Baghdad Protesters Demand That U.S. Get Out of Iraq
(I think we'll have to see if this increases as we go along, or subsides...t)
washingtonpost.com
Baghdad Protesters Demand That U.S. Get Out of Iraq
Reuters
Friday, April 18, 2003; 10:09 PM
By Hassan Hafidh
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of protesters demanded on Friday that the United States get out of Iraq while leaders of the Arab nation's neighbors meeting in Saudi Arabia also called for U.S. forces to leave quickly and warned Washington against trying to exploit Iraq's oil wealth.
In the biggest protest since U.S. forces toppled Saddam Hussein's iron-fisted, 24-year-long rule nine days ago, Muslims poured out of mosques and into the streets of Baghdad, calling for an Islamic state to be established.
Carrying Korans, prayer mats and banners, tens of thousands of people marched in a protest that organizers said represented both Iraq's majority Shi'ite Muslims and powerful Sunnis.
"Leave our country, we want peace," read one banner. "No Bush, No Saddam, Yes Yes to Islam," read another.
Meanwhile, while the United States pressed ahead with its plans for a post-war Iraq, foreign ministers of the country's neighbors meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, called on the United Nations to take a central role in rebuilding the country.
U.S. officials told Reuters in Kuwait the United Nations must lift sanctions within weeks to help the country recover, but Washington faces an uphill battle to get them dropped quickly as the issue raises questions over who controls Iraq's oil and thus who in effect runs the country.
"In order for U.S. forces to withdraw as soon as possible, we call on the occupying authority to set up a transitional government quickly and make all efforts to set up a broad-based constitutional Iraqi government," said an opening statement read at the meeting.
After the meeting, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told reporters that the U.S.-led forces who invaded Iraq had no legitimate right to exploit its oil and U.N. sanctions should end only when Iraq has a legitimate government.
"Now Iraq is under an occupying power and any request for lifting sanctions must come when there is a legitimate government which represents the people... and which can comply with its duties toward lifting sanctions," Faisal said.
"(The ministers) affirmed that the Iraqi people should administer and govern their country by themselves, and any exploitation of their natural resources should be in conformity with the will of the legitimate Iraqi government and its people," Faisal said.
FRIENDS OF THE U.S.
Barring Syria and Iran, all participants at the talks are key U.S. allies that offered some form of support for the invasion. But they all fear the United States will install a puppet regime in Iraq which would ally itself with Israel.
The U.S. Central Command in Qatar said Iraqi Kurds had captured and handed over Samir Abul Aziz al-Najim, a senior Baghdad official of Saddam's Baath Party, near Mosul in northern Iraq.
He was on a U.S. list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis. U.S. Brigadier General Vincent Brooks told a news briefing Najim may have been posted to northern Iraq to take command of some military operations there.
Later U.S. officials in Washington said that an Iraqi official who had been involved in the country's suspected nerve gas program had surrendered to U.S. forces and was being interrogated.
Imad Husayn Abdallah al-Ani, who was not on the U.S. military's list of 55 most-wanted Iraqi officials, recently turned himself in to U.S. forces in Iraq but is denying that the country was developing weapons of mass destruction, a U.S. official said.
He was involved in Iraq's suspected program to produce the VX nerve agent about a decade ago, but it was unclear what his most recent involvement might have been, the official said.
Asked how big a fish he was, the official replied: "He is not a minnow and he is not a whale."
So far, four of the top 55 most-wanted officials have either been captured or surrendered. Besides a-Najim, the three other leading Iraqis held by U.S. forces are Saddam's half-brothers Barzan and Watban Ibrahim Hasan al-Tikriti, and top scientific adviser Amer Hammoudi al-Saadi.
Abu Dhabi television, meanwhile, aired footage it said showed Saddam and his son Qusay addressing a crowd in Baghdad from the top of a car on April 9 -- the day the city fell.
The state-run channel also played an audio tape which it said was the last radio speech broadcast by Saddam, but it was not clear when the speech was thought to have been recorded.
Abu Dhabi TV said the pictures were shot in the northern Aadhamiya district and that the video tape had been obtained by its Baghdad correspondent from undisclosed sources.
A U.S. intelligence official said the United States would review it to determine whether Saddam, target of at least two bombing raids aimed directly at him, had indeed survived.
In the audio tape, the voice said to be that of Saddam called on Iraqis to make sacrifices "to protect our land and our rights."
It added, "Regardless of the time needed to achieve victory and regardless of the forms of the struggle that might be needed, regardless of the length of the occupation, the freedom of the people is the most important."
Abu Dhabi TV said the pictures were taken on the same day U.S. tanks drove into central Baghdad and Iraqis toppled a massive statue of Saddam.
Organizers of Friday's mass demonstration in Baghdad called themselves the Iraqi National United Movement. The protest served notice of the hostility that the United States, which has appointed a retired American general to lead an interim administration in Iraq, is likely to face from sectors of the influential Muslim clergy.
NEW ECONOMY
The United States is now turning its focus to kick-starting Iraq's shattered economy, hit by three wars in 23 years and economic sanctions since 1990.
U.S. officials, briefing Reuters on condition of anonymity, said the U.N. must lift sanctions within weeks to help Iraq recover and added the United States would open Iraq's borders to tariff-free trade for 90 days once the U.N. embargo was lifted.
They also forecast Iraq could not rely on using its oil revenues for about a year until it sorted out its debt, estimated at more than $100 billion, and war reparation claims.
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