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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rick Faurot who wrote (31472)	11/13/2003 3:04:06 PM
From: sylvester80	Respond to of 89467

NEWS: Japan balks at sending Iraq force [ed: After the Turks, Bush waves bye bye to the Japs.] msnbc.com NBC, MSNBC AND NEWS SERVICES BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 13 — As the death toll from a devastating attack on an Italian compound in southern Iraq rose to 32, including 19 Italians, Japan said Thursday it was reconsidering its planned dispatch of non-combat forces to Iraq. Meanwhile, grappling with the expanding insurgency, U.S. forces launched two attacks on alleged guerrilla targets around Baghdad. THE BLOODIEST SINGLE attack on U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq since August put Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, a close Washington ally, in a tight spot a day ahead of a visit to Tokyo by U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The suicide truck bombing of the headquarters of the Italian Carabinieri police occurred in the southern region where Japan’s troops were expected to be based. “There should be a situation where our country’s Self-Defense Forces can conduct their activities fully,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda told a news conference where he was grilled on the issue. “But to our regret, the situation is not like that.” Asked whether the dispatch could be delayed until next year, Fukuda said: “That possibility has always existed.” The attack in Nasiriyah also prompted Portugal to decide to send 128 elite police officers originally slated for Nasiriyah to Basra instead. Another important U.S., South Korea, said it won’t send more than 3,000 troops to Iraq, rebuffing Washington’s request for a bigger deployment, President Roh Moo-hyun’s office said Thursday. The decision was made on Tuesday, one day before the Nasiriyah bombing, presidential spokesman Yoon Tae-young said in a news briefing. ITALIAN VISIT Italian Defense Minister Antonio Martino flew to Nasiriyah on Thursday and went straight to visit wounded Italian soldiers on his arrival. An injured man recovers in a hospital after the bombing of the Italian headqurters in Nairiyah. Martino blamed al-Qaida terrorists and loyalists of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein for the bombing, which caused the country’s highest military death toll since World War Two. Italy has “some fairly reliable intelligence information” that the Fedayeen Saddam, the ousted leader’s former paramilitary force, was responsible along with “regrouped al-Qaida terrorists,” the defense minister told Italian state television Thursday after he arrived at the attack site. Italy’s cabinet confirmed on Thursday that Rome would keep troops in Iraq despite the bombing. Elsewhere, an American soldier was killed in a roadside bomb attack in Baghdad, a spokesman for the 1st Armored Division said on Thursday. The spokesman said a roadside bomb struck a passing Humvee in Baghdad on Wednesday, wounding two soldiers. One of them later died, he said. The latest death brings to at least 156 the number of U.S. soldiers killed in action in Iraq since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1. In a separate attack, a bomb planted on a road in the flashpoint Iraqi town of Fallujah hit a U.S. military vehicle on Thursday and residents spoke of three American casualties. The U.S. military had no immediate word on the attack, which left a crater in the main street of the town west of Baghdad. Local witnesses told reporters at the scene after the incident that they believed one American soldier had been killed and two wounded in the attack. ........more