Free Republic

WASHINGTON, April 20 (AFP) - US intelligence officials have tracked around 12 Iranian agents moving from Tehran to Al Kut in southeastern Iraq over the past month, according to latest edition of Newsweek out Monday. "We are absolutely 100 percent positive that there are Iranian operatives in town," a senior US military intelligence official told Newsweek, adding that several of them were known members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard. US officials believe that the Iranians in Al Kut, 160 kilometersmiles) southeast of Baghdad are primarily intelligence officers gathering information and possibly spreading propaganda. There are concerned though that Iran appears...

The biggest Iraqi Shi'ite opposition group says it will boycott a US-hosted meeting of opposition factions on Tuesday. It also says it will not recognise a US-installed interim administration for Iraq. A senior leader of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution of Iraq, Abdul Aziz Hakim, told a news conference on Monday his group would not be going to the meeting of US officials and Iraqi political parties opposed to ousted President Saddam Hussein in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah. "We will not attend the meeting in Nasiriyah because the Iraqi people won't accept preparations for an administration...