By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer
FALLUJAH, Iraq - Insurgents launched a brazen attack Thursday on an Iraqi civil defense outpost visited by Gen. John Abizaid, commander of all U.S. forces in the Middle East. Abizaid and his party escaped injury in the gun battle.
Just moments after a convoy carrying Abizaid and his party pulled inside the cinderblock walls at the headquarters of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps in this city west of Baghdad, an explosion rang out. Seconds later, two more explosions were heard near the rear of the compound, and U.S. soldiers responded with a barrage of rifle and machine gun fire.
Several attackers fired three rocket-propelled grenades, and another pelted the party with small arms fire from a nearby mosque. The gun battle lasted about six minutes.
No U.S. soldiers and no one in Abizaid's party were injured. Residents said one Iraqi was grazed in the leg by a bullet and slightly injured.
Abizaid was accompanied by Maj. Gen. Charles Swannack, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division. After the gun battle, Abizaid and Swannack canceled plans to walk into the city and instead returned to a U.S. military base near here.
A defense official in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it was likely that the insurgents had been tipped off to the presence of the senior general.
However, U.S. officials, briefing reporters at military headquarters in Baghdad, said they were not prepared to make such a link. One noted that rocket attacks in the Fallujah area were relatively common.
In Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt issued a statement saying: "Today at 1330 (1:30 p.m. local time) in Fallujah, Gen. Abizaid and Gen. Swannack were visiting an Iraqi Civil Defense Corps battalion headquarters compound when three rocket propelled grenades were fired at their convoy from rooftops in the vicinity. No soldiers or civilians were injured and both coalition and Iraqi civil defense soldiers returned fire and pursued the attackers. A local mosque was thought to be haboring the attackers and Iraqi Civil Defense Corps soldiers conducted a search of the mosque without result."
Kimmitt said Swannack reported that the attack was believed due to "a small number of personnel unrepresentative" of most of the people of Fallujah
After Abizaid left in a convoy of Humvee utility vehicles, soldiers of the 82nd Airborne's 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment asked members of the Iraqi security force to clear the mosque. But they refused.
Abizaid appeared unfazed. Speaking in Arabic to one member of the Iraqi security force after the gunfight, the general asked about the attack and was told, "This is Fallujah. What do you expect."
Later, after he returned to the U.S. base, Abizaid told a reporter, "This is an area where there are plenty of former regime elements out there, willing to fight." Abizaid then flew on to Qatar, as scheduled.
Abizaid was tapped as Central Command chief after Gen. Tommy Franks retired after the ouster of President Saddam Hussein.
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EDITOR'S NOTE: AP Military Writer Robert Burns is traveling with Gen. Abizaid in Iraq
By GEORGE JAHN, Associated Press Writer
VIENNA, Austria - In another apparent link to the nuclear black market emanating from Pakistan, U.N. inspectors in Iran have discovered undeclared designs of an advanced centrifuge used to enrich uranium, diplomats said Thursday.
The diplomats said preliminary investigations suggested that the design matched drawings of enrichment equipment found in Libya that was supplied through the network headed by Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.
The revelations came a day after President Bush, in a keynote speech, acknowledged loopholes in the international enforcement system and urged the United Nations and member states to draw up laws that spell out criminal penalties for nuclear trafficking.
Khan, a national hero in Pakistan for creating a nuclear deterrent against archrival India, confessed on Pakistani television last week to masterminding a network that supplied Libya, Iran and North Korea (news - web sites) with nuclear technology. President Pervez Musharraf then pardoned him.
Beyond adding a link to the chain of equipment, middlemen and companies comprising the clandestine nuclear network supplying weapons-related technology to rogue governments, the find cast doubt Tehran's willingness to open its nuclear activities to international inspection.
Accused of having nuclear weapons ambitions, Iran — which denies the charge — agreed late last year to throw open its programs to pervasive inspections by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency and said it would freely provide information to clear up international suspicions.
But the diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Iran did not volunteer the designs. Instead, they said, IAEA inspectors had to dig for them.
"Coming up with them is an example of real good inspector work," one of the diplomats told The Associated Press. "They took information and put it together and put something in front of them that they can't deny."
At less enriched levels, uranium is normally used to generate power. Highly enriched, it can be used for nuclear warheads.
Iran — which says it sought to make low enriched uranium — has bowed to international pressure and suspended all enrichment. But it continues to make and assemble centrifuges, a development that critics say also throws into question its commitment to dispel suspicions about its nuclear aims.
The United States and its allies interpret enrichment suspension as encompassing the whole process — including a halt in assemblage of related equipment. U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher warned last month that failure by Iran to indefinitely suspend "all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities would be deeply troubling."
The IAEA continues to negotiate with Iran on what constitutes suspension, but Mohamed ElBaradei, the agency's director general, also is known to be seeking a commitment from Iran to stop and assembling centrifuges.
The diplomats said Iran had not yet formally explained why the advanced centrifuge designs were not voluntarily handed over to the agency as part of its pledge to disclose all past and present activities that could be linked to weapons.
"They'll probably say it's an oversight," said one of them.