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BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Iraqi interior minister said Tuesday that authorities had foiled an al-Qaida plot that would have put hundreds of its men at critical guard posts around Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, home to the U.S. and other foreign embassies as well as the Iraqi government. A senior Defense Ministry official said the 421 al-Qaida fighters were actually recruited to storm the U.S. and British embassies and take hostages. Several ranking Defense Ministry officials have been jailed in the plot, the official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information. Interior Minister Bayan Jabr,...

US calls for sacking of Iraq's interior minister over Sunni prisoner abuse Jonathan Steele Saturday December 17, 2005 The Guardian (UK) The US is pressing for the sacking of Bayan Jabr, Iraq's Shia interior minister, whose staff have been discovered to be torturing Sunni prisoners. With a strong Sunni role in Iraq's next government apparently secure after their high turnout in Thursday's election, US officials want to ensure that cabinet posts are no longer exploited for sectarian or partisan ends. Sunnis have long complained that the interior ministry is one of the worst offenders. Inspections of two detention centres on...

Ever since the beginning of major combat operations in Iraq in March 2003, the media have kept a precise count of U.S. casualty figures, which now stand at nearly 1,700 killed and more than 6,400 wounded. There's also been plenty of tendentious speculation about the number of Iraqis killed by coalition action, the purpose of which is to cast Iraq's liberation as an unmitigated horror for Iraqis. What has not been so carefully tracked, however, is the number of Iraqis killed by insurgent violence: the worshippers murdered as they pray in their mosques, the ranks of unemployed mowed down as...

Veteran politician to return home in SeptemberLondon, Iraq Press, August 3, 2003 – A veteran politician and once key opposition figure to the rule of the deposed leader Saddam Hussein is expected to return home by the middle of September.Saad Saleh Jabr, a former prime minister under the Hashemite Monarchy that ruled Iraq until 1958 told Iraq Press that he was homesick and was looking forward to seeing Baghdad again.Jabr was the first to form an active group in exile to oppose the rule of Saddam Hussein.He founded Umma or the Nation Party in 1982, but dissolved it later and...