Thread: Archive Latest News - Think Tank - 16/08/07 - 03/11/07

Two parliamentarians quit secular INL

Iraqi National List's (INL) members of parliament Safiyah al-Sehil and Hachem al-Hassani announced their withdrawal from the secular list, which is led by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, saying they will sit as independents in the Iraqi parliament.

"We announce our defection from the INL and we will sit as independents in the parliament," the two parliamentarians said in a joint news conference before the session of the parliament.

When asked about the reasons behind his decision, al-Hassani told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI) that divisions within the secular list over the decision-making process resulted in a complete lack of harmony between some of its members.

Al-Hassani was the former speaker of Iraq's Transitional National Assembly, the first Iraqi parliament formed after the 2005 elections. He was also a leading member in the Iraqi Islamic Party and was appointed as the minister of industry in Allawi's interim government. During the second legislative elections in 2005, al-Hassani joined the secular alliance led by Allawi, which includes many political parties of different ethnic affiliation.

Meanwhile, al-Sehil said that the list's deviation from the moderate and liberal line and its adoption of a "national Baathist line" led some of its senior members to consider reform. "We have tried to bring in reforms and rectify the path of the INL, but we unfortunately failed," al-Sehil said.
After the defections of the two parliamentarians the INL now has 22 seats in the 275-member parliament.

Two parliamentarians quit secular INL | Iraq Updates

17 key Sadrists released today, security advisor warns of politicizing initiative

Seventeen prominent members of al-Sadr movement, or those loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, will be released today from U.S. prisons in Iraq, Iraqi National Security Advisor Moqaffaw al-Rubaie said on Wednesday.

"17 Sadrist detainees in coalition prisons will be set free in response togovernment efforts," al-Rubaie said during a news conference in the Iraqi capital Baghdad.

Refusing to reveal the identity of the released prisoners, al-Rubaie said, "I would not describe them as leaders, but some of them are well-known in their regions…"

"This is the fourth batch of Sadrist detainees to be released from coalition forces' prisons," he explained.

At the beginning of the conference, al-Rubaie announced an initiative by the Iraqi government that aims at enhancing the performance of security and legal institutions and release detainees from Iraqi prisons, and warned political factions against politicizing the move for "sectarian purposes."

Describing his government's initiative for "enforcing the rule of law" as an attempt "to do justice to the detainees in Iraqi prisons and address their issues in accordance with human rights principles," al-Rubaie said that the Iraqi government is determined to take all necessary measures to improve the performance of its security and legal apparatus.

Al-Rubaie read out the details of the initiative to reporters, which he said urges all concerned state-run institutions, including the ministries of defense, interior, justice, and labor, to provide accurate information about the number of Iraqi detainees and prisoners.

The information will be submitted to the Supreme Legal Council, the leadership of the Public Prosecution, and the Ministry of Interior, al-Rubaie indicated.

Acknowledging serious problems in Iraqi prisons and detention centers, the security advisor warned political factions of politicizing the government's initiative. "The government asserts that it is not a political issue. We should put political divisions and factional and sectarian allegations aside and undermine endeavors to make use of the initiative for political or partisan purposes," al-Rubaie noted.

17 key Sadrists released today, security advisor warns of politicizing initiative | Iraq Updates

Kurdistan Region Parliament Ratified Several other Items of Judiciary Draft Law

Speaker of Kurdistan region parliament, Mr. Adnan Mufti, charred a session of the parliament today which was devoted for discussing and ratification of several other items of Judiciary Draft Law in Kurdistan Region.

KRG Minster of justice and several other high KRG officials attended the session in which 9 articles of Judiciary Draft Law was ratified. Kurdistan Region Parliament will meet on next Wednesday for ratifying other articles of the draft law.

Following the end of the session, Kurdistan Region Parliament presidency also announced that the coming session on next Thursday will be devoted for inviting KRG minister of Municipality to the parliament for presenting his ministries report on the causes of spreading cholera diseases in Kurdistan Region.

PUKmedia :: English - Kurdistan Region Parliament Ratified Several other Items of Judiciary Draft Law

Iraq and Russia Signs an Agreement

Iraq and Federal Russia signed yesterday an agreement to open their Consulates in both countries at the end of talks by their foreign ministers, and the talks were described as “friendly, positive and productive.”

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari, in a joint press conference with his Russian counter part Serge Lavrov said that “the talks showed an agreement in the points of view about all the issues which were discussed.”

Zebari said that the letter which he delivered to President Puten included a desire to develop the bilateral relations, and he mentioned that Iraq is in a critical stage and needs the support of all international effective countries, especially Russia.

He also stressed the necessity of the International and Regional Conference about Iraq which will be held in Istanbul at the end of October.

PUKmedia :: English - Iraq and Russia Signs an Agreement

Effort to shift course in Iraq fails in Senate

A proposal that Democrats put forward as their best chance of changing the course of the Iraq war died on the Senate floor on Wednesday, as Republicans stood firmly behind President George W. Bush.

With other war initiatives seemingly headed for the same fate, Senate Democrats, who only two weeks ago proclaimed September to be the month for shifting course in Iraq, conceded that they had little chance of success. They said their strategy would now focus on portraying Republicans as opposing any change and on trying to chip away support from the White House as the war continued.

The proposal that failed Wednesday fell 4 votes short of the 60 needed to prevent a filibuster and would have required that American troops be given as much time at home as they had spent overseas before being redeployed. There were 56 votes in favor, including 6 Republicans — one fewer than the 7 Republicans who joined the Democrats in July, when the measure also fell 4 votes short.

Supporters of Bush's war strategy declared victory, saying they had firmly beaten back legislative efforts to change course.

"It means that Congress will not intervene in the foreseeable future," said Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, the independent Democrat who has voted with the Republicans on war issues. "The fact that it didn't get enough votes says that Congress doesn't have the votes to stop this strategy of success from going forward."

The Senate vote was a crucial test of the war plan that Bush put forward last week, calling for only gradual reductions in troop levels in Iraq from their current high, and leaving intact by next summer a main body of more than 130,000 troops, about the same number as last February.

The outcome reflected the fact that the strong opposition to the plan voiced by Democrats and a handful of Republicans remained insufficient to overcome a powerful Republican minority that had succeeded all year in staving off Democratic challenges to Bush's war policy.

The failed July vote now appears to be the closest Democrats will have come to bipartisan legislation that would force Bush to change his war strategy. And with Republicans now solidly behind the plan outlined by Bush and General David H. Petraeus, the commander in Iraq, Democrats have retreated to a firm antiwar stance.

They are no longer entertaining the kind of compromise measures that some Democrats had proposed this month as an attempt to woo Republican defectors, and they said they would instead seek opportunities to force votes that would more starkly contrast Republican support for the president with Democrats' demands for withdrawal.

"The Republican leadership and the White House is getting them all to march in line," said Senator Charles Schumer of New York, who ranks third in the party leadership. "But it is marching further and further away from where America is. We just keep at it. It's all we can do."

Democratic strategists and party officials said that Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, and his colleagues decided to stop trying to strike a deal with Republicans after they found little interest on the other side and could not settle on a plan that would appeal to Republicans but was tough enough to hold Democrats together.

Jim Manley, a spokesman for Reid, said the majority leader was rebuffed repeatedly in his efforts to find consensus with the Republicans.
"It became evident that Republicans were not willing to break with the president," he said.

If passed, Democrats said, the proposal, put forth by Senator Jim Webb of Virginia, would have added time between deployments, forced the withdrawal of troops on a substantially swifter timeline and, they said, protect troops from serving protracted and debilitating deployments.
After the proposal was defeated, Republicans failed to get 60 votes for a nonbinding resolution that said American troops should get as much re****e time as possible before redeployment.

On Thursday and Friday, the Senate is expected to vote on several other war proposals by the Democrats, including one by Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, that would require most American troops to be pulled out of Iraq by next June and would then cut financing for continuing military operations.

Another proposal by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, would require a shift of American troops away from combat by next summer. Neither has much chance of winning 60 votes.

The Senate will also vote on a plan by Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, that calls for a greater reliance on diplomacy to forge a political solution in Iraq and end the war.

But Democrats seemed resigned to having little chance of influencing the war strategy anytime soon.

After the vote, a clearly dejected Webb said: "You are seeing, as of a week ago, the administration and some of the leading Republicans in here talking about, 'Hey it's O.K. that we're going to be in Iraq for the next 50 years.' I don't think it is O.K.."

He continued: "And so we are going to have this debate. It is going to be a long and emotional debate, long meaning in months and perhaps years."

Webb's plan came under sharp attack by the Pentagon, which said it would interfere with complex troop deployment schedules, and late last week the administration put intense pressure on Republican lawmakers when it became clear that Webb was close to securing enough Republican votes to win.

And it was dealt a death blow when Senator John Warner, Webb's fellow Virginian, and one of the most respected Republican voices on military affairs, announced dramatically on the Senate floor that he was withdrawing his support for the proposal based on information provided by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and other senior military officials.
"I endorsed it," Warner said of the Webb proposal. "I intend now to cast a vote against it."

In explaining his decision, Warner said he had been convinced, at a meeting earlier in the day with senior military officials, that the Webb plan could not be carried out without causing havoc for the armed forces, potentially lengthening tours in Iraq. Warner also met with Gates, a longtime friend, on Monday.

But Warner's change in position echoed a wider unwillingness by Republicans to break ranks with the Bush administration.

The two Republican senators who are running for president — John McCain of Arizona and Sam Brownback of Kansas —voted against the Webb proposal. The four Democratic senators who are presidential candidates — Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Barack Obama of Illinois, Biden and Christopher Dodd of Connecticut — voted in favor of the measure.

The continuing partisan divide frustrated some moderate lawmakers in both parties who are eager to help shape Iraq policy as well as send a message to constituents that they are doing their part to end an increasingly unpopular war. But there appeared to be little likelihood that any of those measures would move forward until next month when Congress must consider a supplemental military spending bill.

Reid's spokesman said the decision to stick with a hard deadline for withdrawal was endorsed by Levin, who earlier had signaled a willingness to soften his proposal in a bid to win Republican converts.

Effort to shift course in Iraq fails in Senate - International Herald Tribune

Bin Laden brands Iraq's Maliki 'traitorous apostate'
New Al-Qaeda video threatens Shiite Muslim who back American presence in Iraq.

Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden branded Iraq's Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki a "traitorous apostate" in new video that threatens the Shiite Muslim in the violence-ravaged country.

The 81-minute documentary-style video was made public on Thursday by the US-based SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors Islamist websites.
In it, bin Laden talks of a succession of US-backed government in Iraq since Saddam Hussein was overthrown in 2003 and taunts them for failing to end the US-led occupation of the country.

His remarks were made in a documentary style video with English subtitles called "The Power of Truth" in which bin Laden appears in still photographs and video footage.

"We've seen (Iyad) Allawi's government come and go, yet the occupier did not leave; and the (Ibrahim) Jaafari government as well, yet the occupier did not leave.

"And there is the traitorous apostate Maliki government taking the same line as the Jaafari government because it is just another face of it."

The Al-Qaeda leader makes a reference to Iraq's Shiite Muslims, to which he is virulently opposed, and threatens them with violence.

"It is not possible for such a large number of southerners to participate with American and its allies in violating Fallujah, Ramadi, Baquba, Mosul, Samarra, Qaim and other cities and villages and then in exchange have their region enjoy safety from harm and reaction."

Those cities have predominantly Sunni Arab populations.

Bin Laden brands Iraq's Maliki 'traitorous apostate' | Iraq Updates

US Senate rejects anti-war bill on Iraq
Democrats fail to pass bill aiming to limit numbers of troops ready for deployment.

President George W. Bush's administration Wednesday thwarted the latest bid by Democrats to derail its Iraq strategy, as the Senate blocked a bid to limit the numbers of troops ready for deployment.

After wavering Republican Senators came under fierce political pressure, the bill garnered 56 votes in the 100-member chamber, but in a stinging defeat for Democrats, fell four votes short of the required 60-vote supermajority.

The measure, framed by Democratic Senator James Webb, and co-sponsored by Republican war critic Senator Chuck Hagel, would have mandated rest periods for troops equal to the length of time they spent on combat tours.

Its failure was the latest bitter disappointment for Democrats who grabbed control of Congress last year, but have repeatedly failed to change the course of US strategy in the unpopular war.

Hagel had argued in a day of impassioned debate that US troops were being stretched beyond endurance, and facing rising rates of stress, divorce and personal hardship by repeated combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"We cannot continue to look at war and the people who fight and die in wars as abstractions, as pawns, as objects," said Hagel.
"The humanity of this is lost."

But critics branded the bill a "back-door" attempt to enforce a drawdown of US troops from Iraq. Supporters did not dispute the fact it would limit troop levels, but said it was vital to ease the strain on the US military.

Though Secretary of Defense Robert Gates had warned he would ask Bush to veto the measure had it passed, the bill was seen as the Democrats best shot this year of challenging Bush's control of the war.

Republicans celebrated the defeat of the bill, which they said would have amounted to a legislated surrender in Iraq, a week after Bush declared his troop surge strategy a success.

Senator and 2008 presidential candidate John McCain branded the bill "dangerous," adding it would have "the effect of changing policy on the war."

Republican Senator Jim Bunning issued an outspoken attack on the bill.
"I will not support this slow bleed strategy in Iraq, it ties the hands of our commanders," he said.

Republican Senator John Warner, an expert on the military, who has expressed disquiet about war strategy, had considered voting for the measure, but was swayed by top military brass in a meeting on Wednesday.

He said the provision would interfere with Bush's gradual troop redeployment plan from Iraq, to 'pre-surge' levels of around 130,000 by mid-2008, and would limit spe******t troops available in Iraq.

"I regretfully say I have been convinced by those in professional uniform -- they cannot do it," said Warner.

Another Republican Senator Arlen Specter, who had expressed interest in the bill, also changed his mind of meeting senior military officers.

Webb said he had been hopeful that the bill would get the required 60 votes, but concluded his quest was derailed by a fierce lobbying operation organized by the White House.

"When it became possible, and likely that we would get to 60 votes, the White House really revved up the engines on this," he told reporters after the vote.

The bill's 56-vote tally was exactly the same as the number a similar version garnered in June, when it last came up for the vote, showing little progress by Democrats in thwarting Bush's war strategy.

Faced with apparently solid Republican backing for Bush on the war in the Senate, Democrats are now expected to make several symbolic -- but almost certain to fail -- attempts to establish troop withdrawal timetables.

By the Democratic script, September was supposed to have been the month, when constant pressure on wavering Republican senators broke the back of Bush's support for the war in Congress.

But a public relations campaign by the White House, and testimony by war commander General David Petraeus and US ambassador to Baghdad Ryan Crocker now seems to have been decisive.

US Senate rejects anti-war bill on Iraq | Iraq Updates

US troops detain Iranian businessman in Iraq

US forces arrested an Iranian businessman on Thursday at a hotel in Sulaimaniyah, a majority Kurdish city in northern Iraq, a regional government official told AFP.

He is the latest Iranian national to be detained in Iraq by the US military, which accuses Iran of helping fund and arm Shiite militia groups in the country's bloody sectarian conflict.

The businessman, identified only as Farhadi, was detained at around 4.00 am (midnight GMT) after US troops raided the Sulaimaniyah Palace hotel, said a spokesman for government of the largely autonomous region of Kurdistan.

The businessman was a member of an Iranian commercial delegation visiting Sulaimaniyah, said the spokesman, Jamal Abdullah.

"American troops raided the Sulaimaniyah Palace hotel early in the morning and arrested a man known as Farhadi. He was a member of a commercial delegation from the Iranian province of Kermanshah," Abdullah said.

US military spokesman Major Winfield Danielson said he could not immediately comment on the reported detention.

There was no immediate comment frm Tehran.

Late last month, US forces briefly detained a group of Iranians, including two diplomats, from a Baghdad hotel in what the military later said was a "regrettable incident."

Tehran issued a protest over what it called the "unjustifiable" detention of the Iranians, who were taken by US troops from a hotel in blindfolds and handcuffs after their convoy was stopped at a nearby checkpoint.

Thursday's arrest is the third such action by US troops since January, when five Iranians working in the northern Kurdish city of Arbil were seized for allegedly aiding the anti-American insurgency. They are still in US military custody.

It comes amid mounting tension between the United States and Iran, with Washington accusing Tehran of stoking tensions in Iraq and of covertly developing a nuclear weapon.

Iran denies both charges, saying the presence of US troops is the main cause of violence in Iraq and that its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes only.

Amid a mounting war of words, Iran angered Washington further when it warned on Wednesday that it could bomb Israel if it was attacked by the Jewish state.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is travelling to New York on Sunday and will give a speech at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, the same day that US President George W. Bush is scheduled to speak.

US troops detain Iranian businessman in Iraq | Iraq Updates

Iraq violence lowest since '06 mosque attack: U.S.

Violence in Iraq has fallen to its lowest level since before a mosque attack last year which unleashed the deadliest phase of the Iraq war, the deputy commander of U.S. forces in Iraq said on Thursday.

Lieutenant-General Raymond Odierno said attacks in Baghdad had also fallen by half since January, just before Washington began pouring 30,000 extra troops into Iraq to try to drag the nation back from the brink of civil war.

"There are still way too many civilian casualties inside of Baghdad and Iraq," Odierno said, after telling a news conference the number of sectarian killings in the capital had fallen from an average of about 32 a day to 12 a day this year.

U.S. forces launched a security crackdown in Baghdad in February which later spread to other provinces, targeting Sunni Islamist al Qaeda and other Sunni Arab insurgents as well as Shi'ite militias.

"Al Qaeda in Iraq is increasingly being pushed out of Baghdad and the surrounding areas. They are now seeking refuge elsewhere in the country and even fleeing Iraq," Odierno said.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki this month said his government had averted civil war and that levels of violence in Baghdad and surrounding areas had fallen 75 percent since the "surge" of troops began.

Al Qaeda, however, has vowed to step up attacks during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan. At least 30 people were killed in a spate of bombings and shootings across Iraq on Sunday, soon after that threat was issued.

Odierno said there had been no sign of any reprisal attacks since a Baghdad shooting incident on Sunday involving U.S. security firm Blackwater in which 11 people were killed.

U.S. and Iraqi officials have launched a joint inquiry into the incident, with Maliki's government announcing it had halted Blackwater's operations and would review the activities of all local and foreign security firms.

"It's amazing to me the great restraint that the Iraqis showed and we're very thankful for that," Odierno said.

DEADLIEST PHASE

The security crackdown was seen by Washington as an attempt to buy time for Iraq's fractured coalition government to reach political benchmarks aimed at reconciling majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs dominant under Saddam Hussein.

Maliki's Shi'ite-led coalition has been paralyzed by infighting and the withdrawal of about a dozen ministers from cabinet, but a senior lawmaker said Maliki's 16-month-old administration was not about to fall.

"There is absolutely no way now to overthrow the government and to present a proposal to withdraw confidence from it," Khaled al-Attiya, the deputy speaker of parliament and an independent member of the ruling Shi'ite Alliance, told Reuters.

The bombing of the golden-domed al-Askari mosque, one of Iraq's four holiest Shi'ite shrines, in mainly Sunni Arab Samarra in February 2006 sparked the deadliest phase of violence since the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam in March 2003.

Sectarian violence had been on the rise, but the bombing changed the focus from a Sunni Arab insurgency against U.S. and Iraqi forces into a spate of revenge sectarian attacks in which tens of thousands of Iraqis died and many more fled their homes.

Odierno said U.S. and Iraqi forces had been pressing ahead with their strategy of keeping al Qaeda and other militant groups "off balance" by targeting their leadership.

U.S. troops this year have been pushing out of large bases into smaller combat outposts and joint command centers in neighborhoods in Baghdad and areas around the city.

This had also led to an increase in the discovery of weapons caches, which in turn resulted in a decrease in the number of attacks by improvised explosive devices or roadside bombs, by far the biggest killers of U.S. troops in Iraq, Odierno said.

He said 60 percent more weapons caches had been discovered in the first nine months of 2007 than in all of 2006.

General David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, and ambassador Ryan Crocker reported to Congress last week that some security improvements had been achieved although the pace of political progress was disappointing.

U.S. President George W. Bush, under pressure to show progress in the unpopular war or bring troops home, later announced a limited withdrawal of about 20,000 troops by July.

Iraq violence lowest since '06 mosque attack: U.S. | Iraq Updates

Petrel upbeat on Iraq de****e losses

Petrel Resources, the Irish exploration company looking for oil in southern Iraq, says its operating losses increased by 45% to €330,000 in the six months to the end of June compared with the first half of 2006.

But the company says it is delighted to be in the war-torn country, as bigger companies are put off by the conflict.

Petrel chief executive David Horgan says there is no current oil and gas opportunity to match Iraq. He says the undeveloped proven and probable reserves alone are immense, let alone the unexplored deeper horizons, which have proven to hold massive reserves throughout the wider region.

RTÉ Business: Petrel upbeat on Iraq despite losses