1.

International News

RUMSFELD MAKES SURPRISE VISIT TO BAGHDAD

** Defense secretary warns against political ‘turbulence’ **

Associated Press
April 11, 2005

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7469124/

BAGHDAD -- The leaders of Iraq’s emerging new government must not allow “turbulence or incompetence or corruption” to slow or foil progress toward building democracy and defeating the insurgency, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said.

Rumsfeld arrived at the Iraqi capital before sunrise Tuesday aboard an Air Force C-17 cargo plane for his second visit in three months. The visit reflects a desire to push the political and military momentum that he believes has been growing since the Jan. 30 elections for a national assembly.

Rumsfeld was meeting later Tuesday with Interim President Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish former rebel leader, and Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Shiite Muslim who was designated interim prime minister last week.

Once al-Jaafari has chosen his cabinet ministers and they are approved by the National Assembly, he and Talabani are to lead Iraq’s transition to a constitutionally elected government by December.

En route from Washington, Rumsfeld told reporters he would press the new Iraqi leadership to avoid delays on either the political or security front at a time when U.S. troops are still being killed or wounded and billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars are being invested in rebuilding the country.

“It’s important that the new government be attentive to the competence of the people in the ministries and that they avoid unnecessary turbulence,” Rumsfeld said.

Some in the Bush administration are concerned that factional maneuvering during the formation of the transitional government could undermine the counterinsurgency effort that is a key to eventually pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq.

“Anything that would delay that or disrupt that as a result of turbulence or incompetence or corruption in government would be unfortunate,” Rumsfeld said.

He would not discuss his thinking on how soon the 140,000 U.S. troops based in Iraq could begin leaving.

2.

World

TALABANI PREDICTS U.S. EXIT IN TWO YEARS

** Pakistan appeals for envoy's release **

CNN
April 11, 2005

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/04/10/iraq.main/index.html

BAGHDAD -- The newly elected president of Iraq said Sunday he expects that U.S. troops will be gone from his country within two years.

Jalal Talabani told CNN two years should be enough time for Iraqi forces to rebuild and secure control of the country as well as take over the job currently being performed by some 140,000 U.S. troops.

"We are trying to build -- as soon as possible -- our military forces," he told "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer."

"I think within two years, we can do it, and at the same time, we will remain in full consultation and coordination, cooperation with our American friends."

Talabani said how long U.S. forces remain in Iraq will depend on a number of factors, including "the common desire of Iraqi people and American people."

Two prominent U.S. senators told CNN Sunday they were optimistic that Talabani's prediction could come true.

The two-year figure "probably is realistic in terms of the bulk of the troops," said Sen. Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.

Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, the committee's top Democrat, said, "The single most important thing we have to be doing now is make sure that training is on target and that they have the capacity to govern."

"By the end of '06 we're going to have a pretty clear picture of whether or not it's succeeding or failing," Biden said. "And success will be dependent upon a government that's representative and a capacity to govern in terms of security."

But even if that is not achieved, "I suspect you'll see the American people calling for us to significantly draw down anyway," he said.

Talabani predicted Iraq's new constitution will be drafted by August 15 as scheduled, though he can ask for a six-month extension.

Talabani is the first Kurd to serve as president of a majority Arab nation. Dictator Saddam Hussein oppressed Kurds and was an enemy of Talabani.

Video of his election was shown to Saddam and other imprisoned former regime members.

"I think the Iraqi minister of human rights wanted to show them which kind of democracy now we have," Talabani said.

He disputed the view of some critics that his role will be largely symbolic.

"That is not true," he said. "According to the law, the president represents the sovereignty of Iraq, and he has the right to look over all important issues and affairs of the government.

"He -- with two vice presidents and with the prime minister and his deputies and with the speaker of the house -- they are forming a collective leadership," Talabani said.

PROTESTS URGE U.S. WITHDRAWAL

Several thousand protesters gathered Saturday in Baghdad to urge the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq as well as to call for national unity and denounce terrorism. (Full story)

The protest and other demonstrations marked the second anniversary of the fall of Saddam's regime and the famous toppling of the former ruler's statue in Baghdad's Firdos Square.

In cities of the "Sunni Triangle" west of Baghdad, protesters also demanded the withdrawal of U.S. troops. Sunni Arabs, who dominated in Saddam's government, don't have the clout they once had.

Shiites, who make up 60 percent of the Iraq's 26 million people, and Kurds hold sway in the new transitional National Assembly, elected in January.

U.S. officials have said repeatedly they will not set a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops.

"Our troops will come home when Iraqis are capable of defending themselves," President Bush said at a news conference last month.

GROUP CLAIMS KIDNAPPING

An Iraqi group has claimed to have kidnapped a Pakistani diplomat, who failed to return home from evening prayers at a western Baghdad mosque, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said.

The Foreign Ministry said Malik Mohammad Javaid had contacted the Baghdad embassy to say he was unharmed.

"I appeal to the kidnappers to release Malik Mohammad Javaid. He is a civilian member of the embassy staff," Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said at a news conference on Sunday, Reuters reported.

A Pakistani official told CNN Sunday a group known as Omer Bin Khatab said it kidnapped Javaid on Saturday.

The group has not previously been heard of or claimed responsibility for other kidnappings, according to Reuters.

The diplomat was last seen leaving the mosque in Amiriya in west Baghdad about 8 p.m. local time (1600 GMT) Saturday, police said.

Pakistan was a key U.S. ally in its fight against al Qaeda but opposed the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Last year insurgents kidnapped and killed two Pakistani truck drivers, accusing them of working with U.S. forces in Iraq.

Also Sunday, the terrorist group al Qaeda in Iraq, led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed to have kidnapped and killed Najaf police Brig. Gen. Bassem Mohammed Kadhim al-Jazaari while he was visiting Baghdad, according to The Associated Press.

CAR BOMB WOUNDS U.S. SOLDIER

Two car bombs were reported Sunday in Iraq, one wounding a U.S. soldier and the other wounding four Iraqi civilians.

Separately, the U.S. military said a soldier died Saturday from wounds suffered in "a non-hostile incident" on April 6 near Forward Operating Base Kalsu.

In a written statement, the U.S.-led multinational forces said a soldier with Task Force Liberty was wounded Sunday in Baquba when a car bomb detonated near his combat patrol at about 6:45 a.m. (11:45 p.m. ET).

In Baghdad, Iraqi police officials said a car bomb targeting a U.S. military convoy detonated near the Amiriya district, in the western part of the capital, wounding four Iraqi civilians and damaging three civilian cars.

Also, police said, two members of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq were shot by unidentified gunmen in eastern Baghdad. One died; the other was critically wounded.

The council is one of the major political parties in the United Iraqi Alliance, the Shiite-led coalition that has a major voice in developing the new government.

Multinational forces also said troops detained 13 suspected insurgents in northern Iraq and confiscated explosives Sunday.

--CNN's Kevin Flower, Ayman Mohyeldin, Mike Mount, Barbara Starr and Mohammed Tawfeeq contributed to this report.

3.

World

Middle East

The Gulf

Iraq

IRAQI PROPOSES BROADER AMNESTY
By Ellen Knickmeyer

** Citizens Who Killed in Battle Would Qualify **

Washington Post
April 11, 2005
Page A01

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42580-2005Apr10.html

[PHOTO CAPTION: Jalal Talabani spoke on first day of work as president.]

BAGHDAD -- Iraq's new president called Sunday for extending amnesty to Iraqi insurgents who had killed combatants, possibly including U.S. and Iraqi troops, as part of a drive that he said could help end attacks within months.

Jalal Talabani, speaking on his first day of work in the white and gilt presidential offices after his inauguration Thursday, excluded clemency for al Qaeda and other foreign armed groups operating here.

As for killings by Iraqi insurgents, Talabani said: "There are two kinds of killing: In battle or in action, this could be covered by the amnesty. Those who are involved in killing innocent people, detonation of car bombs, killing people in mosques and in churches, these would not be covered by the amnesty."

Talabani did not say specifically whether the amnesty would apply to fighters who had killed U.S. troops, other foreign troops or Iraqi security forces. Nor did he elaborate on how an amnesty program would work.

Iraq's new assembly speaker, Hachim Hasani, said last week when Talabani broached the topic of amnesty in his inaugural speech that the president was speaking about an amnesty by presidential order, after consultation with the new government.

The interim government put in place after U.S.-led troops routed President Saddam Hussein in March 2003 offered an amnesty to Iraqi insurgents that excluded rapists, kidnappers and killers.

Talabani said amnesty must be only a part of a program that draws Iraqi insurgents into efforts to build democracy, strengthen the economy, diminish public support for insurgents and block their attacks militarily.

"With a comprehensive policy, we can eradicate terror in the country within months," said Talabani, a Kurdish former rebel leader and Sunni Muslim elected last week by the new National Assembly.

Leaders in the government increasingly have drawn a line between Iraqi insurgent groups, with which they will seek common ground, and foreign groups, with which they won't.

"It is essential that we separate those who came from outside the country, like all those organizations affiliated with al Qaeda, from Iraqis," Talabani said. "We must seek to win over the Iraqis to the democratic process going on in the country and fight the criminal gangs" from outside the country.

Talabani also said he would work to secure the release of hundreds of people loyal to Moqtada Sadr, a firebrand Shiite Muslim cleric, from U.S. detention. Sadr's followers, who have twice fought U.S. troops, have pledged to follow peaceful and democratic ways, Talabani said, and have asked for his help with the detainees. "I will do my best to release them," he said.

Talabani spoke in the audience room of his new offices. A white-haired man in his early seventies who has given up the rebel trim of his youth and middle age, Talabani waited for a reporter on a chair in the presidential offices and pulled an already knotted tie over his head for the interview.

Many Iraqi Kurds backed the U.S. drive to topple Hussein, and Talabani, unlike the majority of Iraqis in opinion polls, said he was in no hurry to see U.S. troops leave.

"The war was not the best way, but it was the only way to liberate Iraq," Talabani said. "For that, I am grateful for those who came and sacrificed their lives for this thing. If there was not a sacrifice, you would see me in the mountains, not here in Baghdad! In the caves! You know, the airplanes would come bombard us."

Talabani's election by lawmakers Wednesday makes him the first member of Iraq's long-oppressed minority to fill the presidency and the highest-ranking Iraqi Kurd in a half-century.

Talabani and his two vice presidents have veto authority and other powers, although their duties are largely ceremonial. Their first job Thursday was naming Ibrahim Jafari, a Shiite former opposition leader, as prime minister.

Jafari's appointment sealed one of the myriad deals by which Iraqi politicians are doling out posts in an intended national-unity government meant to bring together the Shiite majority, Kurds, Sunni Muslims and secularists.

Negotiators met with former interim president Ayad Allawi on Sunday in an effort to bring his 40-seat secular bloc into the governing coalition, said the interim deputy prime minister, Barham Salih.

Kurds and other secular politicians hope that the inclusion of Allawi's group would offset any religious tilt by Shiite lawmakers, who won the largest share of seats in the 275-seat parliament.

Talabani said Sunday that he would oppose any move to substitute Islamic law for the current civil code on marriage, divorce, inheritance and other family matters. He said he welcomed the influence Iraq's leading Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, had had on building the government so far, including drawing out the Shiite vote.

Talabani also said he thought any renewed effort by the new government to remove members of Hussein's Baath Party from the government and military should spare the hundreds of thousands who committed no crime or abuses.

But the new government cannot ignore the suffering of the victims of Hussein's Baath-led institutions, particularly Shiites and Kurds, he said.

"They were poisoned and they were massacred. There are hundreds of thousands of victims from these two groups," he said. "Of course these people are hating very much Saddam's Baathists. We must also take into consideration the desire of these people in dealing with these criminals."

4.

Foreign

QAEDA WING CALLS NEW IRAQI PRESIDENT U.S. STOOGE

Reuters
April 11, 2005

http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=10532 (registration required)

DUBAI/BAGHDAD -- Al-Qaeda's wing in Iraq dismissed an amnesty offered to insurgents by Iraq's newly elected president, calling Jalal Talabani America's "tail," according to an Internet statement posted on Sunday.

Talabani, a veteran Kurdish leader, said after being sworn in last week that the government's top priority would be to bring stability to Iraq and that some insurgents might be offered an amnesty if their crimes were not too serious.

"The tail of America, Jalal Talabani, announced a so-called amnesty for the mujahideen (holy fighters) and called on them to enter into atheism, polytheism and the political game," the group led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said in a statement posted on a Web site used by Islamist militants.

SECURITY MEASURES:

In another development, Iraqi lawmakers on Sunday called for easing security measures imposed every time they meet, and Pakistan's government confirmed that an embassy diplomat was kidnapped in Baghdad.

Malik Mohammed Javed, deputy of the Pakistani chargé d'affaires, went missing late on Saturday after he left his Baghdad home to attend prayers at a nearby mosque.