Free Republic

Iraq's interior minister lashed out yesterday at a Saudi minister who voiced worries about growing Iranian influence and Shi'ite power, saying Iraq would not be lectured by "some Bedouin riding a camel." Ethnic tensions within Iraq's governing coalition also heightened, with the nation's Kurdish president called on the Shi'ite prime minister to step down. Prince Faisal, foreign minister of Sunni Saudi Arabia, had expressed concern about growing Shi'ite influence in Iraq during a visit to Washington last month. Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr, a member of the Shi'ite Islamist Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, fired back during a...

About 10 huge cargo planes an hour - packed with heavy armor, trucks, Humvees and troops - landed at a makeshift northern Iraq airstrip controlled by U.S. troops over the last 24 hours, officials said yesterday. The steady stream of planes included C-17 Globemasters, big enough to carry an Abrams tank, and C-130s. The giant planes hit the airstrip, disgorged their load and were back in the air in 30 minutes, officials said. A few miles away yesterday, coalition war planes pounded Iraqi positions to aid U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters as they seized territory in preparation for an advance by coalition...

The sudden expulsion of families from a 20-mile border strip between the autonomous Kurdish north and the rest of Iraq has led to speculation that President Saddam Hussein is clearing a buffer zone to defend against a US invasion from the north. ``It seems like they're clearing a buffer zone,'' says Fawzi Hariri, a KDP spokesman. ``It may be a new method or strategy, and it could well be part of a military maneuver.'' The Mujahedeen Khalq denied that its fighters were stationed in northern Iraq or assisting Saddam's forces in any way. A spokesman for the group, Farid Soleimani,...