Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Los Angeles Times
December 5, 2006
U.N. chief Annan's call for international talks on Iraq is also rejected.
By Alexandra Zavis, Times Staff Writer
BAGHDAD — Iraq's besieged prime minister hit back Monday at U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's characterization of the Iraq sectarian conflict as a civil war, accusing him of "burnishing the image" of former President Saddam Hussein's brutal regime.
Prime Minister Nouri Maliki also rejected Annan's suggestion that an international conference could help the country resolve dangerous sectarian divides and an insurgency that killed at least 72 more Iraqis in just over 24 hours.
"His call for an international conference on Iraq is a denial of the will of the Iraqi people," Maliki's office said in a statement. "The Iraqi government, which is founded on a constitutional basis, will not accept the notion of holding an international conference about Iraq that will reverse all the development in the political process and impose an international guardianship on the Iraqi people."
U.S. forces, meanwhile, recovered the last three bodies of four servicemen killed when a Marine helicopter made an emergency landing on a lake Sunday. The deaths raised to 13 the number of military personnel killed in an unusually deadly weekend.
Debate has raged about whether the violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Iraq constitutes civil war since The Times, NBC and other news organizations started using the term. Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell also used the term at a conference last week in the United Arab Emirates.
In an interview with the BBC aired Monday, Annan said the level of violence in Iraq was far deadlier than recent civil wars elsewhere and agreed with complaints by some Iraqis that life was more difficult now than it was under Hussein.
"When we had the strife in Lebanon and other places, we called that a civil war; this is much worse," Annan said.
He recently proposed holding a conference drawing in the country's main political groups and representatives from around the region to find solutions to the strife, an idea also gaining currency among some U.S. officials.
Senior Iraqi politicians, however, have rejected the proposal. President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, said Sunday that Iraq was an independent state that would resolve its own problems.
Abdelaziz Hakim, a Shiite Muslim power broker in the Iraqi parliament who met with President Bush in Washington on Monday, also opposes the idea.
Maliki's terse statement Monday came as the prime minister was trying to shore up his fractured government by standing up to international leaders, demanding more control over his security forces and promising a Cabinet reshuffle.
The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, and Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top U.S. general in the country, pleaded with Iraqis on Monday not to be drawn into the cycle of killings gripping Baghdad.
"The true enemies of all Iraqis are the murderers who carry out these senseless and cowardly attacks, regardless of sect, tribe or ethnicity," Khalilzad and Casey said in a joint statement. "We implore all Iraqis not to become pawns of those who seek to destroy you and your country. Do not allow yourself to be drawn down the road of senseless brutality by striking back."
Police in Baghdad recovered 52 bodies in the 24 hours ending Monday night, many of them cuffed, tortured and shot execution-style, apparent victims of sectarian death squads.
At least 10 other unidentified bodies were recovered in Baqubah, northeast of the capital, and one in Hillah, to the south, police and morgue officials said.
West of the capital, U.S. forces recovered the bodies of three service members missing since mechanical problems forced a CH-46 helicopter with 16 people aboard to land in Lake Qadisiya in Al Anbar province, the U.S. command said in a statement. One body was recovered shortly after the crash.
In other violence Monday, a news editor with the independent station Radio Dijla was gunned down as he left his Baghdad home, the station said. At least 93 journalists and 45 support staffers have been killed since the war's start, most of them Iraqis, according to a count by French-based Reporters Without Borders.
A roadside bomb killed a child and injured two other people in a predominantly Sunni part of south Baghdad. On Sunday, a 5-year-old girl was shot and killed during an attack on U.S. forces and Iraqi police in the same neighborhood, the military said.
Gunmen killed four government workers as they drove to work in Baqubah, police said.
Elsewhere in northern Iraq, U.S. and Iraqi forces killed two suspected insurgents, detained six others and found an array of arms during raids on buildings where guerrillas were making car bombs, the U.S. military said.
And in Hussein's genocide trial Monday, the prosecution called its last witness.
Abdul Kader Abdullah, an education official and former Kurdish guerrilla, wept when he described finding the bodies of more than 40 victims of a 1988 chemical attack against the minority group in northern Iraq, including his mother and two daughters.
His mother was lying face-down near a stream, he said. "I thought of kissing her, but I was afraid that I might get infected," he said tearfully.
The case resumes Wednesday with a review of prosecution documents.
Special correspondents in Baghdad, Baqubah, Taji and Hillah contributed to this report.
December 5, 2006
U.N. chief Annan's call for international talks on Iraq is also rejected.
By Alexandra Zavis, Times Staff Writer
BAGHDAD — Iraq's besieged prime minister hit back Monday at U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's characterization of the Iraq sectarian conflict as a civil war, accusing him of "burnishing the image" of former President Saddam Hussein's brutal regime.
Prime Minister Nouri Maliki also rejected Annan's suggestion that an international conference could help the country resolve dangerous sectarian divides and an insurgency that killed at least 72 more Iraqis in just over 24 hours.
"His call for an international conference on Iraq is a denial of the will of the Iraqi people," Maliki's office said in a statement. "The Iraqi government, which is founded on a constitutional basis, will not accept the notion of holding an international conference about Iraq that will reverse all the development in the political process and impose an international guardianship on the Iraqi people."
U.S. forces, meanwhile, recovered the last three bodies of four servicemen killed when a Marine helicopter made an emergency landing on a lake Sunday. The deaths raised to 13 the number of military personnel killed in an unusually deadly weekend.
Debate has raged about whether the violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Iraq constitutes civil war since The Times, NBC and other news organizations started using the term. Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell also used the term at a conference last week in the United Arab Emirates.
In an interview with the BBC aired Monday, Annan said the level of violence in Iraq was far deadlier than recent civil wars elsewhere and agreed with complaints by some Iraqis that life was more difficult now than it was under Hussein.
"When we had the strife in Lebanon and other places, we called that a civil war; this is much worse," Annan said.
He recently proposed holding a conference drawing in the country's main political groups and representatives from around the region to find solutions to the strife, an idea also gaining currency among some U.S. officials.
Senior Iraqi politicians, however, have rejected the proposal. President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, said Sunday that Iraq was an independent state that would resolve its own problems.
Abdelaziz Hakim, a Shiite Muslim power broker in the Iraqi parliament who met with President Bush in Washington on Monday, also opposes the idea.
Maliki's terse statement Monday came as the prime minister was trying to shore up his fractured government by standing up to international leaders, demanding more control over his security forces and promising a Cabinet reshuffle.
The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, and Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top U.S. general in the country, pleaded with Iraqis on Monday not to be drawn into the cycle of killings gripping Baghdad.
"The true enemies of all Iraqis are the murderers who carry out these senseless and cowardly attacks, regardless of sect, tribe or ethnicity," Khalilzad and Casey said in a joint statement. "We implore all Iraqis not to become pawns of those who seek to destroy you and your country. Do not allow yourself to be drawn down the road of senseless brutality by striking back."
Police in Baghdad recovered 52 bodies in the 24 hours ending Monday night, many of them cuffed, tortured and shot execution-style, apparent victims of sectarian death squads.
At least 10 other unidentified bodies were recovered in Baqubah, northeast of the capital, and one in Hillah, to the south, police and morgue officials said.
West of the capital, U.S. forces recovered the bodies of three service members missing since mechanical problems forced a CH-46 helicopter with 16 people aboard to land in Lake Qadisiya in Al Anbar province, the U.S. command said in a statement. One body was recovered shortly after the crash.
In other violence Monday, a news editor with the independent station Radio Dijla was gunned down as he left his Baghdad home, the station said. At least 93 journalists and 45 support staffers have been killed since the war's start, most of them Iraqis, according to a count by French-based Reporters Without Borders.
A roadside bomb killed a child and injured two other people in a predominantly Sunni part of south Baghdad. On Sunday, a 5-year-old girl was shot and killed during an attack on U.S. forces and Iraqi police in the same neighborhood, the military said.
Gunmen killed four government workers as they drove to work in Baqubah, police said.
Elsewhere in northern Iraq, U.S. and Iraqi forces killed two suspected insurgents, detained six others and found an array of arms during raids on buildings where guerrillas were making car bombs, the U.S. military said.
And in Hussein's genocide trial Monday, the prosecution called its last witness.
Abdul Kader Abdullah, an education official and former Kurdish guerrilla, wept when he described finding the bodies of more than 40 victims of a 1988 chemical attack against the minority group in northern Iraq, including his mother and two daughters.
His mother was lying face-down near a stream, he said. "I thought of kissing her, but I was afraid that I might get infected," he said tearfully.
The case resumes Wednesday with a review of prosecution documents.
Special correspondents in Baghdad, Baqubah, Taji and Hillah contributed to this report.