were the biggest challenges in Iraq, Raymond said.
"It takes, really, soldiers at every level to be ready to react," he said. "There's very little you can do to guard against it."
The volatile combat situation had his family on edge, especially last year when a suicide bomber killed and wounded dozens of people eating lunch in a mess tent at a U.S.-run military base where Raymond was stationed. He was not injured, but his family said they are relieved that he is now home.
"You could almost feel the pressure lift off your back that every time you saw a headline, you didn't have to worry that was him," said his sister, Jennifer, 21, a senior at Harvard University, who added that it was hard for her to think that something would have happened. "He's my big brother. Since he's been little, he's always been Superman, so it's hard for you to get in your head that something can happen, even though it can, and you know that it can."
Raymond, who was a Boy Scout growing up, chose a military education on the advice of his father and coaches at Brunswick, his family said. It was a good fit for his personality, his mother, Susan said.
"My son is a very laser-focused person," she said.
"He's extremely focused. When he gets something on his radar screen, he's like a dog with a bone -- he's unshakable. I think that played to his strengths: very focused, very values-oriented, very loyalty-oriented, very committed. And I think that it sort of dovetails with those elements of his personality."
Following his graduation from West Point, Raymond married his longtime friend and sweetheart from Greenwich Academy, Rebecca Raaen.
Raymond said that it is his new wife who will play a role in whether he will stay in the military. He still has a few more years left of his Army obligation.
So far, though, reuniting with her has made his return home easy.
"That's how wonderful my wife is, she's made it too easy," he said.
Foreign fighter facilitator killed
Update: Sunday, October 9, 2005 - 10:11 AM
BAGHDAD, Iraq – Coalition forces killed a known al Qaeda in Iraq member near Fallujah before he could activate a suicide bomb strapped to his body Oct. 8.
Abu Sarmad had facilitated transportation and housing for foreign fighters and suicide bombers who had been smuggled into Iraq through Syria.
Additionally, he received support and guidance from Saudi Arabian extremist financiers and was believed to be a major link for supporting terrorist activity between al Qaeda in Iraq in Baghdad and the Western Euphrates River Valley.
Abu Sarmad was wearing a suicide bomb vest and appeared to be prepared to kill himself and others in the event of his capture. Coalition assault forces shot Abu Sarmad before he could activate the explosives strapped around his torso.
Eight additional individuals were detained during the operation.
Greg Sheridan - Foreign editor
October 10, 2005
The US missile defence program, initially written off by sceptics as a waste of money and effort, can already intercept and destroy a North Korean ballistic missile aimed at the US mainland.
On a brief visit to Australia, US Missile Defence Agency director Henry Obering said the program already had nine missile interceptors between California and Alaska.
The system is mainly being configured to cope with missiles launched from North Korea or the Middle East, but it will ultimately have the ability to cope with missiles from anywhere. Australia is deeply involved in the program as one of just four nations with full missile defence co-operation agreements with the US. The others are Britain, Japan and Italy.
Australia's primary involvement is in research and development, with further co-operation through the Pine Gap satellite communications facility in central Australia.
However, the Howard Government has announced plans to buy three air warfare capable destroyers with the Aegis missile defence system.
This will provide defence against missiles aimed at deployed Australian forces, naval or army, and could also provide some limited defence to points on the Australian mainland. And Australia could in the future buy a more comprehensive missile defence.
Lieutenant-General Obering said Australian industry could make a real contribution to missile defence. "There are some very significant capabilities in Australian industry that could be jointly pursued. We don't have all the answers in the US. Many of our threat nations around the world are collaborating against us."
Lieutenant-General Obering, with a budget this year of $US6.4 billion ($8.45 billion) for development and $US1.4 billion to operate the existing system, said more countries were moving towards missile defence, with the US in the process of negotiating agreements with a number of other friendly nations and allies.
"Increasing numbers of nations are realising that other means of defence are not sufficient," he told The Australian. "Many actors are just not deterrable. We're beginning to understand fully what it's like to be in the post-Cold War world."
He said be believed the political and the technical arguments against a missile defence system were now a thing of the past. He said the technical arguments were lost in the first Iraq war, when Saddam Hussein was able to inflict significant loss of life on allied forces with missiles. In the second Iraq war, all his missiles were intercepted in the air.
In terms of the political battle, the program now has bipartisan support in the US, and increasing numbers of militaries around the world, such as the Germans and the Dutch, are pursuing their own missile defence.
Lieutenant-General Obering said although there were still technical issues to overcome, the basic utility of missile defence had been well established.
"This is not easy, building these types of capabilities," he said. "We're on a path to handle more complex threat suites. It couldn't handle a Russian or Chinese attack and it's not designed for that."
Instead, he said, the system was designed to handle a rogue nation or terrorist missile attack.
He said the impetus for developing the system in the US came from an event that did not involve missiles -- the September 11 terror attacks.
"The major lesson was not the method of attack but the demonstration of will to inflict major damage on us," he said. "Not being able to protect yourself against even a short-range missile is very bad."
Sun. 9, Oct. 2005
BRIAN BRADY
A TEAM of military specialists has been dispatched to Iraq to compile a comprehensive dossier of evidence that "Iranian elements" have been arming insurgents engaged in a brutal struggle with British forces around Basra.
The Foreign Office last night confirmed that experts were engaged in an intensive operation to back up growing concerns that Iran is "interfering" to deadly effect in efforts to pacify Iraq and restore democracy to the war-torn country.
The insistence that Britain is determined to prove Iran is providing sophisticated equipment to perpetrators of attacks that have claimed the lives of at least eight British soldiers in the past five months is a significant development in the escalating war of words between London and Tehran.
Ministers and military officials also fear that a continuing escalation in the violence against their forces in Iraq could lengthen the British presence in the country at a time when they are faced with further commitments elsewhere in the world.
Diplomatic sources also confirmed last night that an operation in Basra to seize 12 men, including members of the Iraqi police and the chief of the city's state-run electricity company, was directly related to the wider operation to target supporters of insurgent fighters.
A number of those detained are believed to have been supporters of the rebel Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who oversees the militia that has risen up twice against US and British forces over the past year.
"In the past two months, eight multi-national force soldiers and six coalition members have been killed by terrorists in Basra province," said Brigadier John Lorimer. "This terrorism must be stopped."
Scotland on Sunday revealed last month that the British military was convinced Iran was to blame for the sophistication of weapons used against troops in the Basra area.
Tony Blair went public with the suspicions last week, suggesting that the "particular nature of those devices leads us ... to Iranian elements" - or to the Lebanese group Hezbollah.
Both Hezbollah - itself widely believed to be backed by Iran - and the Tehran government, immediately denied the claims. But British diplomatic sources say they remain the prime suspects - and that the government had now increased efforts to prove their guilt.
The timing of the diplomatic row, a week before Iraqis vote on a referendum on their proposed new constitution, is significant, as the US and Britain are keen to prevent any outside interference in the process.
"It has been clear for the past few months and during the summer that there have been more sophisticated attacks that required technologically advanced equipment and knowledge of how to use it," a Foreign Office spokesman told Scotland on Sunday last night.
"It is clear from the equipment involved that it is coming from outside Iraq. There are indications that the sort of equipment is similar to that used by Hezbollah, which is known to be trained and equipped by Iran. We are seeking to track down who is involved.
"Whatever information is raised, if there is a suggestion that outside countries are involved, these issues will be raised with the countries concerned." Scotland on Sunday understands that a team of military intelligence officers has been detailed to mount a forensic investigation into the construction and origins of devices used in the southern 'British' zone of Iraq during the past six months.
One senior intelligence source revealed last month that officials had been disturbed by the rapid acceleration in the technological sophistication of the weapons used against British forces patrolling the streets around Basra. The greatest concerns centre around the difficulties securing the 900-mile border with Iran, and controlling contact between Tehran and its Shia Muslim colleagues in southern Iraq.
"They have had foreign nationals, finance and weaponry streaming over the border," one former military intelligence officer explained.
"They are using explosive devices with incredibly sophisticated trigger mechanisms - basically the support they have had has enabled them to learn in two years what it took Irish republicans 20 years to perfect."
Blair's open admission of Britain's suspicions over Iran's behaviour was followed by an invitation to talks from his Foreign Secretary.
"We look to the Iranian government to sit down with us, hear what we have to say and take action where appropriate," said Jack Straw after Blair's statement, delivered at a press conference alongside the Iraqi president Jalal Talabani.
But the accusation was dismissed as a "lie" by counterparts in Tehran. Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza-Asefi insisted that "a stable Iraq is in our interests". He said: "The British are the cause of instability and crisis in Iraq." A senior Foreign Office source last night insisted that "any interference in Iraq's moves towards democracy is unacceptable".
But the climate of distrust, and the most recent arrests, threaten to destabilise relations in Iraq in advance of the referendum, to be held on Saturday.
The British government is keen to move Iraq closer to democracy, to enable an early start on the withdrawal of the 8,500 UK troops in the country.
The Ministry of Defence is already committed to sending thousands of troops to Afghanistan next year, amid growing concerns the country is on the verge of further unrest.
The recent upsurge in violence in southern Iraq has forced ministers to review plans to begin pulling out as early as next year. Blair last week assured Talabani that British troops would stay in the country "as long as he wants them". Iraq faced the imminent threat of civil war as it approaches the constitutional referendum, the secretary general of the Arab League warned yesterday.
Diplomats from the league were flying to Iraq this weekend to prepare a conference on reconciliation of the country's different ethnic groups.
Secretary general Amre Moussa warned that certain interests were promoting tension between Shias, Sunnis and Kurds for their own advantage.
Moussa declined to point the finger of blame at any individual or party, saying that this would merely stoke up pressure even further.
But he said: "The situation is so tense there is a threat looming in the air about civil war that could erupt at any moment, although some people would say that it is already there. We can't just leave Iraq with the divisions and disagreements and conflicts and shootings. There is a policy to provoke and push communities against each other, and there is another policy that would bring them together, and it is our policy in the Arab League that the time has come for us to talk seriously about bringing them together."
It was not enough simply to assume that approval of the constitution in the UN-backed October 15 referendum would put Iraq on to the path of democracy and stability, Moussa said.
Oil products pipelines ablaze
From correspondents in Tehran
October 08, 2005
FOUR oil product pipelines had caught fire in southwest Iran, state television reported today.
The report said the fire affected four out of 13 pipelines connecting a refinery in the city of Abadan, 675km south west of Tehran, to Bid Boland, a centre for processing oil products.
Television showed firemen unable to approach thick columns of flame.
It was not immediately clear how the fire would affect Iran's ability to process oil products.
Most pipeline fires in south west Iran are due to ageing infrastructure, but officials have also blamed some recent blasts on Arab rebels seeking independence from Tehran.
British construction firm Costain and Spain's Dragados, part of ACS in June signed a $US2.2 billion ($2.89 billion) deal with Iran to construct a gas refinery at the Bid Boland complex.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,16858330%255E1702,00.html
Oct 09, 2005
VIENNA (AFP) -- The United States has briefed key nations on intelligence that it says shows Iranian atomic weapons work, namely research on getting a missile warhead to explode at an altitude that would maximize the blast of a nuclear explosion, diplomats and analysts told AFP.
However, a non-Western diplomat said the US briefing, carried out in various capitals ahead of a meeting in September of the UN atomic watchdog, "looks plausible but there is no hard evidence," namely direct proof of a nuclear warhead project.
Iran says its nuclear program is a strictly peaceful effort to develop atomic power in order to generate electricity and rejects US charges that it is secretly developing nuclear weapons.
A diplomat close to the Vienna-based watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that setting a warhead explosion at such a height, which is about 600 metres (yards), the same altitude at which the Hiroshima atomic bomb was detonated, would make sense only for nuclear weapons.
Chemical, biological or conventional weapons need to detonate closer to the ground in order to be effective.
The intelligence does not indicate whether the weapon the warhead is to hold is nuclear but the United States still considers the data the most important information it has on Iran, diplomats said.
The intelligence, the existence of which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal in March, contains diagnostic test information on putting a package, a so-called black box, inside the cone of the medium-range Shahab-3 ballistic missile, a diplomat told AFP.
It consists of extensive Farsi-language computer files and reports. US officials are confident the data is genuine, diplomats said, even though some analysts have criticized it as unreliable since it is believed to come from only one source.
US officials in Vienna refused to comment on the matter.
A diplomat said that, according to the briefings, Iranian research was done from 2001-2003 at a semi-government owned industrial group that works on the Shahab missile and which was on a project commissioned by the elite Revolutionary Guards military.
The black box, actually a round container, is not identified as a nuclear warhead nor do blueprints show pits for uranium or plutonium, the two atomic bomb materials, but experts believe the package is meant to be atomic, diplomats said.
The United States gave the briefing to IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei and his deputy director for international safeguards Ollie Heinonen in July and then to several nations, including Russia, China, India, South Africa, as well as Ghana and Mexico, which are on the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors, diplomats said.
The briefings ahead of an IAEA board meeting in September were part of campaigning for a resolution that found Iran in non-compliance with international nuclear safeguards and could lead to referring Tehran to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions.
Non-proliferation expert Gary Samore, a former US White House official under then-President Bill Clinton, described the data as "basically computer calculations of different configurations for a warhead delivery."
"I'm very confident that it's authentic," Samore said of the information, adding that it was "pretty clear that it was a nuclear warhead that was being designed."
ElBaradei, whose IAEA has been investigating Iran since February 2003, says "the jury is still out" on whether there is a covert atomic weapons program.
A Western diplomat said: "People are being careful because they have been burnt in the past," referring to faulty weapons intelligence about Iraq that was used to justify the US-led invasion of that country in March 2003.
But Washington-based non-proliferation expert David Albright, a physicist and former UN weapons inspector, said: "From my own knowledge of the documents, it appears to be a first effort to develop a credible re-entry vehicle for a nuclear weapon."
A diplomat said the program had the code-name Project 111.
Drawings for the warhead showed "a set of bridge wires," used to detonate explosives arranged in a circle to drive material inwards, the diplomat said.
Albright explained that this "very precise detonation of explosives creates a shock wave typically used to force a chain reaction in nuclear weapons."
The IAEA is trying to get access to certain military sites in Iran, including the Parchin facility where high-explosives work is carried out, as well as interviews with key people like Mohsen Fakrizadeh, who may be the head of the alleged Project 111, a diplomat said.
Sunday, October 09, 2005
KARACHI: An Islamic militant who authorities believe played a role in a failed attempt to kill President Gen Pervez Musharraf two years ago was arrested on Saturday in Karachi, police said.
Sharafat Ali was captured in a residential area after a shootout, city police chief Tariq Jamil said, adding that the suspect was among those who tried to kill the president on December 25, 2005, in Rawalpindi.
Although Musharraf escaped unhurt, 16 people – mostly policemen – died when suicide bombers rammed their explosive-laden vehicles into Musharraf’s motorcade, the second attempt on his life in less than two weeks. Since then authorities have arrested several militants and some junior military personnel in connection with the attempted assassinations.
On Saturday, Jamil said Ali was also involved in attacks against minority Christians in Karachi and three other cities of Punjab.
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