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As I write this in early April, the situation in Iraq remains unresolved. Saddam Hussein's militia--the fedayeen--takes pot shots at coalition troops and supply lines hourly but, so far, this seems more likely to prove an irritant rather than a prelude to full-scale guerilla war. Whatever its ultimate military significance, however, the resistance that coalition forces have encountered shows that at least some Iraqis are willing to fight and die for the Baath regime. Of course, little doubt exists that coalition forces will eventually get Baghdad firmly under control and face only sporadic resistance in outlying areas. A number of...

TEHRAN, Iran - Iranian President Mohammad Khatami (news - web sites) said Wednesday his country will not recognize a U.S.-installed interim administration in Iraq (news - web sites) and will support Syria if it is attacked. It was the first time a senior official had defined Iran's already well-known stance on a postwar Iraq. "We will not recognize any administration other than an all Iraqi government. However, we are not seeking tension or confrontation with anybody," Khatami told reporters after a Cabinet meeting. On Tuesday, retired U.S. Gen. Jay Garner, chosen by the United States to lead the interim administration,...

It's too early to say the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq has turned sour. But the classic headaches of a military occupation have come on with astonishing speed.Despite months of planning, U.S. forces have shown themselves to be confused about the transition from invading to policing, and unsure about what policing entails. Commanders have been wildly optimistic about the ease of setting up a transitional government. And many Iraqis are signalling that they plan to think for themselves when it comes to designing their country's future.Four weeks into the war, it's still unclear whether Washington is seriously looking for help in...

TEHRAN, Iran-- Iranian President Mohammed Khatami said Wednesday his country will not recognize U.S.-installed interim administration in Iraq and will support Syria if it is attacked. It was the first time a senior official had defined Iran's already well-known stance... "We will not recognize any administration other than an all Iraqi government. However, we are not seeking tension or confrontation with anybody," Khatami told reporters.

WASHINGTON: Pro-American Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi returned to the capital Baghdad on Wednesday on his first visit to the city since the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958, an adviser said. "We've just arrived and we have set up a headquarters in central Baghdad," said Zaab Sethna, who traveled with Chalabi in the motorcade from the southern town of Nassiriya. "His first plan is to go see his old home and then start building democracy in Iraq," added Sethna, speaking by satellite phone from Baghdad. Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress), was the first major exile politician to reach...

US Dollars Exported To Pay Iraqi Civil Servants As the U.S. turns from bombing Iraq to rebuilding it, the U.S. government is airlifting dollars from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to replace - - at least temporarily -- the discredited Iraqi currency! The WALL STREET JOURNAL is reporting on Wednesday: As an initial step, American officials charged with the reconstruction will use small- denomination bills to make 'emergency' payments to hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civil servants in an effort to quiet civic unrest and to stabilize the chaotic Iraqi economy. Using U.S. dollars will make the U.S....

A U.S. soldier watches as a statue of Saddam Hussein is toppled. President George W. Bush promised in his news conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair in Belfast that the United Nations would play a "vital role" in a post-Saddam Iraq. But he did not mean that the organization would be a significant agent in determining the governance or future of the country. Indeed, White House sources immediately made it clear that he meant no more than that the United Nations would be allowed to deliver humanitarian resources to the Iraqi people who have suffered from the economic...

<p>CAMP AS SAYLIYAH, Qatar (AP) -- Gen. Tommy Franks, director of the U.S.-led assault on Iraq that efficiently deposed Saddam Hussein, went to Baghdad on Wednesday to take a firsthand look at the work of his troops and offer them his congratulations.</p>

Troops Find Terror Training Camp in Iraq DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent4-16-2003 American troops raided the home of the mastermind of Saddam Hussein 's biological weapons lab on Wednesday and discovered a sprawling, recently abandoned terrorist training camp south of Baghdad as they dug for secrets from a dead regime. With major combat over, the Bush administration lowered the terrorist threat at home to yellow, down a notch from its wartime level of orange. "Terrorists and tyrants have now been put on notice, they can no longer feel safe hiding behind innocent lives," said President Bush . Inside Iraq ,...

<p>KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — President Hamid Karzai, who stepped in to run a devastated Afghanistan after the collapse of the Taliban, has some advice for coalition forces as they plan a reconstruction strategy for Iraq.</p> <p>"The allied forces must take very, very special care that security is immediately provided to the Iraqi people until the institutions are back in full service," Karzai said Tuesday in an interview with the Associated Press. He spoke from his office inside the well-guarded presidential palace.</p>

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A bank heist in downtown Baghdad on Wednesday should have presented the perfect opportunity for the new U.S.-Iraqi police patrols to show off their muscle. But thanks to dithering, language problems and the sheer audacity of the robbers, it turned into a farce worthy of the Keystone Kops. By the time a patrol of Iraqi policemen and U.S. Marines arrived on the scene, more than 20 thieves had already made their getaway, firing a victory shot from an AK-47 as they fled. Another three were thrown to the ground by Marines, who taped their arms behind their...

'From the folks who brought you preemptive war, here comes preemptive peace." So writes American Prospect editor-at-large Harold Meyerson, in a Washington Post op-ed warning of the perils the US will soon face in Iraq. "The decision to run postwar Iraq as an adjunct of the Defense Department may prove even more fateful than the decision to go to war... It fairly begs the world to view us as occupiers rather than nation-builders." Plenty more blood may yet be shed before the US and UK declare victory in Iraq. Yet just as dire forecasts were made of a conflict that...

ROME - The Italian government asked parliament Tuesday to authorize the deployment of up to 3,000 people to Iraq, including military policemen and relief workers, to help restore order and provide humanitarian assistance. The proposal, outlined by Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, was expected to be endorsed by the legislature, where Premier Silvio Berlusconi's conservatives have a solid majority. "We can't allow the aftermath of the war to make more victims than war itself," Frattini told Italian senators. The full contingent would number between 2,500 and 3,000, including a military component that Frattini said was essential to make sure supplies would...

<p>Baghdad, Iraq - Some people are surrendering the booty they took in the Dura district of Baghdad, perhaps in response to a rumored edict by a Muslim cleric forbidding Iraqi wives from having sex with looter husbands.</p> <p>Muslim clerics have been demanding that ill-gotten goods be surrendered, though none here could confirm the sex-ban order, said to have been issued in Najaf.</p>

Baghdad citizens get taste of free expression By Edmund Blair BAGHDAD, April 15 (Reuters) - It could mark a tiny step towards democratic free expression in Iraq after 24 years of one-party rule under Saddam Hussein. Kurdish activists on Tuesday plastered posters of a Kurdish leader, Massoud Barzani, around a pedestal where a few days earlier a massive statue of the deposed Iraqi president had been unceremoniously toppled. It was a novel image in a country where only one face, that of Saddam, has stared down on people for years. A small crowd of curious onlookers soon gathered. Asked what...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- A group of Iraqi policemen drove through this lawless city with sirens blaring Tuesday and immediately made themselves useful by collaring their first crook. Though tiny, unpaid and poorly armed, the embryonic patrols are crucial to the success or failure of the U.S.-led war here, because the American occupying force has been unwilling or unable to effectively police the cities it is capturing.Baghdadis cheered the three white patrol cars as they drove through the central al-Shorja market, following a U.S. Marine Humvee and trailed by a red bus filled with Iraqi police officers in black berets...

Iraqis Seek Democracy, Rule of Law, Women's Role, Document Says Washington, April 15 (Bloomberg) -- Participants in the first meeting of future Iraqi leaders, including Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites, issued the following statement at the end of the session convened by the U.S.-led coalition near Nasiriyah. The group will meet again in 10 days. U.S. Central Command, which is leading the war and rebuilding efforts, released the statement: 1. Iraq must be democratic. 2. The future government of Iraq should not be based on communal identity. 3. A future government should be organized as a democratic federal system, but on...

<p>UR, Iraq — The first meeting of Iraqi political and religious leaders on forming a government to replace Saddam Hussein's regime ended Tuesday with an agreement to meet again in 10 days and a vow by the United States not to rule Iraq. Thousands of Shiites, Iraq's oppressed religious majority, boycotted in Nasiriyah, chanting "No to America, and no to Saddam!"</p>

We want an Islamic state, say protesters By Sandra Laville in Nasiriyah (Filed: 16/04/2003) As America gathered its chosen leaders for the new Iraq behind barbed wire checkpoints on an airbase in the desert, the seeds of a new democracy were being scattered on the streets of Nasiriyah yesterday. Chanting "Yes, Yes, Islam, No America, No Saddam", a slogan they never dared to whisper under the old regime, Shia religious leaders led a demonstration of more than 3,000 men to protest against the US-led attempts to build a new government. Watched by hundreds who did not agree with what they...

The US Government will be beaming US Broadcast and CABLE news to the newly FREED Iraki public. In a segment from CNN tonight (4-15) Paula Zahn spoke with Norm Pattiz from Westwood1 Radio and and Georgetown Professor Mamoun Fandy. Pattiz is PRO and Fandy is CON. The telecasts will include ABCCBSNBC and FOXNEWS nightly news broadcasts in the hope that by viewing a "free and OPEN" news media system, this will aid the creation of a free Iraki media too..."the benefits of a FREE PRESS" as Zahn put it. Fandy also said that viewing the US news broadcasts would bias...