1.

Wrapup 3

OVER 30 DEAD IN BAGHDAD AS BOMBS GREET BRUSSELS MEETING
By Lutfi Abu Oun

Reuters
June 23, 2005

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L22706115.htm

BAGHDAD -- Three car bombs shook Baghdad after dawn on Thursday, killing at least 15 people, wounding 50 and causing mayhem in the downtown Karrada commercial district, police sources said.

Hours earlier a triple car bombing claimed by al Qaeda hit a mainly Shi'ite district of the capital, killing 18, following a day of meetings in Brussels between the new Shi'ite-led government, its U.S. sponsors and other foreign powers.

Police said a suicide car bomber killed three policemen and wounded two when he drove at their patrol in Karrada. Two other, apparently stationary, cars exploded in the same area within minutes, one close to a Shi'ite mosque.

A Reuters Television cameraman saw three bodies being carried away from the scene of the attack on police as black smoke and flame darkened the bright morning sky.

After dark on Wednesday, a coordinated series of three car bombs killed at least 18 people and wounded 48 in the Shi'ite Shola neighborhood in the west of the capital, police said.

Insurgents drawn mainly from the once dominant Sunni Arab minority have killed some 1,200 people in Iraq since the Shi'ite-led government was formed two months ago.

The Shola blasts caused widespread damage and casualties on the area's main street, near a restaurant and close to a car repair workshop, police said. A Reuters journalist saw a burned out building and several wrecked cars near the restaurant.

The al Qaeda organization in Iraq, led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for the attack.

The group, speaking of a "Sunni reprisal raid" posted film on the Internet showing fires in at least three places and sounds of blasts and shooting. It was impossible to tell where or when the footage was made. A fourth blast late on Wednesday in Baghdad targeted an Interior Ministry convoy, police said.

INSURGENT TALKS?

In Brussels, the United States, European Union and other powers endorsed the stated aim of the Iraqi government to draw the once dominant Sunni Arab minority into a political process after many failed to vote at January's post-war election.

Iraq's security minister said he was in touch through intermediaries with some anti-American, nationalist rebels, urging them to come forward and negotiate and to break any links with those bent on holy war or restoring Saddam Hussein.

"There are nationalists within the insurgency who are against the (U.S.) occupation. We are urging them to show their faces and come to the table," Abdul Karim al-Enzi told Reuters.

"We are not talking about the foreigners, Saddamists, and religious radicals who think they have a divine right to label others heretics and sanction all sorts of killing."

In Washington, officials disclosed a CIA report saying the Iraqi insurgency may be training guerrillas who pose a greater threat to the United States than those like Osama bin Laden who learned their trade fighting Soviet troops in Afghanistan.

President George W. Bush, facing new criticism of a 2003 invasion that failed to find Saddam's supposed chemical and nuclear arsenal, said on Saturday Islamists had since flowed into Iraq, making it a "central front in the war on terror".

DEMOCRATIC MOVES

At the one-day Brussels conference, staged to show world unity over Iraq two years after the controversial invasion, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari appealed for help to fight the insurgency and to rebuild his country.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice attacked Syria for failing to stop insurgents crossing its border into Iraq and insisted Iraq was "well on the way to democracy".

Sunni leaders said they had formed a team to negotiate the text of the new constitution but full talks may be delayed -- sabotage has cut water and, consequently, air conditioning to the parliament building, forcing a week's recess. The expanded negotiating body may not be approved until at least Tuesday.

Zarqawi and others have threatened to kill Sunni leaders who negotiate. Some Sunni leaders have also accused Shi'ite militia's of sending hit squads against their representatives.

Jasim al-Ethawi, a Sunni law professor involved in the constitution discussions with parliament, was shot dead at his Baghdad home on Wednesday, along with his 18-year-old son, colleagues said. Another professor, Abdul Satar Jabar al- Khazraji of the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party was shot dead on Tuesday as he headed to work, the Defence Ministry said.

(Additional reporting by Faris al-Mehdawi, Walid Ibrahim, Omar Anwar and Alastair Macdonald)

2.

International

Middle East

INTERNATIONAL DONORS PLEDGE TO STEP UP THEIR EFFORTS TO PROVIDE FINANCIAL AID FOR IRAQ
By Steven R. Weisman

New York Times
June 23, 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/23/international/europe/23rice-long.html

BRUSSELS -- Officials at an international conference of more than 80 nations and organizations pledged Wednesday to reinvigorate their lagging efforts to provide financial aid and debt relief for Iraq, and they urged Iraqi leaders to make more efforts to reach out politically to disaffected minorities supporting the insurgency.

In a day of meetings, conference attendees led by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, and the heads of the European Union listened to upbeat reports about Iraq but also appeals for more financial help, which the Iraqis said had not come through as promised.

"Today I believe that Iraq and the international community are turning a page together," Mr. Annan said. "I hope that all Iraqis take heart from today's conference. The people of Iraq have plenty of friends, and we do not intend to let them down."

Secretary Rice assured attendees that despite news reports focusing on violence and instability, Iraq was "well on its way to democracy" and had "exceeded our expectations" in restoring political order.

Ms. Rice continued what has become a rising tempo of criticism of Syria, which sent an envoy to the conference and joined in the final declaration, accusing it of allowing its territory to be used to help the insurgency, but she said Iraqis who supported the government were more determined than the rebels to win in the end.

"When it is defeated in Iraq, it will be a death knell for terrorism as we know it," she said of the insurgency.

Presentations from Iraqis came from Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, and Finance Minister Ali Allawi, all of whom pleaded for understanding of the difficulties of building a new nation on top of an insurgency and the ruins of war and misrule by Saddam Hussein.

Most of the conference was closed to the news media, but there were signs of disappointment in some public comments. For example, Mr. Allawi, the Iraqi finance minister, made it clear that Iraq was disappointed that little of the financial assistance promised in Madrid in late 2003 had materialized. "The flow of grants and loans from the international community, which are essential for reconstruction, have not been within the expected levels," he said.

American officials say that of the more than $13 billion pledged in Madrid over three years, only $2 billion had been raised. According to American officials, some generalized pledges were made at the two-day conference. The biggest was from the European Union, which, having already met its Madrid pledge, said it would give $130 million in new aid. Other countries promised to assist in police training and to help set up civilian government functions.

Those taking part in the conference were also urged to attend a donors' meeting next month in Amman, Jordan, and to figure out ways to speed up aid.

Mr. Allawi painted a bleak picture of Iraq's financial situation, particularly its problems in producing oil. The production of 1.4 million barrels of oil a day is below the industry's targets, he said, but revenues are higher than expected because of high oil prices.

However, he said the Iraqi budget, 95 percent of which is paid for by oil income, is drained by continued subsidies for gasoline, food and electricity for Iraqis, an elaborate system set up under Mr. Hussein and which the new government has been unable to dismantle for fear of angering Iraqi citizens.

Mr. Allawi said Iraq's burden of $125 billion in debt -- a figure calculated by the United States at $110 billion -- continued to strangle the nation's solvency, and other conference participants expressed frustration -- but only in private -- that Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries had not sent ambassadors to Baghdad or provided debt relief.

The major industrial nations of the West have agreed to relieve 80 percent of their $40 billion share of Iraq's debts. An important theme at the conference came in a series of appeals to Iraqi leaders to make sure that their constitution-writing process includes Iraqis of all ethnic and religious backgrounds. Iraqi leaders repeated just as often that they would do so.