hard for gw to fix a problem he doesnt acknowledge exists
"Iraqi, US talks on command handover hit snag
Deutsche Presse Agentur
Published: Monday September 4, 2006
Baghdad- Talks between Iraq and the US on the proposed handover of the military command hit a snag Monday when the Iraqi Defence Ministry said there would be a delay due to disagreement over the wording of the document outlining the operational transfer. A Defence Ministry source told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that the US transfer of the command of the Iraqi units to the government would not be signed in the meantime for "legal and protocol-related reasons." He did not elaborate further.
In the meantime, tension between coalition forces and Iraqi police on one side and militants on another continued to mount amid escalating violence.
Two U.S. Marines assigned to Regimental Combat Team 5 were killed Sunday while operating in al-Anbar province, 180 kilometres west of m Baghdad in camp Fallujah as a result of enemy action, coalition forces reported Monday.
Only a day earlier, a militant group in the same area killed eight people, all belonging to the same family. The victims were directly shot at, according to autopsy reports. The attackers fled in a car following the incident.
In another incident, insurgents carried out a car bomb attack targeting a police patrol. The explosion wounded two civilians, one of them seriously.
Elsewhere, eyewitnesses in Baquba, 60 kilometres north of Baghdad,told dpa that US and Iraqi forces raided a house of a local imam on Monday at dawn, killing five civilians including a two-month- old baby.
Also on Monday, the Mujahedeen Shura council, a coalition of Iraqi insurgents denied reports broadcast Sunday by US and Iraqi forces saying that Al-Qaeda's second-in-command, Hamed Jumaa al-Saeedi, had been captured.
In an online statement attributed to the coalition, the insurgents described the reports of the leader's arrest as "an attempt (by US and Iraqi forces) to pull off a pathetic media victory to raise the morale of their cohorts.
"The leader of the mujahedeen is fine," added the internet statement. Al-Qaeda's number two is reportedly responsible for a February bombing of the al-Askari mosque, a key Shiite Muslim shrine in the city of Samarra, north of Baghdad, triggering a wave of sectarian violence across Iraq.
Meanwhile, a dispute over Iraqi flag continued Monday when Iraqi President Jalal Talabani criticized a decision by Kurds to lower the Iraqi flag and replace it with the Kurdish one over government buildings in the Kurdish semi-autonomous regions.
The decision to hoist a new flag "is malicious and has an aggressive and a hostile undertone," Talabani said.
According to the Iraqi president, a new flag has to be accredited and approved by Iraq's parliament. The president of Kurdistan, Massoud al-Barazani, defended his decision to ban the national flag and had even threatened to declare the region's independence.
"Any time the parliament saw it proper to declare independence we will declare it and we will have no fear," al-Barazani said in a speech earlier.
In other developments, local Iraqi authorities decided to close the Basra visa department, south of Baghdad, on Monday. The authorities cited that "the spread of forgery and bribery among employees" as the reason behind their decision. |
