1.  Insurgent Alliance Fraying In Fallujah as Locals Turn Against Foreign Arabs (Washington Post) 10/13
2.  US Casualties as Allawi Issues Fallujah Ultimatum (Washington Post) 10/13
3.  Fallujah Talks Break Down over Allawi Ultimatum (AFP) 10/14
4.  US Base Under Constant Attack Told No Troops Available for Protection (Baltimore Sun) 10/13
5.  Allawi Presses Effort to Bring Back Baathists to Government (New York Times) 10/13
6.  After Winning Concessions, Sadr Tries Hand at Diplomacy (PINR) 10/13
7.  Iraqi President Yawar: Elections Could Be Postponed (Associated Press) 10/14
8.  Female Iraqi Candidates a Diverse Group (Associated Press) 10/14
9.  Indelible Ink to Be Used in Iraq Election (Associated Press) 10/13
10. UN Considers Iraq Poll Staffing (Reuters) 10/13
11. Iraq, Pleading Poverty, Gets Back Vote at United Nations (Reuters) 10/13
12. Car Bomb Emerging as 'Weapon of Choice' in Iraq (Associated Press) 10/13
13. Iraq's Suicide Bombers Remain Lethal Mystery (Reuters) 10/14
14. Iraq Spy Chief Accuses SCIRI's Badr Militia of Killing Agents (AFP) 10/14
15. Iraq Faces Growing Health Crisis (Nature) 10/13
16. Iraq Public Health 'Key Concern' (BBC) 10/13
17. Lack of  Books Affecting Children's Education (IRIN) 10/13
18. Shielding Women From a Renewal of Domestic Violence (New York Times) 10/14
19. Rights Group: Terror Suspects 'Disappeared' While In US Custody (RFE/RL) 10/13
20. US Considers Reopening Inquiry Into Abuse before Iraq Prison Scandal (New York Times) 10/14
21. US Security Contractor Expanding, Raking in Profits (Associated Press) 10/13
22. Gareth Evans / Karim Sadjadpour: Iraq Chaos has Emboldened Iran (Int'l. Herald Tribune) 10/12
23. Violence in Iraq Holding Back Foreign Aid (Japan Times0 10/13
24. Cost of Iraqi Reconstruction Viewed (BBC) 10/13
25. Security Concerns Loom over Iraq Donors (AFP) 10/14
26. James Baker: Negotiating Iraq Debt and Profit for His Corporations (The Nation) 11/01
27. Controversy over Iraq Debt Negotiations Deepens (Guardian) 10/14
28. Potential Conflict Surfaces in US Bid to Ease Iraq's Debt (Boston Globe) 10/14
29. US Agrees to Special Audit of Halliburton Iraq Contracts (Reuters) 10/14
30. U.N. to Fund Oil-For-Food Investigation (Associated Press) 10/13
31. Editorial: That Cloud Over the United Nations (New York Times) 10/14
32. Iraqi TV Delivers Twists on Reality and Reality Shows (USA Today) 10/13
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1) Insurgent Alliance Is Fraying In Fallujah: Locals, Fearing Invasion, Turn Against Foreign Arabs
By Karl Vick
Washington Post
October 13, 2004; Page A01

BAGHDAD, Oct. 12 -- Local insurgents in the city of Fallujah are turning against the foreign fighters who have been their allies in the rebellion that has held the U.S. military at bay in parts of Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartland, according to Fallujah residents, insurgent leaders and Iraqi and U.S. officials.

Relations are deteriorating as local fighters negotiate to avoid a U.S.-led military offensive against Fallujah, while foreign fighters press to attack Americans and their Iraqi supporters. The disputes have spilled over into harsh words and sporadic violence, with Fallujans killing at least five foreign Arabs in recent weeks, according to witnesses.

"If the Arabs will not leave willingly, we will make them leave by force," said Jamal Adnan, a taxi driver who left his house in Fallujah's Shurta neighborhood a month ago after the house next door was bombed by U.S. aircraft targeting foreign insurgents.

Located 35 miles west of Baghdad in Iraq's Sunni Triangle, Fallujah has been outside the control of Iraqi authorities and U.S. military forces since April, when a siege by U.S. Marines was lifted and Iraqi security forces were given responsibility for the city's security. Local and foreign insurgents gradually gained control, and Iraqi and U.S. officials say Fallujah has become a principal source of instability in the country.

U.S. and Iraqi authorities together have insisted that if Fallujah is to avoid an all-out assault aimed at regaining control of the city, foreign fighters must be ejected. Several local leaders of the insurgency say they, too, want to expel the foreigners, whom they scorn as terrorists. They heap particular contempt on Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian whose Monotheism and Jihad group has asserted responsibility for many of the deadliest attacks across Iraq, including videotaped beheadings.

"He is mentally deranged, has distorted the image of the resistance and defamed it. I believe his end is near," Abu Abdalla Dulaimy, military commander of the First Army of Mohammad, said.

One of the foreign guerrillas killed by local fighters was Abu Abdallah Suri, a Syrian and a prominent member of Zarqawi's group. Suri's body was discovered Sunday. He was shot in the head and chest while being chased by a carload of tribesmen, according to a security guard who said he witnessed the killing.

Residents say foreign fighters recently have taken to gathering in Fallujah's grimy commercial district after being denied shelter in residential neighborhoods because their presence so often attracts U.S. warplanes.
The airstrikes and the turmoil in the streets have spurred perhaps half of the city's 300,000 residents to flee, residents and officials said.

U.S. aircraft hit Fallujah twice on Tuesday. An airstrike just after midnight destroyed the city's best-known restaurant, a kebab house that a military statement said was used as an arms depot, citing "numerous secondary explosions." A second strike at 4 a.m. destroyed "a known terrorist safe house" in the northeast of the city, the statement said.

Adnan, the taxi driver who moved his panicked wife and four children to another town, said attitudes toward the foreign fighters have changed dramatically since they poured into Fallujah after the Marines' siege ended in April. "We were deceived by them," he said. "We welcomed them first because we thought they came to support us, but now everything is clear."

Among the tensions dividing the locals and the foreigners is religion. People in Fallujah, known as the city of mosques, have chafed at the stern brand of Islam that the newcomers brought with them. The non-Iraqi Arabs berated women who did not cover themselves head-to-toe in black -- very rare in Iraq -- and violently opposed local customs rooted in the town's more mystical religious tradition. One Fallujah man killed a Kuwaiti who said he could not pray at the grave of an ancestor.

Residents said the overwhelming majority of Fallujah's people also have been repulsed by the atrocities that Zarqawi and other extremists have made commonplace in Iraq. The foreign militants are thought to produce the car bombs that now explode around Iraq several times a day, and Zarqawi's organization has asserted responsibility for the slayings of several Westerners, some of which were shown in videos posted on the Internet.

There was another digital display of a beheading on Tuesday. The victim apparently was a Shiite Muslim Arab, and the group that said it posted the video identified itself as the Ansar al-Sunna Army.

Abu Barra, commander of a group of native insurgents called the Allahu Akbar Battalions, said: "Please do not mix the cards. There is an Iraqi resistance, a genuine resistance, and there are other groups trying to settle accounts. There is also terror targeting Iraqis.

President Bush, he said, "knows that and so does the government, but they purposely group all three under the tag of 'terrorism.' "

Barra and other insurgent leaders said the "genuine resistance" is a disciplined force that restricts its attacks to military targets, chiefly U.S. forces. It is motivated, they say, by Iraqi nationalism and humiliation over what it regards as a foreign occupation.

"The others," Barra said, "are Arab Salafis who claim that any Iraqi or Muslim not willing to carry arms is an infidel. They are the crux of our ailment. Most of them are Saudis, Syrians" and North Africans. Salafism is a strain of Islam that seeks to restore the faith to the way it was in the days of the prophet Muhammad, 14 centuries ago.

"It is the Zarqawis and his Salafi group who are going to lead Fallujah, Samarra, Baqubah, Mosul and even some parts of Baghdad to disaster and death," Barra said.

Such worries are encouraged by U.S. and Iraqi officials, who together have mounted offensives in recent weeks to reclaim areas held by insurgents. U.S. forces have led battles to take Najaf, Tall Afar, Samarra and, last week, a string of towns southwest of Baghdad. The operations are intended to establish government control over the entire country before nationwide elections promised for January.

But they also serve, officials say, as a psychological lever on Fallujah, long considered the toughest insurgent outpost.

"The pressure is certainly going up, both as a result of our airstrikes and as a result of their seeing Najaf, Tall Afar, Samarra giving a sense this whole thing is serious," a senior U.S. official in Baghdad said. "There's a lot of fear in Fallujah."

Many residents say the same. A delegation of six prominent Fallujans began negotiating with Iraq's interim government late last month. But senior government officials said it was only after the Oct. 1 assault on Samarra that the Fallujah delegation approached the task with new zeal.

The proposal the delegation took back to Fallujah calls for surrendering control of the city to the Iraqi National Guard. U.S. forces would remain outside the city unless the lightly armed government forces were attacked.

But first, all foreign fighters must leave the city, and the foreigners are adamantly and publicly opposing the plan. Their representative voted against it in a meeting last week of the city's ruling mujaheddin shura, or council of holy warriors, which supported the peace proposal, 10 to 2. The local insurgent who cast the other negative vote was later persuaded to change his mind, residents say.

Foreign fighters already are blamed for violating a cease-fire in April and prompting a Marine offensive that killed hundreds. Dulaimy said a Syrian was slain by local insurgents "after he fired on American forces during the last truce." In remarks broadcast from one of the city's main mosques on Thursday, an insurgent negotiator, Khalid Hamoud Jumaili, said a city of several hundred thousand should not be sacrificed for a handful of foreign fighters.

Meanwhile, U.S. forces kept up military pressure Tuesday in several nearby cities. Marines raided eight mosques allegedly used as armed bases in Ramadi, a provincial capital about 25 miles west of Fallujah, and called in airstrikes in the town of Hit, about 60 miles to the northwest.

"I think there is unquestionably a fissure and there are probably several different splits based on different groups," said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because his remarks were not cleared by Washington. But "whether any of the townspeople have enough force to make this fissure into something that changes the complexion of things" remains to be seen, the official said.

The assault on Samarra was mounted after a more unified local establishment headed by tribal leaders failed in a similar bid to eject a far smaller band of insurgents and foreign fighters than are holding Fallujah, the official noted.

Maki Nazzal, a Fallujah native who travels into the city frequently as an aid worker, said substantial support remains for the foreigners, especially given the number of civilian casualties caused by U.S. airstrikes.

"Not all the people in Fallujah want these people to leave," Nazzal said. "They always have the explanation of Americans bringing people from Spain, Salvador, Poland and over the world to help them and why can't our brothers help us?"

Some foreign fighters already have left, at least for now. The fighting Tuesday in Hit erupted as Marines pursued insurgents who had recently arrived in the city from Fallujah, residents said.

"There are Arab fighters and Iraqis too," said Omar Jabbawi, 23, an engineering student at Anbar University. "They are supplied with modern weapons which even the modern army didn't have. They killed some of the people the moment they came, saying that they were spies for the Americans."

The blend of insurgents held the town, some patrolling a street of shuttered stores, others praying on the sidewalk.

"Most of the people of the city knew that after Fallujah, the fighters will come to Hit because it is an open city and has many wide woods in which maneuvering is easy," said Abeer Fadhill, 32, a traffic policeman.

A woman in Hit said one fighter had said they had come to liberate Hit as they had Fallujah.

"We don't want to be another Fallujah," said the woman, 45, who gave her name as Umm Hussein.
"Ramadan is coming, and we don't have any will to lose a father, a son, a relative or even a friend. Let them leave in peace and fight in a desert away from houses and people."

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2) Six U.S. Soldiers Killed: Allawi Warns Fallujah Insurgents to Hand Over Foreign Fighters
By Karl Vick and William Branigin
Washington Post
October 13, 2004

BAGHDAD, Oct. 13 -- Six U.S. soldiers were killed late Tuesday and early Wednesday by separate roadside bombs detonated near their convoys, the military announced, and Iraq's interim prime minister warned the rebel-held city of Fallujah to hand over foreign terrorists or face a major attack.

Ayad Allawi demanded in a meeting of Iraq's interim National Council that residents of Fallujah, 35 miles west of Baghdad, turn over to the government the Jordanian militant Abu Musab Zarqawi and his followers.

"If Zarqawi and his group are not handed over to us, we are ready for major operations in Fallujah," Allawi told the council, according to Reuters news agency. "I hope they [Fallujah residents] will respond. If they don't, we will have to use force."

He also told the council, "We will not be lenient," the Associated Press reported. Allawi called Fallujah "an honest city," but said it has been "manipulated by a deviant bunch that wants to harm Iraq."

The warning coincided with a claim by a group affiliated with Zarqawi to have beheaded two Iraqi intelligence officers purportedly captured in Baghdad on Sept. 28. A video posted on an Islamic Web site Wednesday showed masked gunmen cutting off the heads of two blindfolded captives, Fadhel Ibrahim and Firas Imeil, who had identified themselves as members of the new Iraqi national intelligence service. The video was released in the name of the Brigades of Abu Bakr Sidiq, a group affiliated with Zarqawi's Monotheism and Jihad organization, the AP reported from Cairo.

Zarqawi's group has claimed responsibility for numerous suicide bombings and the killing of several foreign civilians, including two American contractors and a British engineer who were abducted from their house in Baghdad last month. The three subsequently were beheaded one by one in grisly scenes that were recorded with a video camera. In each case -- as in the latest beheadings of the two Iraqis -- a masked militant then held up the severed head for the camera.

In the latest violence against U.S. forces, a bomb killed a soldier in eastern Baghdad before dawn, a U.S. military statement said. Late Tuesday night, three soldiers were killed when a roadside bomb exploded near their convoy in the Sadr City slum.

In the northern city of Mosul, two U.S. soldiers were killed and five other reported wounded when a suicide bomber blew up his vehicle next to a military convoy. Two of the wounded soldiers returned to duty shortly after the attack, AP reported.

Details on the attacks against U.S. troops were scarce. But the Sadr City attack, in particular, underscored the difficulties facing what U.S. officials describe as a peace initiative rather than a formal cease-fire with a homegrown force of uneven discipline.

Shiite Muslim militiamen in Sadr City have been slowly turning in weapons and explosives as part of a plan to bring peace to what has been the capital's most stubborn insurgent trouble spot.

The militia, known as the Mahdi Army, answers to junior Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, whom Iraqi officials have urged to renounce armed insurgency and embrace politics.

Under terms of the peace deal, members of Sadr's militia are obliged not only to turn in arms, but also to dig up the buried mines, artillery shells and other "improvised explosive devices" or IEDs, planted along the roadsides and typically detonated by remote control as U.S. patrols pass.

On Monday, the first day of five days set aside for weapons turnover, militiamen were kneeling on the fetid streets of the slum, digging up and removing buried munitions and booby traps.

"It just illustrates that we know there are a lot of IEDs and bomb-making stuff out there," said Lt. Col. James E. Hutton. "They have got to cut this stuff out and bring it in."

Hutton said the pace of the weapons surrender picked up on its second day, after a slow start Monday. "But there are way too many weapons on the street," Hutton emphasized. "Unless that stuff is turned in in huge numbers -- I mean massive numbers -- we're going to be skeptical about the intent of them to live up to this.

"The proof of intent . . . is what this is about more than anything," he said. "We're going to have to see it."
Branigin reported from Washington.

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3) Truce talks on Iraqi rebel city of Fallujah break down
AFP
October 14, 2004

FALLUJAH, Iraq (AFP) - A delegation from the rebel city of Fallujah cut off negotiations with the government to protest threats by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi to invade the city if residents do not surrender foreign fighters.

"We were taken aback by Allawi's comments ... since there was no mention of Zarqawi during the talks," one of the delegates said Thursday, who gave his name as Abu Ahmed.

He was referring to Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian suspected of being the point man in Iraq for the Al-Qaeda terror network.

Allawi demanded Wednesday that the Sunni Muslim rebel bastion of Fallujah turn over Zarqawi, the most wanted man in Iraq, or face a military invasion.

Before Allawi made his demand, delegate Sheikh Khaled Hamud had been saying that, after weeks of talks, they were close to mediating a solution between some elements of the insurgency in the city and the government that would allow the return of Iraqi forces.

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4) Base hit by daily attacks told no GIs available for patrols
By Tom Bowman
Baltimore Sun
October 13, 2004

This sprawling supply base on a dusty stretch about 50 miles northwest of Baghdad is officially known as a "logistical support area." Some of the thousands of soldiers and contractors who endure daily mortar and rocket attacks have another name for it: Mortaritaville.

At least six soldiers and contractors have been killed and nearly 100 wounded here since April. There have been about two attacks daily since July. Three weeks ago, a young airman lost his legs and his right hand when a mortar shell slammed into the base.

Officers here say Anaconda, the largest support base in the country with 22,500 U.S. troops and 2,500 contractors spread over 15 square miles, is also the most frequently attacked. But there is no indication the soldiers will get help.

Brig. Gen. Oscar Hilman, commander of the 81st Brigade Combat Team, an Army National Guard unit from Washington state whose mission is to operate the base, has asked for 500 to 700 more soldiers to provide more patrols. But he said his requests were denied.

"We asked twice," Hilman said. He said he was told "there are no additional forces" and that U.S. soldiers are needed elsewhere.

The 81st's top enlisted man, Sgt. Maj. Robert Barr, said soldiers are frustrated and that he often hears the question: "Why aren't we stopping it or killing their guys who are doing it?"

While the 81st Brigade provides security inside the concertina wire fence that surrounds the base, the task of protection outside the wire falls to the soldiers of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, part of the 1st Infantry Division, which is based in Tikrit. The division has been part of the effort to take back Samarra, and those units, too, are stretched thin.

Hilman said he requested more forces through the 13th Corps Support Command, which is responsible for Anaconda as well as all other multinational supply and transportation facilities throughout Iraq.

Maj. Richard Spiegel, a 13th Corps spokesman, confirmed that Hilman put in a request for more troops and that the request was endorsed by the command's top officer, Brig. Gen. James Chambers.

But Chambers "is not the approving authority--the request went to Multi-National Corps Iraq headquarters," which assesses troop requirements and makes the final decision, Spiegel said. The request was turned down, he said. He declined to provide details of the decision.

The Air Force will not base its cargo planes here because it's considered unsafe, said one officer at Anaconda, who requested anonymity. Pilots drop off their cargo with the engines running and quickly take off again.

Officers said attacks are not interfering with the supply flow--the thousands of tons per month of spare parts, fuel, clothing and food. "I call [Anaconda] the life support of the theater" of operations, Hilman said.

Over the past month, tall concrete slabs have been put up at Anaconda to protect the sleeping areas from shrapnel. Mortars and rockets have landed near the 81st Brigade's operations center, the mess hall and a mosque.

Gallows humor has surfaced among some of the soldiers. The base store is selling T-shirts that picture a soldier looking skyward and the words, "Mom I'll call when the mortars stop."

On Thursday morning, two mortars landed near the south gate, but there were no injuries. Just before dinner, a plume of smoke rose outside the fence from another explosion.

Seated at a long table in the mess hall, Sgt. Charles Rhoade of Havre de Grace, Md., said, "You can never tell where they're coming from."

One officer, who requested anonymity, said some Air Force mechanics and pilots volunteered to patrol outside the base's fence to stop the attacks. "They're fed up," he said. But it would take about 20 days to train them in basic infantry tactics and weaponry. "They've got other jobs," the officer said.

Hilman recently set up an operations center to try to stop the attacks. Soldiers monitor huge television screens that show live video from cameras in the guard towers and from airborne drones. They are designed to pinpoint the locations of the attackers and quickly dispatch helicopters and troops.

Still, the mortars and rockets strike at all hours.

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5) Allawi Presses Effort to Bring Back Baathists
New York Times
By EDWARD WONG and ERIK ECKHOLM
October 13, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 12 - Seeking to speed the return of senior officials of the former ruling Baath Party into the government, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi has tried to dismantle a powerful independent commission that was established after the American invasion to keep such people from power.

It is the most aggressive move yet by Dr. Allawi, a former Baathist who fell out of favor with Saddam Hussein, to bring former ranking party members into his fold. Dr. Allawi says the readmissions will dampen an increasingly lethal insurgency by co-opting disenfranchised Sunni Muslim Baathists. The expertise of high officials from the old Iraqi security forces is also urgently needed to help combat the guerrillas, he contends.

And with general elections scheduled for January, Dr. Allawi and American officials are scrambling for ways to bring reluctant Sunnis into the political process.

Dr. Allawi's push reflects, in part, his long power struggle with Ahmad Chalabi, the former exile who is chairman of the commission and favors a thorough purging of senior Baathists. But it is also part of a deeper battle for the soul of the Iraqi government and will determine who holds some of the highest offices.

Dr. Allawi's efforts to limit the purging process could widen the divide between the country's majority Shiite Muslim population and the Sunni minority, which ruled the region for centuries.

Because most of the top Baathists were Sunnis, Dr. Allawi's moves have already drawn sharp opposition from Shiite political leaders, though he is himself a Shiite. Jawad al-Maliki, deputy head of the Dawa Islamic Party, one of the most powerful Shiite parties, said Dr. Allawi's orders were "outside the law" and that the commission had every right to "remove all trace of the Baathists."

Recent arrests of Iraqi security officials by the American military point to another danger: former Baathists who are readmitted to the government without enough precautions can aid the insurgency from within.

Last month, the American military arrested Brig. Gen. Talib Abid Ghayib al-Lahibi, who had been assigned to command three Iraqi National Guard battalions in restive Diyala Province. The military said the general, an infantry commander under Mr. Hussein, had "associations with known insurgents."

In August, marines arrested the police chief of Anbar Province, which includes the jihadist stronghold of Falluja, and began investigating him for suspected ties to the insurgency. The police chief, Jaadan Muhammad Alwan, was a high-ranking Baathist during the Hussein years.

"It's a challenge when you have so many individuals," a senior American commander said. "You've got some individuals who are capable, but some of the individuals have a bad background."

There are also concerns that former Baathists may be unwilling to stand too strongly against insurgents. In May, the marines handed control of Falluja over to an ad-hoc militia, the Falluja Brigade, commanded by Hussein-era military officers and senior Baathists, but it quickly withered under pressure from the insurgency. It disbanded over the summer, with many members actually joining the guerrillas.

Dr. Allawi's effort began in earnest early last month, when the head of his cabinet issued an order to disband the commission in charge of purges and set up a more lenient judicial system in its place. A council of judges ruled that the commission was enshrined in the interim constitution. But Dr. Allawi's cabinet has since asked government ministries not to deal directly with the commission, according to documents obtained by The New York Times.

Last month, Dr. Allawi's cabinet demanded that the commission leave its office building inside the fortified government headquarters along the Tigris River, said a general director of the commission, Ali Faisal al-Lami.

The government also issued new badges for entrance into the Green Zone but gave only 50 to the commission, enough for just a fifth of the commission's work force, he said. The rest of the employees are now working at home or in offices outside the fortified compound.

The new system proposed by Dr. Allawi would readmit former senior Baathists unless criminal charges are brought against them and they are found guilty in a court, according to a memo sent to all ministries last month by his cabinet head, Zuhair Hamody.

The readmission of noncriminal senior Baathists has the approval of the American government. The former top American administrator here, L. Paul Bremer III, purged all high-ranking Baathists from public positions in May 2003, but reversed that decision last spring when it became clear that experienced people were needed to help stand up the nascent government.

The commission members contend that Dr. Allawi's system could lay the foundation for an effective reconstitution of the Baath Party, as well as allow former officials suspected of human rights abuses or other crimes back into the government.

Mr. Lami said that Dr. Allawi's government had appointed former senior Baathists to top positions in the security forces over the commission's objections. Mr. Lami also said that the commission had asked ministries to dismiss certain government workers found to have questionable backgrounds but that the ministries had stalled. The Interior Ministry, which oversees the police and border patrol, has fired only 500 of 900 employees the commission deemed suspect, he said.

"They are repeating the mistakes of the former regime," he said of the Allawi government. "They will create a gap between themselves and the people."

But Sunni politicians in particular have staunchly defended the rights of many Baathists to return to their jobs, saying that many Iraqis joined the party simply for career advancement. Tens of thousands of teachers and medical workers, for example, who felt pressure to join but were not ardent supporters of Saddam Hussein are widely seen as innocent victims of the purges. Mr. Bremer's policy reversal last spring was intended to allow many of them to return to their jobs.

"Distinguishing between the criminals and those who were forced to join the Baath Party is very important," Dr. Allawi said before the 100-member National Assembly last Tuesday, after one member pointedly asked why former senior Baathists were returning to power. "This goes to the issue of national unity in Iraq."

One of the main functions of Mr. Chalabi's council, the Supreme Commission for De-Baathification, has been to review appeals from dismissed or suspected officials and clear their names if their records do not show participation in heinous crimes or upper party ranking. Some 8,000 former Baathists have gotten their jobs back through this process, said Mr. Lami, who is also a deputy in the Hezbollah Party, a Shiite political group.

At the same time, the commission seeks to confirm the dismissals of individuals from the higher party ranks or who, as commission members put it, "have blood on their hands."

But Mr. Lami said officials from the prime minister's office or from the Iraqi National Accord, a political party led by Dr. Allawi that is largely made up of former Baathists, have increasingly subverted the commission's dismissal decisions, especially in key security positions.

Over the summer, the Interior Ministry appointed Rasheed Flayeh to the post of director-general of the secret police force, over the commission's objections that, as head of security in the southern city of Nasiriya in 1991, he had taken part in the brutal suppression of a Shiite uprising.

But an Interior Ministry spokesman, Sabah Kadhum, said he had been told that Mr. Flayeh did not play any such role in Nasiriya.

The foundation for the prime minister's recent moves to dismantle Mr. Chalabi's commission was laid in a final order issued in June by Mr. Bremer. That order said the commission would be disbanded when the interim Iraqi government established a new organization to oversee the purging of Baathists.

Though Dr. Allawi has been pushing to install a court system in place of the commission, other politicians, especially Shiite leaders, are rallying to keep it. Mr. Maliki, the Dawa Party official and deputy head of the interim National Assembly, said the assembly intended to grill Dr. Allawi's office about the attempts to disband the commission. "We're going to follow up on this because it's illegal," he said.

Edward Wong reported from Baghdad for this article and Erik Eckholm from New York.

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6) After winning concessions, Al-Sadr tries his hand at diplomacy
PINR
By: Erich Marquardt
13 October 2004

PINR In the early days of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, one of the major mistakes made by the Bush administration was that it underestimated the power of Shi'a leader Moqtada al-Sadr. It was little more than a year ago that al-Sadr was considered a young and inexperienced leader, only a slight threat to Washington's Iraq strategy. But upon the power vacuum created after the fall of Saddam Hussein, al-Sadr managed to capitalize on the opportunity and used his private militia to provide much-needed social services to the Iraqi people, in addition to speaking out harshly against the U.S.-led occupation.

Al-Sadr's Struggle with U.S.-led Forces

Al-Sadr's defiance increased his stature among the Iraqi population, and his call to arms against U.S.-led troops demonstrated his resolve, helping to win followers in a society that is well versed with sacrifice and hardship.

Al-Sadr's quick rise to power made it difficult for U.S. forces to adequately contain him. Even after his repeated uprisings, which surprised Bush administration officials due to the higher than expected rate of U.S. casualties involved in the rebellions, the United States refused to capture or kill al-Sadr, fearful of the negative repercussions that would follow within the Shi'a community. As retired Army general Daniel Christman told USA Today, "The great vulnerability we have is to turn the mass of the Shi'a population against the coalition. We can win every tactical battle but lose the war if we don't put the individual engagements inside a larger political context."

Nevertheless, Washington has not bowed to al-Sadr's pressure and has continued to pound his Mehdi Army militia, inflicting on it a high casualty rate. Washington's persistence in this matter successfully prevented al-Sadr's movement from spreading to Iraqi Shi'a as a whole. Furthermore, Washington's continued pressure caused al-Sadr to realize, at least momentarily, that there is only so much he can accomplish from guerrilla attacks against U.S. troops.

This realization is evident by al-Sadr's willingness to direct his forces to lay down their weapons and let Iraqi and U.S.-led security forces take back control of rebellious areas. Indeed, beginning October 11, Mehdi Army forces handed over medium and heavy arms -- such as grenade-launchers, mortars, machine guns and artillery shells -- to Iraqi and U.S.-led forces; in exchange for their weapons, they were given money for each item that they relinquished. While it may be impossible to judge the extent of the weapons handover, as long as the Mehdi Army is participating in this endeavor, it is a sign of stability.

However, al-Sadr's recent decision to resort to diplomacy should not be taken as a sign of weakness. On the contrary, if Washington decision makers wish to stabilize Iraq, they must not underestimate al-Sadr again. His pronouncement to resort to diplomacy actually demonstrates the strength he has acquired by resisting the United States; that al-Sadr is even able to dictate terms means that he is in a much more superior position than he was in the early days of the invasion.

Al-Sadr's Terms

In exchange for a temporary peace with al-Sadr's movement, Washington awarded him generous concessions. The most important concession is that al-Sadr is being allowed to enter the Iraqi political process, and is said to even be considering forming a political party. The fact that he is being allowed to do this, even though he is responsible for the deaths of perhaps hundreds of U.S. troops, is remarkable for it demonstrates Washington's acquiescence to his power base.

Another important concession was when U.S. forces released a senior aide to al-Sadr, Moayed Khazraji, an outspoken Baghdad cleric who was one of the first victims of Washington's crackdown on al-Sadr's movement; the release of aides to al-Sadr has been a central demand of the al-Sadr faction, one that Washington would not initially comply with. The Iraqi government and U.S. forces also agreed to release al-Sadr fighters and followers, provided that they have not been implicated in any major criminal acts.

Finally, the Iraqi government announced that it would spend around $ 500million on rebuilding al-Sadr's home city of Sadr City, one of Baghdad's most impoverished slums, made even more so by the consistent fighting there between U.S. and Mehdi Army forces. "After [the handing in of medium and heavy weapons], reconstruction operations will start immediately in Sadr City," promised Iraqi National Security Advisor Qassim Dawud. "And I would like to point out that there is a very large budget allocated for the reconstruction of Sadr City. The Iraqi government has allocated about $ 350million for this operation, and also funds are being provided by other countries, which may reach $150 million. So, in general, we have about half a billion dollars allocated for the reconstruction of Sadr City."

In return for these concessions, what has been basically asked of al-Sadr is that he refrain from using violence to resist the U.S.-led occupation, a concession that, if followed, would be a major success for Washington decision makers. Nevertheless, there has been silence on the talk of al-Sadr disbanding his militia, and Washington has come a long way since its statements in early August when one U.S. marine colonel announced that U.S. forces would "finish this fight that the Moqtada militia started."

Additionally, all al-Sadr has agreed to is a verbal commitment tied to some sort of voluntary handing over of medium and heavy weapons. The question lingers: what guarantees does the United States have that, should al-Sadr become disillusioned with the political process, he won't pick up arms again and bring the card of violent resistance back to the table?

Conclusion

Washington's temporary success at pacifying al-Sadr is a positive development in its struggle to stabilize Iraq. With the threat of al-Sadr removed from the picture, Washington can reposition its forces to concentrate on the Sunni Arab-based insurgency and the alleged presence of foreign Islamist fighters linked to al-Qaeda. A stable Shi'a movement before and during the January elections would also add legitimacy to the election results.

Yet, despite this success, U.S. policymakers must not overlook the fact that al-Sadr's peace agreement has been largely on his terms. Moreover, Washington's granting of concessions to al-Sadr has made him more distinguished in the eyes of Iraq's population, and, therefore, more powerful.

Despite his negotiations with Iraqi and U.S. security forces, al-Sadr has not moderated his outspoken stance against the U.S.-led occupation. Even after the agreement with Iraqi and U.S. forces, Sheikh Abd al-Hadi Daraji, a top aide to al-Sadr, said that the al-Sadr movement still considers the occupation to be the main issue plaguing Iraq. "Resistance to occupation is legitimate," he advised. "Even the Americans have said resisting the occupation is legitimate. We reject their military presence here." Should al-Sadr not realize his political ambitions, Washington must be prepared to respond to a recalcitrant leader who would hold more power than ever before.

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7) Iraqi president: Vote could be postponed
Associated Press
October 14, 2004

BAGHDAD (AP)  Iraq's president said in an interview published Thursday that the Jan. 31 date for Iraqi elections is "not sacred" and the vote could be postponed if if a lack of security threatens the fairness of balloting.

President Ghazi al-Yawer's comments, made in an interview with the Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, represent a departure from a major policy goal of both the U.S. and Iraqi governments. President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi have insisted the election will proceed as planned despite the growing security crisis.

"All of us are intensively working to bring security and the rule of law to every part of Iraq so there can be elections," al-Yawer, a Sunni Muslim, was quoted as saying. "Yes, it's scheduled for Jan. 31, but that date is not sacred."

He added: "If we see that elections held by that date without security or conditions favoring a fair and comprehensive vote and that that in turn will have a negative impact on our country, then we will not hesitate to change its date."

Al-Yawer's press office confirmed the remarks for The Associated Press. Most real power in the Iraqi government rests with Allawi, and al-Yawer's role is mostly ceremonial. But al-Yawer's views carry considerable weight given his tribal pedigree  his Shamar tribe is one of Iraq's largest. He is also the highest ranking member of Iraq's Sunni Arab minority.

A general election by Jan. 31 was called for in a U.N. Security Council resolution adopted in June and is a major plank in the U.S. strategy for building democracy in Iraq. Success in establishing a stable government could enable the Americans to reduce their 140,000-strong troop presence next year.

Iraqi voters will choose a 275-seat parliament to draft a permanent constitution for Iraq. Another election will be held under that constitution by Dec. 31, 2005.

But some U.S. officials have suggested that a vote may not be possible in areas hardest hit by the 17-month-old insurgency, particularly the Sunni Arab regions  a prospect that alarms many members of that community.

"An election that lacks credibility will mean that the draft constitution will not have credibility, either," said al-Yawer.

"We will not abandon the rule of law or the need for the participation of all Iraqi cities in the elections," al-Yawer said.

The Iraqi president denied any dispute with Allawi, saying he supported the prime minister. "Sometimes, we have differences in our views, but our joint perspective is as good as it can be," he said.

Al-Yawer also suggested in the interview that a decision to postpone the election should be taken with the participation of the United Nations, which has about 35 experts in Iraq providing technical assistance to the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq.

Three board members of the Iraqi electoral commission told a news conference Wednesday they were confident that elections would be held in January. They said registering political parties and individuals intending to run will begin Nov. 1 and last for six weeks.

Verification of voter rolls will be carried out over the same period, using a database compiled for a food ration system introduced by Saddam Hussein's regime in the 1990s.

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8) Female Iraqi candidates a diverse group
Associated Press
By Scheherezade Faramarz
October 14, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Salama al-Khafaji, a deeply religious woman in an all-enveloping black robe, says that if elected, she'll bring "bright Islamic thoughts" to Iraq's legislature.

On the other hand, Wijdan al-Khuzaei, who wears a lavender pants suit and dyes her hair blond, wants to keep religion out of politics.

What they and many other potential female candidates have in common in running in the January election is a desire to ensure that Iraqi women vote their own way, not as their husbands demand.

"We want ... to have our own voice, our own choice and our own vote," says Salam Smeisem, 45, an economic adviser in the interim government who is also thinking of running.

They have been encouraged by a clause in the interim constitution guaranteeing at least a quarter of the 275 seats in Iraq's new National Assembly to women.

The big obstacle in this extremely conservative and deeply religious society is to get women, more than 50 percent of whom are illiterate, to make their own choice at the ballot box.

Nesreen Berwari, public affairs minister in the interim government, says: "Eighteen months after liberation, women have become active." But her own situation reveals some of the touchy issues that arise for women in politics in tradition-bound Iraq.

The fact that Berwari is the third wife of President Ghazi al-Yawer has raised eyebrows and made many women question whether she is the best spokeswoman for gender equality. Although Islam allows men to have several wives, the practice is frowned upon by many secular women.

Asked about it by The Associated Press in an interview this week, Berwari snapped: "I'm not the third wife. I don't want to talk about this," and abruptly ended the interview.

Some officials have said the union between Berwari, a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, and al-Yawer, an Arab leader of the powerful al-Shammar tribe, was a political marriage. But others simply say they love each other, and al-Khafaji, the Islamic candidate for the legislature, praises her as a competent politician who works tirelessly for women's causes.

"Islam allows men to tie the knot for political reasons," she said.

Al-Khafaji, who survived an assassination attempt in May that killed her 17-year-old son, was one of only three women on the 25-member U.S.-appointed Governing Council until the transitional Iraqi government took over in June. She now has a seat on a national council that oversees the work of government.

She plans to run on an independent Islamic platform, though that doesn't mean she wants Sharia, or Islamic law, to rule. Instead, she wants to it to coexist with secular law.

Secular candidates like al-Khuzaei concede they will have a harder time overcoming what she describes as the strict social and religious curbs on women.

"The seculars need a powerful hand to help them win. They need economic support and support from the media," said al-Khuzaei, a 40-year-old mother of two who heads the Democratic Iraqi Women's Society and Iraqi Society of Businesswomen.

"But all this will not deter us," she said. "We are determined to reach our goal - to empower women to live their own lives and not be subservient to their husbands."

She wants to help women become self-reliant through small projects and loans. Al-Khafaji, on the other hand, wants to improve the health and education of the poor, from whom she draws most of her support.

Al-Khuzaei says her journalist husband is fully behind her. Al-Khafaji says she has a harder time persuading her husband, an architect, to support her.

"He likes to see me as a woman doing everything in the house, like other Iraqi women," she said.

She says she has asked higher religious authorities to rule on whether Islam obliges women to cook. They assure her it doesn't.

But willl her husband accept the ruling? "I am a political woman," she says, flashing a mischievous smile. "I use diplomacy in my house, too."

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9) Indelible Ink to Be Used in Iraq Election
By HAMZA HENDAWI
Associated Press
October 13, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Voters in Iraq's January elections will have their thumbs marked with indelible ink to prevent them casting ballots more than once, the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq announced Wednesday.

The use of indelible ink sparked controversy in Afghanistan's presidential elections last weekend and an independent panel of experts is looking into opposition complaints that the ink used in some polling stations could be rubbed off.

Farid Ayar, who sits on the Iraqi commission's board, said the ink to be used in Iraq's elections could not be removed for at least 48 hours. Asked whether chemicals could be used to remove it, he said: "Yes, but it will burn."

The electoral commission also said the registration of parties and independent candidates wishing to participate in the election will begin Nov. 1 and continue until mid-December. Verification of voter rolls, based on a Saddam Hussein-era database for food rationing, will take place over the same period.

The announcements came as the commission published rules governing the eligibility of candidates for the election to choose a 275-seat assembly whose main task will be to draft a permanent constitution for Iraq. If adopted, the document will be the basis for a second general election by Dec. 15, 2005.

Senior members of Saddam's Baath party will not be allowed to run, unless they have been exempted from laws barring them from public office, the commission said. Iraqis who were once "full members" of the party that ruled Iraq for 35 years will be required to sign a document renouncing their membership in order to participate.

Former members of Saddam's security agencies, which terrorized Iraqis throughout his 23-year rule, also were barred from running, as were Iraqis found to have taken part in the persecution of fellow citizens or to have illegally amassed wealth.

Foreign and local experts will be allowed to monitor the January vote, said Safwat Rasheed, another board member. However, they must belong to recognized non-governmental organizations.

Election staff in Afghanistan were supposed to mark voters' left thumbs with indelible ink, but some apparently used pens meant for marking the ballots or ink meant for stamping them instead. The wrong ink was easily washed off, opening the way to claims of multiple voting.

Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's government is determined to hold elections throughout Iraq by the U.N.-determined Jan. 31 deadline despite a mounting insurgency that has made parts of the country no-go zones for U.S. and Iraqi troops. Some U.S. commanders have expressed doubt that voting will be possible in all areas.

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10) UN considers Iraq poll staffing
Reuters
By Evelyn Leopold
October 13, 2004

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations is considering sending 25 election specialists to Iraq before the planned polls in January, U.N. sources say.

Fearful of security, the world body so far has had a ceiling of 35 for all staff in Iraq, of which only about six are currently dealing with the forthcoming elections, a far cry from original plan of at least double that amount for the polls.

Both the Bush administration and current Iraqi leaders believe that holding the first democratic polls in decades on time is crucial to quelling an insurgency that has killed thousands since last year's U.S.-led invasion.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has been under pressure from Iraqis and others to send international staff to Iraq before the election.

At the same time U.N. staff associations and security officials have warned him that the world body is no longer protected by its blue flag and is a target.

Annan pulled out all international staff after the second bombing of U.N. headquarters in Baghdad a year ago. The first attack on August 19, 2003, killed 22 people and injured 150.

"Further attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan remain possible and there is a distinct possibility of direct and deliberate targeting of United Nations personnel and facilities," Annan said in a report this week in which he asked for $97 million to pay for an additional 778 new security officers worldwide.

The United Nations is organising guards for its premises, mainly from Fiji. But so far there is no separate force that would be part of the multinational force to protect U.N. staff outside of Baghdad, which means U.S. troops would continue to guard U.N. staff.

Georgia has offered troops but details are far from settled. "It is a problem to find suitable, well prepared forces," said George Kaladze, a counsellor at Georgia's U.N. mission. "There was an offer. There is a readiness. There was no rejection as far as I am aware of."

Iraqi officials have made clear they feel let down by the United Nations.

"I ask the United Nations, where is the critical support for the political process that the U.N. is mandated to provide?" Iraq's deputy prime minister, Barham Salih, told a donor's conference in Tokyo this week.

"We need more U.N. support and we need it now. Please don't let the Iraqi people down," he added.

Last month, Iraq's U.N. envoy, Feisal Amin al-Istrabadi, told the U.N. Security Council, "It is a fact that the number of U.N. workers now in Iraq is inadequate. No one does a better job of assisting in organising credible, honest elections in emerging democracies than the United Nations."

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11) Iraq gets back its vote at United Nations
Reuters
12 Oct 2004

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Iraq has regained its voice at the United Nations after the General Assembly concluded it could not pay its dues because of conditions beyond its control, U.N. officials said on Tuesday.

Although Iraq regained its sovereignty in June, 15 months after the U.S.-led invasion, Baghdad was barred from voting in the 191-nation assembly until it paid at least $14.6 million in back dues.

The assembly has now waived the rules for Iraq and 10 other countries, officials said. The others were Central African Republic, Comoros, Georgia, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Niger, Moldova, Sao Tome and Principe, Somalia and Tajikistan.

Under U.N. rules, member states that fall behind in their dues can get back their votes if the assembly finds the situation is "beyond the control of the member."

The General Assembly is the main U.N. deliberative body, where each member normally has one vote.

Even before last year's war, Iraq had no vote because it could not afford its dues under the stringent U.N. economic sanctions imposed on it in 1990 over Baghdad's invasion of neighboring Kuwait.

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12) Car bomb 'weapon of choice' in Iraq
By DENIS D. GRAY
ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 13, 2004

BAQOUBA, Iraq -- Hunting for the deadliest weapons in the insurgents' arsenal along one of the most dangerous highways in Iraq, a U.S. Army patrol rolls past the charred remnants of a suicide bomber's car.
Moments later, the troops snake by a roadside pitted by an explosives-packed donkey cart that was blown up trying to hit an American convoy.

The soldiers inside the Humvees scan for telltale signs of their now longtime foe, the roadside bomb, and of a newer, often more lethal and far more difficult to detect weapon - the car bomb.

"You consider every car a potential bomb," says Staff Sgt. Darrell Theurer, a veteran of some 400 missions. "We've had everything from a piece of junk to a Mercedes to that donkey cart - with the donkey still attached."

Countrywide, and especially in Baghdad, the U.S. military says the VBIED - for "vehicle-borne improvised explosive device" - has become the insurgents' weapon of choice, mostly wielded against Iraqi security personnel and American troops but often soaking the blast area with the blood of bystanders.

The U.S. command says 59 car bombs were detonated or discovered before going off last month, the highest total since the war began. The bombs killed 29 Iraqi and multinational soldiers, along with dozens of civilians.

 That record may soon be broken, given the pace of attacks and detections reported by the military - 30 in the first nine days of October - in Baghdad, Mosul, Fallujah, Baqouba and elsewhere. In the latest attack, a car bomb killed two U.S. soldiers on Wednesday.

Little is known about the suicide bombers. Militant Iraqis, and foreigners drawn to the war, are fighting in small, uncoordinated bands without a supreme leader or even agreement on goals and tactics, which makes it hard for authorities to track.

And, unlike Palestinian militant groups, the insurgents only occasionally claim responsibility for bombings and almost never advertise the names of suicide bombers.

In one of those rare incidences, the Tawhid and Jihad terrorist group led by Jordanian extremist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi last May identified a suicide bomber who tried to kill an Iraqi deputy interior minister as Ahmed el-Shami Aby Abdel Rahman, a Syrian.

And last year, a Yemeni was arrested after his car bomb failed to explode at a Baghdad police station.

"Obviously they are looking for more lethality, to have more effect on our operations," Capt. Ronald J. Talarico, an engineer with the 1st Infantry Division's 3rd Brigade, said of the car bombers. "They've looked at the effects of IEDs (roadside bombs) and saw that their impact was low."

Car bombs offer the insurgents a range of advantages.

Planting a remote-controlled or booby-trapped bomb along a roadside can take up to two weeks, whereas a car, minibus or truck jammed with explosives can be quickly sent out in response to changing intelligence on targets, Talarico says.

Car bombs are relatively easy to rig - troops have seized CDs in Baghdad showing how it's done - and can slip through checkpoints with explosives attached to the undersides of vehicles or hidden in piles of vegetables or construction materials.

And they reduce casualties for insurgent bands compared to other forms of attacks, such as ambushes with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, which generally trigger an overwhelming U.S. response.

Highlighted in the media, mass casualties inflicted by bombs raise the international profile of the insurgency and undermine popular support for a government many Iraqis feel cannot provide security.

After car bombs killed 35 children at the opening of a Baghdad sewage plant Sept. 30, many parents didn't blame those who set off the blasts, but rather U.S. troops for failing to protect the neighborhood and sparking general lawlessness by the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Unleashed in the Islamic world over the past few decades after earlier use in Vietnam, Spain, Northern Ireland and elsewhere, vehicle bombs were inevitable in Iraq.

The first car bombs in Iraq, in August last year, struck the U.N. headquarters and Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad. By the end of 2003, at least 354 people had been killed by such attacks, says the Brookings Institution, which keeps track of car bombings that kill more than two people.

The attacks have escalated this year, with 1,077 killed through Oct. 9. The Washington-based research organization says that of 136 bombings so far this year, 87 were carried out by suicide attackers, who are not included in its casualty count.

The U.S. military says it is mounting a major effort to stop car bombers and to ferret out roadside explosives.

Around Baqouba, 35 miles north of Baghdad, the 141st Engineer Combat Battalion conducts at least two bomb-seeking patrols a day, seven days a week, in what is one of the most perilous jobs in Iraq. Theurer, a sergeant in the South Dakota National Guard unit, says two of the six men in his squad have been wounded by explosives.

"It's a lot easier to find IEDs than car bombs. Most of the car bombs find us," the Bismarck, N.D., native says as the patrol scouts a 6-mile stretch of highway that soldiers have dubbed "IED Alley."

A half dozen car bombs and some 35 roadside bombs have been detonated along that strip the last six months. A sign at both ends warns that any car left standing by the road for more than one hour may be destroyed by the U.S. military.

There is little technological wizardry available to detect car bombs, says Theurer, who has a small crucifix dangling above the dashboard of his Humvee.

Some checkpoints have X-ray machines to scan vehicles and a video-equipped robot can be called up to peer into a suspicious car. But out on the road, the best defense against VBIEDs is largely experience, eyesight and instinct, he said.

The patrols are on the lookout for certain aging car models, vehicles with low riding back ends, cars that try to get close to vehicles as they pass a military convoy or just a driver's darting, shifty look.

"Often it's one soldier's decision - a 19-year-old sitting behind a .50-caliber machine gun in a Humvee in 110-degree weather making a decision in five seconds," said Talarico, the engineer captain.

In one incident, he recalled, a remotely detonated car bomb went off at a traffic circle near Baqouba two months ago. As U.S. troops moved in to cordon the area, a young soldier spotted a nervous-looking driver trying to get a stalled, decrepit car moving. Within moments the soldier fired, turning the car and suicide bomber into a cauldron of flames and flying metal.

"The insurgents are always looking for new avenues of attack," Talarico says, then adds an ominous note:
"What we have to find out is what comes after the VBIEDs."

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13) Iraq's Suicide Bombers Remain Lethal Mystery
Reuters
By Michael Georgy
October 14, 2004

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A few Iraqis have spotted them speeding toward death before they disintegrate in a bloody fireball. But little is known of Iraq's suicide bombers except that the supply seems endless.

Suicide bombers are the biggest security nightmare in Iraq, terrorizing the streets up to three times a week with huge explosions that have killed more than 1,000 people.

But Iraq's interim government, struggling to stabilize the country before elections planned for January, still has few clues as to who they are.

"Either they are foreigners so you don't hear anything about them or they are Iraqis and their families just keep quiet out of fear of being arrested," said Ghassan al-Attiyah, executive director of the Iraq Foundation for Development and Democracy.

Whether they are foreign militants inspired by Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda or Iraqis swept up in anti-U.S. fury after the occupation, suicide bombers show no signs of letting up.

Their gory ritual is simple and impossible to prevent. They just pack any car or truck with explosives, drive toward a building or a crowd and blow up, scattering flesh in every direction.

Iraq's U.S.-backed interim government has blamed mostly foreign fighters for suicide missions and car bombs. But the authorities have never delivered on promises to televise the scores of foreign fighters they say have been captured.

IRAQI DISBELIEF

The only hard evidence has come from a video distributed by followers of Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, described by the United States as a key ally of al Qaeda.

Militants from countries including Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Jordan and Syria were filmed making
pronouncements in the video just before their suicide bombing of "infidels."

In the footage, they turn American convoys into flames, drive suicide speed boats toward an offshore oil platform and bomb the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad.

Only one Iraqi suicide bomber is mentioned in the video, credited with attacking a U.S. convoy in central Baghdad.

Zarqawi has claimed responsibility for the most spectacular bombings. But it is still not clear how many Iraqis take part.

Standing in pools of blood after suicide bombings, traumatized Iraqis often express disbelief that their countrymen would do such a thing.

A few have said they saw a heavily bearded militant driving a car toward his death. They always describe the bomber as an outsider, usually someone inspired by Saudi Arabia's hardline Wahhabi sect of Islam.

It is a murky picture in Iraq, unlike in Palestinian areas where some families of suicide bombers offer sweets and chocolates after their sons become "martyrs" attacking Israelis. Some mothers take pictures with their sons before suicide missions.

Suicide bombings were unknown under toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and there were a few isolated incidents in the war of March-April 2003. The suicide carnage began 14 months ago and now all Iraqis know the bombers can strike at any time.

If there is one place where suicide bombings could have appeal, it is Falluja, a city west of Baghdad that keeps producing some of Iraq's most determined rebels despite almost daily U.S. air strikes.

In a rare case resembling the Palestinian practice, a Falluja resident said his 20-year-old son had warned his family he would blow himself up outside at a U.S. base.

"He told us three months before the attack. He told his sister that when she hears about his martyrdom she should hand out chocolates to family and friends," said the man, who asked to remain anonymous.

"She handed out the chocolate two weeks ago."

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14) Iraq's spy chief accuses SCIRI's Badr militia of killing agents
AFP
By Ned Parker - BAGHDAD
October 14, 2004

Iraq's national intelligence chief Mohammed al-Shahwani has accused Iran's Baghdad embassy of masterminding an assassination campaign that has seen 18 intelligence agents killed since mid-September.

Shahwani said a series of raids on three Iranian "safe houses" in Baghdad on September 29 had uncovered a treasure trove of documents linking Iran to plots to kill members of the intelligence service and using the Badr former militia of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq's (SCIRI) as its tool.

SCIRI has vigourously denied the allegations and counter-charged that the intelligence service is full of veterans of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's military who are now renewing their vendetta against former Shiite resistance groups based out of Iran in the 1980s.

Since mid-September, 18 Iraqi intelligence agents have been killed in Iraq, 10 of them by the Badr organisation on orders from Iran and the rest by Al-Qaeda-linked foreign militant Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, Shahwani charged.

"Badr and Zarqawi have assassinated 18 of my men," Shahwani said from his heavily-guarded villa in central Baghdad.

Shahwani confirmed that two of his intelligence agents were beheaded by Zarqawi's Unity and Holy War group, as seen in a video released by the fighters on Wednesday.

The intelligence chief said he suspected Tehran was funding Zarqawi, but lacked conclusive proof.

Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's government has escalated its rhetoric against Iran in recent days, accusing the neighbouring Islamic republic of running a campaign of sabotage in Iraq.

But Shahwani's claims of huge caches of documents seized in the September raids are the most explicit charges to date against Iran and the first time an Iraqi party has been publicly named as Tehran's proxy.

Shahwani said that during the raids, "Documents were obtained ... showing the Iranian regime ... is seeking to embroil some of the SCIRI members in subversive acts to exacerbate Iraq's wounds and dominate it."

The intelligence director said the documents showed Iran had a 45-million-dollar budget for sowing chaos in Iraq and had recruited members of Badr and a subsidiary party, Hezbollah, to kill Iraqi intelligence agents.

"A document showed that Iran allocated a budget to Badr Corps, totalling 45 million dollars.

"Among the objectives of this budget is to back the formation of a security service grouping several directorates to carry out a set of subversive acts including ... physical liquidation."

Shahwani flipped through folders of charts and writing in Farsi that he said his agents were still sifting through.

He claimed his intelligence service had obtained the names and addresses of Badr members working directly for Iran.

Badr, the former paramilitary wing of SCIRI, has formerly renounced violence since the party returned to Iraq in the spring of 2003 after a 20-year exile in Iran.

SCIRI vehemently denies the charges.

"These are false accusations made against the organisation. Badr and SCIRI are the biggest threats to terrorists," said SCIRI spokesman Haitham al-Husseini.

Instead, Husseini charged that Shahwani, a general who fled Saddam's Iraq, was running amuck and taking out his bias against Shiite parties which fought Saddam during the 1980s when Iran was at war with Iraq.

"We criticise the way the new intelligence agency is ... hiring ex-officers of Saddam Hussein's military back to their posts. They have a history of targeting SCIRI and Badr members."

The two groups currently serve in the interim parliament and Allawi government.

Shahwani says that four Iraqis who were arrested following a botched assassination attempt on an Iraqi intelligence officer in September belonged to the Hezbollah of Iraq party and had confessed to being on the payroll of Iran's intelligence service

Hezbollah is part of the SCIRI alliance of Shiite parties.

The intelligence chief took out dossiers and glossy photos of 27 members of Iran's embassy in Iraq and accused them of masterminding Iranian covert operations.

"We will ask them to leave the country," Shahwani said.

Shahwani also claimed that Iranian spies had held meetings at Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi's Baghdad home since May when the one-time Pentagon favourite's house was raided by Iraqi police and US forces, saying that Chalabi was suspected by the Americans of leaking intelligence to Iran.

The Iraqi foreign ministry declined to comment on the intelligence chief's allegations against the embassy.

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15) Iraq faces growing health crisis
Nature
Mark Peplow
13 October 2004

The rising tide of disease in Iraq could kill more people than the military conflict has, according to the country's Ministry of Health.

In the first official government survey of Iraq's health since a number of countries, known as the coalition forces, invaded in March 2003, a detailed report reveals a crumbling health service unable to deal with an epidemic of typhoid, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases.

Disruption to water supplies during the conflict means that roughly 20% of urban households now have no access to safe drinking water. This has led to 5,460 cases of typhoid in the first quarter of 2004, the report estimates. In rural areas, more than half of households are without fresh water or adequate sanitation.

Measles and mumps are infecting thousands of children, partly because a third of them are chronically malnourished, it is reported. There were 8,253 cases of measles reported in the first half of 2004, with Basra particularly badly hit. In 2003, there were just 454 cases.

Likewise, the first four months of 2004 saw 11,821 cases of mumps, nearly 5,000 more cases than there were in the whole of the previous year.

Although Iraq has enormously valuable oil reserves, an estimated 27% of the population live now on less than $2 a day. Life expectancy has fallen to below 60 years of age for both men and women.

The report is presented today by Ala'din Alwan, minister of health for Iraq, at a meeting of donors to the Iraqi International Reconstruction Fund Facility in Tokyo, Japan.

Strained service

Alwan's report says that in the aftermath of the coalition invasion, a third of Iraq's health centres were looted of vital equipment, with one in eight hospitals suffering the same fate. The health service is being strained further by staff shortages, an unreliable electricity supply and the ongoing violence in Iraq, leaving it unable to stem the growth in infections.

"I'm not surprised by this at all. The breakdown of sanitation and public health services is a huge problem in Iraq," says Gilbert Burnham, a public health researcher and co-director of the Center for International Emergency, Disaster, and Refugee Studies at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland. Burnham leads a team that is gathering its own evidence about the health impacts of the conflict. "Our research supports these conclusions," he says. The team plan to publish their research in the next few months.

The violence that still rocks Iraq is also an important factor, adds Burnham. "People are afraid to go out and get health care," he says.

"Currently, the emphasis in Iraq is on training clinicians in emergency care. Basic public health concerns - clean water, food and so on - are low on the priority list," Burnham says. "Whenever there are conflict situations, public health goes down."

"One of the major issues of reconstruction is to put a decent public health system in place," he adds.

Deadly decline

As well as addressing current health concerns, the report also details the Iraqi health service's 15-year decline under Saddam Hussein's rule. "More Iraqis may have died as a result of ... neglect of the health sector over the past 15 years than from wars and violence," says Alwan in the report.

Alwan adds that Iraq's health is now comparable with countries like Sudan and Afghanistan; 15 years ago it rivalled that of rich nations such as Jordan and Kuwait. "Iraq used to be the place to go in the middle East for clinical care," says Burnham.

Despite the rise in infectious diseases, cardiovascular disease still ranks as the number-one killer in Iraq. This is largely owing to poor diet and a very high prevalence of smoking, but it is exacerbated by a lack of public health initiatives to change the population's lifestyle.

Continuing problems

Declining health is just one of the problems now facing Iraq. Last month, scientists started assessing the environmental situation in the aftermath of the war (see "Iraq to tackle toxic 'hot spots'".

And on 11 October, additional concerns about security in Iraq were raised by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The agency said equipment and materials that could be used to build nuclear weapons had been lost from the country. It presented satellite photographs showing that sites relevant to Iraq's nuclear programme had been systematically dismantled, even though the Iraqi government had reported no such activity.

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16) Iraq public health 'key concern'
By Magdi Abdelhadi
BBC Regional analyst
October 13, 2004

The state of Iraq's health is emerging as one of the most difficult problems facing Iraqi society, a new report by the country's health ministry claims.

The interim Iraqi health minister, Dr Alaa El-Din Alwan, says all of Iraq's hospitals are in urgent need of repair.

Many of Iraq's hospitals were looted last year after the fall of Baghdad, leaving many without vital equipment.

Dr Alwan blamed problems on 12 years of UN sanctions and a lack of investment in health by the ousted regime.

Uncertain diagnosis

However, the ministry's report, quoted in the British newspaper the Independent, paints a bleak picture of Iraq's state of health.

The report says more Iraqis have died as a result of inadequate health services over the past 15 years than from wars and violence.

About 12% of hospitals were damaged last year, Dr Alwan told the BBC.

"But 100% of hospitals now require pressing rehabilitation, and they need to be equipped because of the neglect of the health sector that has been there for more than two decades," the minister added.

Crucial to raising standards of health in Iraq is improving the availability of clean drinking water and reliable power supplies.

These two public utilities have suffered most because of the war and sabotage.

Continued violence and lack of security are also hampering much-needed repairs and upgrades of these basic services.

Spread of disease

Many households are still without access to clean water. The breakdown of sanitation services is also contributing to the spread of disease.

As a result, the health ministry says Iraq has seen a surge in typhoid, with more than 5,000 cases in the first quarter of this year.

Qassem Allawi, a spokesman for the ministry of health, said the number of cases of typhoid and tuberculosis had increased over the past two years.

The report also highlights the link between poverty and poor health.

It says one in three children in Iraq are chronically malnourished, putting their lives at serious risk from disease.

Iraq is a rich country caught in a vicious circle: it has the resources to provide good basic services, but for that to happen, massive reconstruction is needed to repair the damage done to its infrastructure.

But lack of security is hampering reconstruction. It is also delaying the disbursement of aid worth billions of dollars.

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17) Lack of books affecting children's education
IRIN
October 13, 2004

BAGHDAD - A shortage of books and poor conditions in
schools is slowing the educational progress of Iraqi children, according
to teachers in the capital, Baghdad.

Teachers say the shortage means they are distributing one book between 10
students, something that didn't happen during Saddam's Hussein time. "We
started our year without the minimum conditions needed to teach our
students," Zina Obaidi, a science teacher at Kadhimya secondary school in
Baghdad, told IRIN.

After the fall of Saddam, all school books distributed by the regime were
said to be full of propaganda and were taken out of circulation. Some 64
million new textbooks are to be reprinted this year. They will not contain
references to the Baath party or images of the former president.

Funds are coming in from a variety of donors for the new textbooks,
including the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

In addition, heads of primary and secondary schools in Baghdad say that
after the recent war, most decent books in libraries and schools were
stolen and that delivery of the new books has been very slow.

They added that many meetings had been held with the Ministry of Education
but up to now there had been no solution to the lack of books and poor
sanitation in some schools.

"If everyday they change someone in the government and don't stick to the
right way of working, education in Iraq will be lost and the children will
suffer," Fadia Ibrahem, director of Mansoor primary school in Baghdad,
told IRIN.

Iraq's Minister of Education, Sami Abdul Mehdy, told IRIN that they are
working hard to revamp the education system and that a special group from
the ministry would be visiting schools to establish their requirements. He
added that the education system had suffered major blows and that it would
take some time to recover.

According to US officials, some 3,100 schools have been rehabilitated
countrywide. There are some 11,066 primary schools in Iraq and about 4.3
million students attending them. Many buildings were destroyed during the
recent fighting and others have been neglected as rehabilitation continues.

Education officials attribute the delay with the books to security and a
shift in companies responsible for printing them, mainly outside the country.

Teachers also say that basic facilities and supplies, such as potable
water, are lacking in many schools and that in some places sewage is
overflowing. The Ministry of Public Works says that it is working to full
capacity to carry out repairs in schools.

"It is terrible to see children bringing water from their homes because
the school cannot offer clean water. The winter is coming and there are no
heaters," Mariam Kubaissi, a mother of a child at the Mansoor primary
school, told IRIN.

The United Nation Children's Fund (UNICEF) spent about US $15 million in
the education sector in 2003. This included a massive back-to-school
campaign that began right after the war, with the distribution of 1,000
school-in-a-box kits. UNICEF support also enabled 5.5 million children to
take their annual examinations in June 2003.

More than $1 million was spent on printing examination papers and
restoring exam centres that had been damaged or looted after the war.

In September 2003, UNICEF began delivery of education kits for every
primary school pupil, teacher and principal in the country.

This included more than 8,000 primary schools, covering approximately 3.6
million school children and 131,000 teachers and school principals at an
approximate cost of $8 million. By the end of 2003, over 95 per cent of
the school kits had been distributed.

But teachers say the situation has been particularly bad this year, with
few NGOs on the ground. Many aid agencies have left the country due to
insecurity and the ongoing kidnapping of foreigners. "If you have one book
for 10 students and 10 drops of water for one child, what can we expect
for the future of Iraqi children?" Obaidi asked.

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18) Shielding Women From a Renewal of Domestic Violence
New York Times
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
October 14, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A sampling of the smashed lives in this city's first shelter for battered women shows just how much work its founder, Yanar Mohamed, has before her.

There is Susan, whose new husband began to beat her after discovering that she had been raped as a teenager. He held their new baby to her breast for feedings, because she was not allowed to touch the infant. She now lives in the shelter with the child.

Rana, a 16-year-old who had been abused for years by her father, escaped from her home soon after he beat her sister so badly that she died.

Over the summer, Ms. Mohamed, an Iraqi-Canadian architect-turned-advocate, has opened a shelter in Baghdad and another in Kirkuk, in the north. Between them, the shelters house 10 women. The shelters are the first in Iraq (not including the Kurdish-controlled part of northern Iraq, which has been free from Saddam Hussein since 1991), and they have provided a safe place for victims of abuse.

The women come without papers or passports. They even leave their names behind them, for safety. They are blamed for the very abuse they suffer, accused of bringing dishonor on their families. In a punishing and rigid Islamic tradition, some would be killed if their relatives found them.

Since the American invasion and the virtual collapse of the Iraqi state, Islamic militancy has grown. Hard-line Islamists dominate several cities just north and west of Baghdad. Liquor stores have been bombed, and more women are covering their heads in public.

At the same time, women's groups have mushroomed. Hanaa Edwar, secretary of Iraqi al-Amal, which provides health care to poor women, estimates that there are a few hundred women's groups across Iraq now, compared to just a few dozen before the war.

Ms. Mohamed's group, the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq, is among them. In addition to the shelters, she runs a newspaper, organizes lobbying campaigns out of a tiny office in central Baghdad, and employs a lawyer who offers legal services to women.

Her decision to become an advocate for abused women grew from her own past. Her family forced her grandmother, as a teenager, to marry a cleric who was 40 years her senior. She ran away but was returned a few years later and eventually bore him five children.

"Imagine being married by force and having five children with a man you despise," said Ms. Mohamed, 43, who on a recent day was wearing jeans, platform sandals and a red T-shirt. "It cannot happen again. But if you look at the streets now, the politics, it is happening."

In many ways, Iraqi women were freer a half-century ago than they are today. Women's groups had pushed through changes to the civil code making multiple marriages more difficult for men and improving rules that governed inheritance for women. Some women were educated abroad, and women were appointed as judges and to government posts.

But women began losing those gains in the 1980's, when years of war sapped economic resources, plunging the country into poverty and eroding women's independence. To appease religious leaders in Iraq and his Arab neighbors, Mr. Hussein forced a stricter adherence to conservative religious rules.

The Baghdad shelter is a two-story house rented by Ms. Mohamed and run by a woman in her 30's. Its location is secret. An armed guard is always on duty. A handful of women live in two bedrooms and a living room.

Rana, the 16-year-old, is from a conservative southern city. She was taken out of school after the fourth grade. She was not allowed to leave the house, or watch television. After her sister died and she fled, a woman from the American military saved her, she said, allowing her to stay on a military base temporarily.

Her family tracked her down, through a local Iraqi translator at the base, and showed up one day to take her back. The family signed an agreement saying they would not beat her, but she said it had no effect.
Relatives placed hot coals on her head to cure her of her running away, which they perceived as a mental illness, Rana said.

She escaped again, back to the base, and has been in the shelter since it opened. She spoke sitting on a sunny patch of couch in Ms. Mohamed's office, wearing a tight lime-green T-shirt, tennis shoes and a leather wristband. Most of all, she said, she wants to return to school, for the first time in many years.

Shelters for abused women are completely new to most Iraqis. Violence against women is not discussed publicly. It is implicitly condoned even by Iraq's legal system, which gives much reduced sentences in cases of so-called honor killings, in which male relatives kill a woman they think has violated the honor of the family. Rega Rauf, an Iraqi now living in Sweden, wrote a book on honor killings in northern Iraq that detailed 400 cases in Sulaimaniya in 1998."When you speak about the phenomenon of violence against women, it is very new," Ms. Edwar said. "It's a very old problem, but people are not used to hearing it talked about."

Ms. Mohamed is talking loudly. She separated from her husband and returned to Iraq last year after living abroad since 1993. She sold her house in Canada, left her 17-year-old son there with his father and used the proceeds from the sale to start her organization.

She is a last-resort advocate for women in many situations. She helped a group of 47 who worked in a bank and who were jailed in the spring after their supervisor accused them of stealing. After days of waiting to plead her case, she lost her patience and began shouting at the Iraqi clerks and American military officials in the room with her.

"I had bad manners," she said, smiling. "But they listened to us."

Three weeks later, all 47 women were released, and a superior was arrested.

Ms. Mohamed has received threats by e-mail and by phone. Both her phone number and her e-mail address are published in her newspaper so women can reach her about abuse. One person threatened to kill her, and another said he would blow her up.

"He was very specific," she said. She seemed unruffled, but said she had worn a bulletproof vest to the hearing for the bank workers, just to be safe.

The women most in danger of being killed are those whose families accuse them of besmirching the family honor. They are being sought by their entire tribe. There are three such women in the Baghdad shelter.

The killing and abuse stretches across class and educational lines.

Ms. Mohamed's newspaper, Equality, recently published a story about a woman who died after being tied to a tree, shot and beaten in an area called New Baghdad after she went alone with the man she wanted to marry to a southern city to fetch a tribal leader. She had hoped he could persuade her father, a lawyer, to accept her choice of husband. "I don't want to take us back to the time of my grandmother," Ms. Mohamed said. "It depends on us whether we resist or not."

Mona Mahmoud contributed reporting for this article.

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19) Rights Group Says Terrorist Suspects Have 'Disappeared' While In U.S. Custody
RFE/RL
By Andrew Tully
October 13, 2004

Washington -- With the exception of the prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq, the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush says its treatment of suspected terrorists in its custody is a matter of policy.

It calls the prisoners "illegal combatants" -- members of a hostile force that do not follow the Geneva Conventions on warfare. Therefore, it says, they do not enjoy the convention's protections.

Tom Malinowski, the advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, said that argument might apply, but he said it is only half an argument. He told RFE/RL that the United States is a signatory to other conventions with equal weight.

"You have the Geneva Conventions, which apply in wartime, and then you have a number of other standards, treaties, rules that apply in peacetime. One always applies. And whether your standard is the Geneva Conventions or these other treaties, they're all very clear that you can't hold people incommunicado, [that] you can't hold people in secret," Malinowski said.

Malinowski pointed to the UN Convention Against Torture and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, among others. He said they apply to all people, whether or not they are in custody, and whether or not they are suspected of fighting for an entity that ignores the laws of war.

Human Rights Watch says the practice demeans the United States, which many see as an exemplar of human rights.

Human Rights Watch says the practice demeans the United States, which many see as an exemplar of human rights. Specifically, Malinowski said it shows a kind of hypocrisy by the Bush administration.

Malinowski noted that while campaigning for reelection, Bush has justified his invasion of Iraq by saying he is helping to spread democracy and freedom. But he said the way the Bush administration treats prisoners who are suspected terrorists sends an entirely different message.

"It tells the world that this administration isn't practicing what it preaches," Malinowski said. "The president does appear to be very committed to promoting liberty and the rule of law. It's actually not just a good thing but a vital thing in terms of winning the war on terror. But we're not as credible in encouraging other people to live up to these standards if we're not living up to them ourselves."

Arch Puddington is the director of research at another human rights group, Freedom House. He agreed that isolating prisoners is hypocritical for a country that urges others to respect human rights. But he said the current problem is not unique.

Speaking from New York, Puddington told RFE/RL that every U.S. administration in recent history has been accused of some sort of human rights violation. He said a president should be judged on how quickly he remedies the situation, and the seriousness of the violation itself.

Puddington contrasted the reported practice of keeping prisoners in seclusion with the legal limbo of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and the cases of abuse and torture at Iraq's Abu Ghurayb prison, both of which he called far worse.

"I think you have to look at the magnitude of the hypocrisy," Puddington said. "Abu Ghurayb damaged American credibility globally. This issue of whether we are keeping a rather small group of major terror suspects incommunicado -- that is of a different magnitude. And I think people around the world would probably look at it as being not of the same seriousness."

Puddington said the Bush administration might actually have a sound reason for holding these prisoners in isolation. He noted that the 11 men cited by Human Rights Watch include not just low-level suspects, but also Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the suspected planner of the attacks of 11 September 2001, as well as Abu Zubaydah, who is said to have been a close aide to Osama bin Laden.

If the United States argued for acceptance of its treatment of these prisoners, Puddington said, the human rights community might listen attentively.

"It may be that we discover that the war on terror is going to require, at least to some extent, new policies and new rules of war than those that were devised in the era of traditional warfare," Puddington said.

So far, however, the Bush administration has made no such argument.

Puddington said it is time for the United States to sit down with its allies and its colleagues at the United Nations to determine whether the Geneva Conventions and other treaties need to be revised to meet the needs of a new kind of warfare.

[The full Human Rights Watch report can be found at http://www.hrw.org]

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20) U.S. Considers Reopening Inquiry Into Possible Abuse Before Iraq Prison Scandal
New York Times
By NORIMITSU ONISHI and ERIC SCHMITT
October 14, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 13 - Several weeks after two major reports detailed the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison, the Pentagon is reviewing whether to reopen an inquiry into the case of four Iraqis who said they were abused in January at an American base in Iraq.

The case of the Iraqi men, employees of Western news organizations, was dismissed by the Pentagon months before the abuse at Abu Ghraib was first reported. The case, which involves reports of practices similar to those carried out at Abu Ghraib, could provide evidence that maltreatment of prisoners occurred elsewhere in Iraq.

The Iraqis, who were arrested Jan. 2 after trying to report on the downing of an American helicopter near Falluja, said they were physically abused while being held for about three days at Forward Operating Base Volturno. They said American soldiers hit them, deprived them of sleep and made them assume painful positions. They said they were threatened with sexual assault and photographed while being forced to simulate sex acts.

Lawrence Di Rita, a Defense Department spokesman, said that civilian and military lawyers at the Pentagon were reviewing the case to determine whether more review in Washington was necessary. Until now, the Pentagon has deferred to the commanders in the field and their investigations.

Mr. Di Rita said it was likely to be a matter of days before the lawyers decided what, if anything, to do next.

He said the decision to begin the current evaluation, mainly by lawyers on the military's joint staff, was not influenced by the release in August of two reports that offered new details into detainee abuse, one by three Army generals and another by a panel led by former Defense Secretary James R. Schlesinger.

Those reports criticized the leadership of Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, then the American commander in Iraq. Until now, his own review of the case was the highest-level scrutiny it received. Some Defense officials have privately suggested the Pentagon should reopen the case in light of that criticism.

Three of the Iraqis work for Reuters and the fourth for NBC News. Reuters and NBC officials expressed frustration at what they described as the Pentagon's incomplete inquiry case and nonresponsiveness. The three Reuters workers, who were initially ashamed to speak about the abuse, were interviewed separately here in Baghdad, while the NBC cameraman was interviewed by phone from Falluja.

"The fact is that these allegations came before the Abu Ghraib allegations - they are not copycats in any way - and deserve to be investigated seriously and objectively,'' said David A. Schlesinger, global managing editor for Reuters. "But the Pentagon appeared eager to quickly put the investigation to a close.''

Bill Wheatley, vice president of news at NBC News, said that after the Abu Ghraib scandal came to light, he sent a letter to General Sanchez asking that the inquiry be reopened but never received an answer. "We do not feel to our satisfaction that the matter has been investigated thoroughly,'' he said.

General Sanchez declined to comment.

Maj. Amy Hannah, a spokeswoman for the 82nd Airborne Division, which was accused in the incident, also declined to comment on the case beyond the executive summary of the unit's investigation.

According to the four Iraqis, the incident began in Falluja after Friday Prayer on Jan. 2. Word had spread that an American helicopter had been shot down west of the city. The four headed separately toward the site, where American soldiers were recovering the body of the captain and evacuating the co-pilot.

Three of the Iraqis began filming from a distance. According to the 82nd Airborne Division's executive summary of its investigation, the soldiers received fire from the area where the Iraqis were clustered and returned fire. Eventually, the soldiers chased the four Iraqis and took custody of them, taking them to the Volturno base. The Iraqis, who were initially accused of being insurgents posing as reporters, denied having anything to do with the firing.

E-mail exchanges between the Baghdad bureau chief for Reuters, Andrew Marshall, and officials at the 82nd Airborne show that the military was notified immediately that the men worked for Reuters. The military detained the men for about 60 hours, the summary said.

During their captivity, the Iraqis said they were often hooded and repeatedly struck, elbowed and slapped. But they said the more serious abuse occurred in individual interrogations, and then when they were in a small cell together.

Each said the interrogations were conducted by two American soldiers - they said they did not know whether they belonged to intelligence or military police units. An Arabic interpreter was present, they said.

Salem Ureibi, 54, a Reuters cameraman, said one of the soldiers repeatedly jabbed a pen up his nostrils and forced him to kneel with his hands in the air. The soldier, he said, threatened to make him sit on a stool with a nail sticking out that was attached to a wire.

During his interrogation, Ahmad Mohammad Hussein, 26, another Reuters cameraman, said an American punched him whenever he said, "I swear to God.'' He said he was forced to chew and lick a slipper and suck his fingers.

His cousin and driver, Sattar Jabar, 26, said he was forced to chew on a slipper and insert his fingers into his anus. "Then he forced me to put two of the fingers into my nostrils, put the slipper into my mouth and raise my left hand,'' he said. "He said I just looked like an elephant.''

All four said that they were forced to do push-ups, and that while doing so were told to pretend that they were having sexual intercourse by moving their buttocks. Many of the soldiers brought cameras and took photographs, they said.

On Jan. 8, four days after their release, the three Reuters workers were interviewed separately by Mr. Marshall, the bureau chief. A 22-page transcript, which contains most of the details they gave in recent interviews with The New York Times, was given to the military. On Jan. 9, Reuters sent an official letter of complaint to General Sanchez, after which the 82nd Airborne opened an investigation.

On Jan. 29, Reuters received a three-page copy of the inquiry's unclassified executive summary. It said none of the soldiers involved in the detention of the four "admit or report knowledge of any physical abuse or torture.''

"The detainees were purposefully and carefully put under stress, to include sleep deprivation, in order to facilitate interrogation; they were not tortured.''

Pointing out that Ahmad Hussein and Mr. Jabar are cousins, it said: "The cousins' statements are not credible and may have been purposefully exaggerated as part of an anti-coalition information campaign.''

Reuters complained that the inquiry was inadequate, saying that investigators had not independently interviewed the Iraqis and had relied only on the testimony of soldiers. Through August, the news agency sent several letters to the Pentagon demanding that the investigation be reopened. But Pentagon officials wrote back that the case was closed.

In a short letter to Reuters dated March 5, General Sanchez wrote that he was "confident'' that the investigation had been "thorough and objective.'' He added that investigators had concluded that the "soldiers involved acted within the applicable rules of engagement, policies and procedures.''

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21) Security contractor cites major growth
ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 13, 2004

ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. -- Security contractor Blackwater USA, which has lost at least eight workers in ambushes in Iraq, has opened new offices in Baghdad and Jordan and plans to double the number of people it employs at its headquarters in the United States.

At a ribbon-cutting Tuesday for a new target manufacturing plant, Blackwater President Gary Jackson said he was astounded by the growth of his company.

"The numbers are actually staggering. In the last 18 months we've had over 600 percent growth," he said.

Blackwater is one of the biggest and best-known private security firms working in Iraq, with a $21 million contract to guard the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Four Blackwater employees - two Americans and two Poles - were killed in June on the main road to Baghdad airport. Four others were killed March 31, and their bodies were mutilated and burned. Two were hung from the framework of a bridge across the Euphrates river.

The company started seven years ago with 27 employees. Blackwater now has thousands of contract workers based in several countries.

"This is a billion-dollar industry," Jackson said. "And Blackwater has only scratched the surface of it."

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22) Iraq chaos has only emboldened Iran
International Herald Tribune
Gareth Evans and Karim Sadjadpour
October 12, 2004

U.S. policy backfires

BRUSSELS Among the shifting rationales for the Iraq war was the impact it might have on other countries in the region, central among them Iran. What a difference an ill-conceived and mismanaged occupation makes: The debate in Washington is no longer whether the United States can help Iraq shape Iran, but whether it can stop Iran from shaping Iraq.

>From Washington's perspective no country appeared riper for change on the war's eve than Iran. Iraq's nascent secular democracy was to serve as a model, perhaps inspiring envious Iranians to rise up against their authoritarian leaders. Their encirclement by U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Gulf sheikdoms would force Tehran's rulers to modify their behavior. And Iran's most respected Shiite scholars and clerics - a majority of whom oppose Khomeini-style theocratic rule - would take flight to Najaf, where they could freely question the Islamic Republic's religious legitimacy.

To those familiar with the depth of popular discontent in Iran, such grand scenarios may have appeared by no means inconceivable. They assumed, however, a smooth and stable postwar Iraq. In fact, the chaos there has not intimidated but emboldened the Iranian regime, which appears more stable, more repressive and less amenable to foreign pressure than it has been in over a decade. Meanwhile, Washington can resort only to indignant calls that Tehran cease meddling in its neighbor's affairs.

Over the past several months, conservative hardliners have begun to roll back the few political, economic and social advancements of Iran's reformist era. Whereas student-led pro-democracy protests had been pervasive, for more than a year a disillusioned public has been either silent or silenced. Among Iranians, diffuse hope that the United States could improve their lot has gradually given way to widespread skepticism. As a Tehran resident told one of us: "When we look at what's going on in Iraq, or even Afghanistan, it seems that the real choice is not one between democracy or authoritarianism, but between stability or unrest. People may not be happy in Iran, but no one wants unrest."

While the Iranian people may be averse to turmoil at home, their regime has decidedly mixed feelings about chaos in Iraq. Wary that an outright collapse or civil war might spill over into Iran, with its porous borders and close religious and political ties, and concerned that an out-and-out U.S. success would bolster those in Washington who believe in taking action against Iran, Tehran has settled for a de facto policy of promoting managed chaos, helping to generate enough unrest in Iraq to dissuade the Americans from contemplating regime change in Iran, but refraining from supporting a full-fledged insurrection.

Likewise, it has decided to invest in Iraq by diversifying its portfolio, maintaining contact not only with Shiite co-religionists like Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Moktada al-Sadr, Ahmad Chalabi and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, but with Sunni and Kurdish groups as well. Nor is Iran's bolstered international confidence confined to Iraq. With the power vacuum created by Saddam's ouster, Tehran has been free to assert its aspirations for regional hegemony. After years of putting intangible Islamic interests ahead of national ones, Iran's religious conservatives have reverted, ironically, to the nationalistic rhetoric used by Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi three decades ago. And, despite European diplomatic pressure and U.S. and Israeli military threats, Tehran has shown little sign of compromising on its nuclear program.

These are not the hallmarks of a frightened regime but an emboldened one. The Iranian component of its Iraqi gambit having failed, indeed, backfired, Washington needs to rethink its approach toward Tehran. A deeply divided Bush administration flirted with a confrontational approach, pondered limited engagement and ended up without a policy.

Today, with vital U.S. interests at stake in terms of Iraq, Afghanistan and global nonproliferation, Iran is playing a central role in each and the United States isn't talking to it about any.

All of these issues will continue to fester until both countries are in a position to overcome the distrust that has accumulated over the past quarter-century and strike a bargain that addresses their wider and more fundamental dispute. For that, however, the United States will need to put aside its illusory dreams of regime change, overcome its deep-seated trepidation over a bilateral dialogue and engage Iran in a coherent, sustained and comprehensive manner.

Gareth Evans is president of the International Crisis Group; Karim Sadjadpour is an ICG analyst based in Tehran.

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23) Violence in Iraq holding back foreign aid
Japan Times
By KANAKO TAKAHARA
October 13, 2004

When Mohammad Ali-Hassan, the governor of Al-Muthanna Province in southern Iraq, visited Tokyo last week, he thanked Japan for the aid it has given to his province, where Ground Self-Defense Force troops have been deployed.

But Ali-Hassan did not forget to ask for more.

"The time has come to carry out bigger projects in the public service sector that will outlast Japan's presence," Ali-Hassan told a news conference Friday through an interpreter.

The remark apparently reflects Iraq's impatience with the glacial implementation of large-scale, basic infrastructure projects such as roads and power plants.

Japanese officials say reconstruction efforts by Japan and other countries that have pledged aid are suffering under the security threat.

Foreigners engaged in reconstruction projects are targeted for attack by anti-U.S. forces, and Japanese businessmen -- who normally serve as the catalyst for government aid projects -- are advised not to enter Iraq.

Japan hopes the two-day donors' meeting for the International Reconstruction Fund Facility for Iraq, which opens Wednesday in Tokyo, will add momentum to international efforts to fund Iraq's reconstruction.

In October 2003, Japan pledged $5 billion to help rebuild Iraq, of which $1.5 billion will be disbursed in the form of grant aid by the end of this year and the remaining $3.5 billion to be offered in yen loans from 2005 to 2007.

Of the $1.5 billion earmarked for 2004, $1.3 billion has been disbursed. However, feasibility studies and other preliminary work for the yen-loan projects are lagging.

Japan's aid has so far focused on smaller projects, such as supplying police patrol cars and water-supply trucks, or rebuilding war-damaged power plants and hospitals.

Akio Shirota, Japan's ambassador in charge of reconstruction assistance to Iraq, admitted that the security situation has prevented Japan from speeding up implementation of big projects.

But Shirota defended Japan's performance, saying Iraq first needs to map out a policy on how it wants to rebuild before Japan or any government sends officials to assess aid needs.

"The Iraqi government is expected to provide us with a rough report at the donors' meeting," he said.

But Iraq's political system, which is still unstable after the handover of sovereignty in late June from the U.S.-led occupation authority, is also a big reason why Japan is hesitant to move forward on big infrastructure-related projects, another government official said.

"Iraqi bureaucrats and regional chiefs come to the Japanese Embassy in Amman one after another with uncoordinated proposals for various projects," said the official, who asked not to be named.

Japan's aid money could end up being wasted if Tokyo starts offering large-scale aid at this point, he said.

The U.S.-led coalition coordinated reconstruction projects before sovereignty was transferred to the current interim government in June, but now each Iraqi ministry has the power to set priorities over projects under its jurisdiction, according to Kotaro Kodama, chief of Middle East and African division at Japan External Trade Organization, or JETRO.

"Donor countries have to talk to officials at each ministry to find out details of the projects," Kodama said.

There are several essential steps before Japan can disburse aid for a specific ODA project.

The recipient nation conducts a feasibility study of a potential aid project before formally requesting Japan's assistance. Tokyo examines the plan and carries out further research if there are financial or technical problems.

Japan and the recipient nation exchange diplomatic notes after a Cabinet endorsement. The project is then tendered -- usually an international public tender.

According to ministry sources, Japan has received about 400 ideas for yen-loan projects in Iraq from Iraqi bureaucrats -- some of them working together with Japanese trading companies -- but only around 50 are considered sufficiently feasible to survive Tokyo's screening process.

When extending aid to countries under normal conditions, it takes about a year to carry out a feasibility study for each project and another few months for the tendering process before construction begins, they say.

But given the current situation in Iraq, Japan is not likely to launch the process for the yen-loan aid at the beginning of next year, one official said.

Japanese businesses, wary of the precarious security situation, do not send their people into Iraq. Instead, they send them to Amman or Dubai to gather information from Iraqi bureaucrats or hire Iraqis to assess potential ODA projects.

Osamu Mitsui, a senior researcher at the Japanese Institute of Middle Eastern Economies, says major trading companies Mitsubishi Corp, Sumitomo Corp. and Marubeni Corp., which have large amounts of outstanding credit to Iraq, are the top three striving to get a piece of the pie.

"Company workers in charge (of Iraq) are making frantic efforts to gather information," Mitsui said. "But at the same time most are watching how things will go until local security becomes stable."

Mitsui noted that January's elections to choose a transitional government in Iraq is likely to be the turning point in whether security will improve or deteriorate.

"Yen-loan projects will not be carried out unless the security situation improves and Japanese officials can travel freely in the nation," he said.

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24) Cost of Iraqi reconstruction
BBC
October 13, 2004

The US-led invasion inflicted heavy damage on Iraq
The effort to rebuild Iraq is in the spotlight again as a conference of donor nations gets underway in Tokyo.

Rebuilding Iraq's shattered infrastructure ranks as one of the most challenging reconstruction tasks faced by the international community since the World War II.

Last year's US-led invasion caused widespread damage, but much of the country was already in a decrepit state after years of mismanagement under Saddam Hussein's regime.

An eight-year war against Iran during the 1980s, coupled with economic sanctions imposed in the wake of Saddam's ill-fated invasion of Kuwait in 1990, also took their toll.

Last year, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund calculated that restoring Iraq's water, power, road and telecommunications networks would cost $35.8bn (£20bn ; 28.8bn euros).

Repair bill

The Coalition Provisional Authority, which governed Iraq in the aftermath of the invasion, estimated that reconstruction work not taken into account in the World Bank/IMF study, including repairs to the oil industry, would cost another $20bn.

To put these figures into perspective, the World Bank estimates that Iraq's gross domestic product - the combined value of all the goods and services the country produces - stood at just $18.4bn in 2002, the year before the US-led invasion.

In October 2003, a group of 37 countries agreed to provide a total of $32.1bn towards the reconstruction effort.

By far the biggest contribution came from the US, which set aside $18.6bn, followed by Japan, with $4.9bn.

Other major donors included Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, which pledged $500m each, the UK, with $452m, and Spain, with $220m.

Spending delays

However, the reconstruction programme has made disappointing progress since then, mainly because work on the ground has been hampered by an unexpectedly fierce campaign of violence by Iraqi insurgents.

The most telling measure of the difficulties faced by contractors operating in Iraq is the unexpectedly slow pace at which the reconstruction money is being spent.

According to the US government, just $1.2bn of its budget had been spent by 22 September.

Of this, $623m - more than half - was spent on security-related measures, including training and equipping the Iraqi army and police force.

Repairs to the electricity network were the second biggest item of expenditure, absorbing $300m.

Moreover, the US in August diverted some $3.4bn it had set aside to rebuild Iraq's water and power networks towards measures aimed at improving security and creating jobs.

Meanwhile, the other donor nations - who between them pledged $13.5bn - have so far released only about $1bn of the total, partly because of concerns over the deteriorating security situation.

Iraqi leaders are urging them to disburse the rest of the cash, saying that speedily completing the reconstruction work offers the best hope of ending the violence that plagues the country.

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25) Security concerns loom over Iraq donors
AFP
October 14, 2004

TOKYO (AFP) - Iraq's donors said the insurgency in the country was the biggest obstacle to reconstruction, as the interim government appealed for firmer world support for historic elections in January.

A joint statement by the 57 countries and institutions at the two-day meeting in Tokyo urged faster aid to Iraq, as much of the pledged assistance has been held up because of the widespread violence.

"We identified security as the biggest challenge to be overcome," said Japanese envoy Akio Shirota, who chaired the conference.

"That led to detailed discussions on ways and means to bring about the nationwide elections on time," Shirota told reporters Thursday. "Very strong wishes to bring about the elections are expressed by donors."

Ross Mountain, the UN deputy special representative to Iraq, said security would be a key to success in the January elections.

"Security for the electoral commissions, security for the six, nine thousand electoral workers, security for candidates to campaign, security of the ballots when they are moved back to be counted -- security is going to be extremely important," Mountain told a separate news conference.

The donors' joint statement said that while some projects in Iraq are showing results, some "priority projects could not be financed without additional funding".

Donor nations called on one another and the rest of the international community to "come forward with additional funds" to help Iraq.

The Tokyo conference was not designed to secure new pledges, but the European Commission nonetheless announced it would offer another 200 million euros (247 million dollars) for reconstruction, subject to EU approval in the 2005 budget.

The proposed contribution comes on top of 302 million euros the European Commission provided to Iraq in 2003-2004, a Commission statement said.

Iran also pledged 10 million dollars to rebuild its neighbour and former rival.

Denmark promised 22 million krone (3.6 million dollars), New Zealand offered about one million US dollars
and South Korea offered an unspecified amount, said a senior US official who took part in the Tokyo talks.

The US official said international donors had since last year pledged to Iraq a total of 34 billion dollars -- of which only 4.3 billion has been spent.

Of the money that has been disbursed, a full three billion dollars of it has come from the United States, the official said.

The Tokyo conference was the fourth donors' meeting since the fall of Saddam Hussein last year and the first since the interim government took over from US-led forces in June. The next conference will be held in Jordan in the spring.

Iraq's interim government said elections in January were crucial to reconstruction and needed more international support.

"This will be a major turning point for the history of Iraq," Iraqi Planning Minister Mehdi al-Hafez said of the polls.

The aim was to create a "parliamentary government and democratic community". "We are looking forward for the support of the international community," he said.

The European Commission said 30 million euros of its contribution was being devoted to building Iraq's electoral process. Japan said Wednesday it was setting aside for the election 40 million dollars of its five billion dollars in pledges.

US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage on Wednesday urged other countries to boost funding for infrastructure projects as Washington had last month shifted 3.46 billion dollars away from reconstruction, with most of it going to fight insurgents.

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26) James Baker's Double Life
The Nation
by NAOMI KLEIN
[from the November 1, 2004 issue]

When President Bush appointed former Secretary of State James Baker III as his envoy on Iraq's debt on December 5, 2003, he called Baker's job "a noble mission." At the time, there was widespread concern about whether Baker's extensive business dealings in the Middle East would compromise that mission, which is to meet with heads of state and persuade them to forgive the debts owed to them by Iraq. Of particular concern was his relationship with merchant bank and defense contractor the Carlyle Group, where Baker is senior counselor and an equity partner with an estimated $180 million stake.

Until now, there has been no concrete evidence that Baker's loyalties are split, or that his power as Special Presidential Envoy--an unpaid position--has been used to benefit any of his corporate clients or employers. But according to documents obtained by The Nation, that is precisely what has happened. Carlyle has sought to secure an extraordinary $1 billion investment from the Kuwaiti government, with Baker's influence as debt envoy being used as a crucial lever.

The secret deal involves a complex transaction to transfer ownership of as much as $57 billion in unpaid Iraqi debts. The debts, now owed to the government of Kuwait, would be assigned to a foundation created and controlled by a consortium in which the key players are the Carlyle Group, the Albright Group (headed by another former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright) and several other well-connected firms. Under the deal, the government of Kuwait would also give the consortium $2 billion up front to invest in a private equity fund devised by the consortium, with half of it going to Carlyle.

The Nation has obtained a copy of the confidential sixty-five-page "Proposal to Assist the Government of Kuwait in Protecting and Realizing Claims Against Iraq," sent in January from the consortium to Kuwait's foreign ministry, as well as letters back and forth between the two parties. In a letter dated August 6, 2004, the consortium informed Kuwait's foreign ministry that the country's unpaid debts from Iraq "are in imminent jeopardy." World opinion is turning in favor of debt forgiveness, another letter warned, as evidenced by "President Bush's appointment...of former Secretary of State James Baker as his envoy to negotiate Iraqi debt relief." The consortium's proposal spells out the threat: Not only is Kuwait unlikely to see any of its $30 billion from Iraq in sovereign debt, but the $27 billion in war reparations that Iraq owes to Kuwait from Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion "may well be a casualty of this U.S. [debt relief] effort."

In the face of this threat, the consortium offers its services. Its roster of former high-level US and European politicians have "personal rapport with the stakeholders in the anticipated negotiations" and are able to "reach key decision-makers in the United Nations and in key capitals," the proposal states. If Kuwait agrees to transfer the debts to the consortium's foundation, the consortium will use these personal connections to persuade world leaders that Iraq must "maximize" its debt payments to Kuwait, which would be able to collect the money after ten to fifteen years. And the more the consortium gets Iraq to pay during that period, the more Kuwait collects, with the consortium taking a 5 percent commission or more.

The goal of maximizing Iraq's debt payments directly contradicts the US foreign policy aim of drastically reducing Iraq's debt burden. According to Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University and a leading expert on government ethics and regulations, this means that Baker is in a "classic conflict of interest. Baker is on two sides of this transaction: He is supposed to be representing the interests of the United States, but he is also a senior counselor at Carlyle, and Carlyle wants to get paid to help Kuwait recover its debts from Iraq." After examining the documents, Clark called them "extraordinary." She said, "Carlyle and the other companies are exploiting Baker's current position to try to land a deal with Kuwait that would undermine the interests of the US government."

The Nation also showed the documents to Jerome Levinson, an international lawyer and expert on political and corporate corruption at American University. He called it "one of the greatest cons of all time. The consortium is saying to the Kuwaiti government, 'Through us, you have the only chance to realize a substantial part of the debt. Why? Because of who we are and who we know.' It's influence peddling of the crassest kind."

In the confidential documents, the consortium appears acutely aware of the sensitivity of Baker's position as Carlyle partner and debt envoy. Immediately after listing the powerful players associated with Carlyle--including former President George H.W. Bush, former British prime minister John Major and Baker himself--the document states: "The extent to which these individuals can play an instrumental role in fashioning strategies is now more limited...due to the recent appointment of Secretary Baker as the President's envoy on international debt, and the need to avoid an apparent conflict of interest." [Emphasis in original.] Yet it goes on to state that this will soon change: "We believe that with Secretary Baker's retirement from his temporary position [as debt envoy], that Carlyle and those leading individuals associated with Carlyle will then once again be free to play a more decisive role..."

Chris Ullman, vice president and spokesperson for Carlyle, said that "neither the Carlyle Group nor James Baker wrote, edited or authorized this proposal to the Kuwait government." But he acknowledged that Carlyle knew a proposal was being made to the government of Kuwait and that Carlyle stood to land a $1 billion investment. "We were aware of that. But we played no role in procuring that investment."

Asked if Carlyle was "willing to take the billion but not to try to get it," Ullman answered, "Correct."

Iraq is the most heavily indebted country in the world, owing roughly $200 billion in sovereign debts and in reparations from Saddam's wars. If Iraq were forced to pay even a quarter of these claims, its debt would still be more than double its annual GDP, severely undermining its capacity to pay for reconstruction or to address the humanitarian needs of its war-ravaged citizens. "This debt endangers Iraq's long-term prospects for political health and economic prosperity," President Bush said when he appointed Baker last December.

But critics expressed grave concern about whether Baker was an appropriate choice for such a crucial job.

For instance, one of Iraq's largest creditors is the government of Saudi Arabia. The Carlyle Group does extensive business with the Saudi royal family, as does Baker's law firm, Baker Botts (which is currently defending them in a $1 trillion lawsuit filed by the families of September 11 victims). The New York Times determined that the potential conflicts of interest were so great that on December 12 it published an editorial calling on Baker to resign his posts at the Carlyle Group and Baker Botts to preserve the integrity of the envoy position.

"Mr. Baker is far too tangled in a matrix of lucrative private business relationships that leave him looking like a potentially interested party in any debt-restructuring formula," stated the editorial. It concluded that it wasn't enough for Baker to "forgo earnings from clients with obvious connections to Iraqi debts.... To perform honorably in his new public job, Mr. Baker must give up these two private ones."

The White House brushed off calls for Baker to choose between representing the President and representing Carlyle investors. "I don't read those editorials," President Bush said when asked by a reporter about the Times piece. Bush assured reporters that "Jim Baker is a man of high integrity.... We're fortunate he decided to take time out of what is an active life...to step forward and serve America." Carlyle was equally adamant: Chris Ullman assured a Knight-Ridder reporter that Baker's post "will have no impact on Carlyle whatsoever."

In fact, several months earlier, on July 16, 2003, Carlyle had attended a high-level London meeting with Kuwaiti officials about the deal. According to the document, the Kuwaitis asked Carlyle and the other consortium members to "prepare a detailed financial proposal for the protection and monetization" of reparation debts from Iraq. But at the time Baker was appointed envoy, the consortium had not yet submitted its proposed plans to Kuwait. That means that the Carlyle Group could have pulled out of the consortium, citing the potential conflicts of interest. Instead, Carlyle stayed on and the consortium proceeded to use Baker's powerful new position to aggressively pitch a deal that positioned the consortium as the Kuwaiti government's chief lobbyist on Iraq's debts and that gave Carlyle a clear stake in the fate of Iraq's debts.

However, several changes were made in the way the consortium presented itself. The documents state that, "Prior to [Baker's] appointment [former US Secretary of Defense Frank] Carlucci had played a convening and guiding role on behalf of Carlyle." But after the appointment, according to Carlyle's Chris Ullman, the firm's role was scaled back. "When James Baker was named special envoy...Carlyle explicitly restricted its role to only investing assets on behalf of Kuwait." Shahameen Sheikh, chairman and CEO of International Strategy Group, a company created by the consortium to manage this deal, said that Carlyle told her that "they are not a lobbying firm." Days before Baker's appointment, the consortium reached out to another high-profile Washington firm, the Albright Group, which eventually signed on as the leading political strategists and lobbyists for the consortium.

Moreover, Ullman said that Carlyle put "controls in place" that would insure that Baker "would play no role in nor benefit from" the proposed $1 billion investment--an amount that would constitute nearly 10 percent of Carlyle's total equity investments.

But it's not clear that Carlyle has been straightforward about its dealings so far. The day before Baker's appointment was announced, John Harris, managing director and chief financial officer of Carlyle, submitted a signed statement to White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales. "Carlyle does not have any investment in Iraqi public or private debt," he wrote. He didn't mention that Carlyle had for months been in negotiations with Kuwait to help secure its unpaid war debts from Iraq. Asked if the White House had been informed of the Carlyle Group's dealings with Kuwait at any point, Ullman replied, "I'll get back to you on that." He did not.

According to Kathleen Clark, it is unclear whether Baker is complying with the criminal statute and administrative regulations that prohibit government officials from participating in government business in which they have a financial interest-including matters that affect an outside company that employs the official. Clark notes, "even if Baker is somehow being screened from profiting from this deal, Carlyle is using Baker's government position to benefit themselves." She says it's time for Carlyle and the White House to come clean. "There's a tremendous need for transparency here." The White House and James Baker's office did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Baker occupies a complicated place in the consortium's January proposal--he is both problem and solution, stick and carrot. In the documents, Baker's name comes up repeatedly, usually in tones of high alarm. "Mr. Baker's new role and the likely emergence of what will be understood as a new round of global negotiations over Iraqi debt--casts all of these issues in a new light and gives them a new, perhaps even intense, sense of urgency," states a letter signed by Madeleine Albright; David Huebner, chairman of the Coudert Brothers law firm (another consortium member); and Shahameen Sheikh.

But after establishing Baker's envoy job as the embodiment of the threat that Kuwait will lose its reparations payments, the proposal goes on at length about the powerful individuals connected to the consortium who will "have the ability to gain access to the highest levels of the United States Government and other Security Council governments for a hearing of Kuwait's views." According to Levinson, "What they are proposing is to completely undercut Baker's mission--and they are using their connection with Baker to do it."

On January 21, 2004, James Baker's dual lives converged. That morning Baker flew to Kuwait as George Bush's debt envoy. He met with Kuwait's prime minister, its foreign minister and several other top officials with the stated goal of asking them to forgive Iraq's debts in the name of regional peace and prosperity.

Baker's colleagues in the consortium chose that very same day to hand-deliver their proposal to Foreign Minister Mohammad Sabah Al-Salem Al-Sabah--the same man Baker was meeting. The proposal "takes into account the new dynamics that have developed in the region," states the cover letter, signed by Albright, Huebner and Sheikh--dynamics that include "Secretary Baker's negotiations" on debt relief. If Kuwait accepts the consortium's offer, they explain, "we will distinguish Kuwait's claims--legally and morally--from the sovereign debt for which the United States is now seeking forgiveness."

Was it a coincidence that the consortium submitted its proposal on the same day Baker was in Kuwait? And which James Baker were Kuwait's leaders supposed to take more seriously--the presidential envoy calling for debt forgiveness or the businessman named in the proposal as a potential ally in their quest for debt payment?

Ahamed al-Fahad, undersecretary to the prime minister of Kuwait, told The Nation, "I have seen it [the proposal] and I am fully aware of the situation." But when asked about Baker's dual role in Kuwait, he said, "It's hard to comment on that issue, especially now. I hope you fully understand."

Shahameen Sheikh, the consortium head who made the delivery, says the timing was a coincidence. "It had nothing to do with Mr. Baker's visit.... I was in the region so I thought I would stop over on the way to Europe and deliver the proposal."

We do know this: After meeting with Baker on January 21, Kuwait's foreign minister told reporters that Baker had shown "understanding of Kuwait's position on war reparations," confirming that the subject did come up. He also said that, while sovereign debt might be forgiven, reparations would not, because "there is an international decision from the UN."

Three days later, when Baker was back in Washington giving a speech, he made this distinction for the first time. "My job is to deal with Iraqi debt to sovereign creditors, not with war reparations," he said. He also echoed the exact line of the Kuwaiti government: that reparations are outside his purview because they are "under the jurisdiction of the United Nations Security Council and subject to resolutions it has passed."

This was a curious statement: Why would such a large portion of Iraq's debts be off the table? It also seemed to contradict other things Baker said in the same speech. He said that "any reduction [in Iraq's debt] must be substantial, or a vast majority of the total debt." That is impossible without addressing reparations, which by some measures account for more than half of Iraq's foreign debts. The Center for Strategic and International Studies, the center-right think tank hosting Baker's speech, has said it is "unwise" to make any debt relief plan "that does not include reparations."

Baker's statement on reparations also placed him at odds with several other members of the Bush Administration, including former chief envoy to Iraq Paul Bremer. "I think there needs to be a very serious look at this whole reparations issue," Bremer said in September 2003. He compared the Iraq situation to that of Germany after World War I, when the 1921 Reparations Commission forced the Weimar Republic to pay $33 billion. The massive reparations "contributed directly to the morass of unrest, instability and despair which led to Adolf Hitler's election," Bremer warned.

Yet Iraq continues to make regular reparations payments for Saddam's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. In the eighteen months since the US invasion, Iraq has paid out a staggering $1.8 billion in reparations--substantially more than the battered country's 2004 health and education budgets combined, and more than the United States has so far managed to spend in Iraq on reconstruction.

Most of the payments have gone to Kuwait, a country that is about to post its sixth consecutive budget surplus, where citizens have an average purchasing power of $19,000 a year. Iraqis, by contrast, are living on an average of just over $2 a day, with most of the population dependent on food rations for basic nutrition. Yet reparations payments continue, with Iraq scheduled to make another $200 million payout in late October.

This arrangement dates back to the end of the first Gulf War. As a condition of the cease-fire, Saddam Hussein agreed to pay for all losses incurred as a result of his invasion and seven-month occupation of Kuwait. Payments started flowing in 1994 and sped up in 1996, with the start of the UN's oil-for-food program. According to UN Security Council Resolution 986, which created the program, Iraq could begin to export oil as long as the revenue was spent on food and medicine imports, and as long as 30 percent of Iraq's oil revenues went to the United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC), the Geneva-based quasi-tribunal in charge of Gulf War reparations.

Some of the claims that have been awarded by the UNCC are huge: the cost of cleaning up Kuwait's and Saudi Arabia's coastlines from oil spills and fires, or the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation's controversial award for $15.9 billion in lost oil revenues. So far, the UNCC has paid out $18.6 billion in war reparations and has awarded an additional $30 billion that has not been paid because of Iraq's shortage of funds. There are still $98 billion worth of claims before the UNCC that have yet to be assessed, so these numbers could rise steeply. That's why there are no accurate estimates of how much Iraq owes in war reparations--the figure ranges from $50 billion to $130 billion.

But the fate of these debts is now highly uncertain. On May 22, 2003--two months after the United States invaded Iraq--the Security Council decided to cut the percentage of Iraqi oil revenues going to war reparations to 5 percent. This past May, an Iraqi delegation went to the UN to ask for the percentage to be reduced even further, to accommodate Iraq's own reconstruction needs. There is growing sympathy for this position. Justin Alexander of the debt relief group Jubilee Iraq says that many of the claims before the UNCC are inflated and that "even for genuine claims, this is Saddam's responsibility, not the Iraqi people's, who themselves suffered far more than anyone."

This is where the Carlyle/Albright consortium comes in. The premise of its proposal is that Iraq's unpaid debts to Kuwait are not just a financial problem but a political and public relations problem as well. Global public opinion is no longer what it was when Kuwait was promised full reparations. Now the world is focused on reconstructing Iraq and forgiving its debts. If Kuwait is going to get its reparations awards, the cover letter argues, it will need to recast them not as a burden on Iraq but "as a key element in working toward regional stability and reconciliation."

Several parties involved in the consortium emphasized that the proposal concerned only reparations debts. Albright Group spokesperson Jamie Smith said, "We were asked to join a proposal to secure justice for victims of Saddam's invasion of Kuwait and ensure that compensation to Kuwaiti victims--which was endorsed by the US government and the United Nations--be used to promote reconciliation, environmental improvements and investment in Kuwait, Iraq and the region."

In fact, the proposal does not restrict itself to reparations debt. The consortium also asks the government of Kuwait to give the consortium control over $30 billion in defaulted sovereign debts to be used as political leverage to secure reparations claims. Furthermore, most experts on debt restructuring agree that Iraq's debts must be looked at as a whole: There is little point forgiving Iraq's sovereign debts if the country is still going to be saddled with an unmanageable reparations burden. This understanding is reflected in the documents, which repeatedly state that Kuwait's reparations payments are endangered by the moves to forgive Iraq's debts.

To avert this threat to Kuwait, the consortium proposes a three-pronged strategy of aggressive backroom lobbying, clever public relations and creative investing and financing. "Any solution for payment of the Unpaid Awards...must be politically sellable as reinforcing stability and growth in the Gulf and in Iraq. This Proposal provides the strategy, the architecture, and the talent to achieve this goal," the document states.

Lobbying: Since the UNCC exists entirely at the discretion of the Security Council, which can vote to reduce, suspend or eliminate reparations at any time, the part of the proposal dealing with power-brokering is straightforward: It suggests a full-on lobbying offensive directed at Security Council members, using Albright's connections, but also other "eminent" people associated with the consortium like former US Senator Gary Hart and former US ambassador to the UN Jeane Kirkpatrick. "We will first seek to preserve the five percent of the revenues from Iraqi oil allocated as funding for payment of the UNCC awards," the proposal says. To achieve this, the consortium will make "discreet contacts at top levels in key capitals of Security Council member states and with influential representatives," and "interventions with United Nations senior staff to shape presentations to the Security Council." The proposal further notes that "Germany and Romania may be pivotal, and The Albright Group has very close ties to each."

Public Relations: The consortium also has a detailed plan to address the perception that reparations are "diverting resources from rebuilding Iraq to a more wealthy neighbor." First, Kuwait must assign its unpaid debts from Iraq to a private foundation controlled by the consortium. The foundation will manage an investment fund that will invest a portion of reparations payments from Iraq to Kuwait back into Iraq. As examples of the types of investments the foundation would make, Albright, Huebner and Sheikh suggest in their letter that the reparations funds could be used to buy Iraq's state-owned companies. "In the near future, 40 state-owned Iraqi enterprises in a range of sectors will be available for leasing and management contracts," they write. By demonstrating that Kuwait is investing part of its reparations proceeds back into Iraq's economy, the consortium-run foundation "establishes a humanitarian rationale for the United States and other countries to continue their support" for the reparations. The consortium appears to see privatization--a highly controversial proposal in Iraq--as part of a humanitarian mission.

The proposal also suggests more direct public relations strategies. It calls for Kuwait to dedicate $1 billion of the reparations awards it has already been paid by the UNCC to a Kuwait Environmental Restoration Fund, which the consortium would create. The purpose of this fund would be to remind the world of "the gravity of the environmental legacy facing Kuwait" and to "position Kuwait as the region's environmental leader." The fund would be headed by Carol Browner, former head of the US Environmental Protection Agency and a principal in the Albright Group.

Investment/Financing: The proposal predicts that on their own, lobbying and PR will not be sufficient to secure the amounts that the Kuwaiti government hopes to receive in reparations. For the consortium to "maximize the value of Kuwait's compensation," Kuwait will have to part with even more of the reparations payments it has received. In addition to the $1 billion for the environmental fund, the proposal calls for another $2 billion of Kuwaiti money to be invested in a Middle East Private Equity Fund. Of that $2 billion, "$1 billion would be invested, by way of special agreement, in The Carlyle Group equity funds" for a period of at least twelve to fifteen years. At the end of that period Kuwait will get the return on these investments, as well as whatever the consortium has been able to negotiate in reparations payments.

For the consortium, it is an excellent deal: Its members get to manage a $2 billion investment portfolio, collecting healthy management fees as well as a percentage of interest. They also will be paid a "retainer" and 5 percent of any debts the consortium gets repaid, and "a negotiated percentage of the value returned to Kuwait exceeding" the pre-arranged amount.

Other consortium members sharing in these benefits include Fidelity Investments; BNP Paribas, a European bank embroiled in the oil-for-food scandal; Gaffney, Cline & Associates, an energy company specializing in oil and gas privatization; Nexgen Financial Solutions, a financial engineering firm partly owned by the government of France; and Emerging Markets Partnership, an AIG affiliate headed by a former senior vice president of the World Bank, Moeen Qureshi.

In addition to the financial windfall, the arrangement would give this group of private companies tremendous power. Whoever holds Iraq's debt has the ability to influence policy in Iraq at a moment of extreme political uncertainty. Yet for the government of Kuwait the proposed deal is fraught with risk. It's true that the fate of its Iraqi reparations looks grim. The consortium estimated that if Kuwait tried to sell those debts on the market, its $27 billion would be worth only $1.5 billion. But the consortium is asking Kuwait to risk $3 billion of reparations money it has already received in the hope that it can be used to leverage some of the rest. However, as Jerome Levinson points out, "There are absolutely no guarantees of even that."

It is clear that the consortium is extremely eager to seal a deal with Kuwait. Consortium CEO Shahameen Sheikh writes of making five trips to Kuwait in four months; Albright met with Kuwait's foreign minister about the issue on April 2, 2004; and the Albright Group's Carol Browner is reported to have "personally delivered a copy" of the proposal to his hotel when he was in Washington. Yet Kuwait appears reluctant: It took four months to reply to the proposal and then it would only say, in a letter dated August 10, that the proposal "will be taken into deep consideration and is currently being studied by the appropriate authorities." According to Ahamed al-Fahad, "The issue is now in the hands of the under secretary of foreign affairs," who was unavailable for comment. But Salem Abdullah al Jaber al-Sabah, Kuwait's ambassador to the United States, said, "As far as my information is concerned, my government is not considering such proposals."

Even if the deal falls through, the fact that the Carlyle Group and the Albright Group have been engaged in these negotiations may already have damaged debt relief efforts, hurting both Iraqi and US interests. Levinson points out that the Bush Administration has made commitments that Iraq's oil revenues will be spent on reconstruction. Yet the failure to deal with the reparations issue means that "part of those resources instead are being diverted to Kuwait. Who pays for this? It's the people of Iraq who continue to make reparations payments, and it's US taxpayers, who are asked to foot the bill for reconstruction, because Iraq's money is going to debt payments."

Levinson says this is all the more remarkable because of who is involved. "Here you have two former Secretaries of State seemingly proposing to use their contacts and inside information to undercut the official US government policy." Washington University's Kathleen Clark says the proposal "lays bare how former high-level government employees use their access in order to reap financial benefits that appear to be enormous."

A case can certainly be made that James Baker and Madeleine Albright have had more direct influence over Iraq's debts and reparations payments than any politicians outside Iraq, with the possible exception of the forty-first and forty-third Presidents of the United States.

As Secretary of State, Baker played a role in running up Iraq's foreign debts in the first place, personally intervening in 1989 to secure a $1 billion US loan to Saddam Hussein in export credits. He was also a key architect of the first Gulf War, as well as of the cease-fire that required Saddam to pay such sweeping reparations. In his 1995 memoirs, The Politics of Diplomacy, Baker wrote that after seeing the oil-well fires in Kuwait he cabled President George H.W. Bush and said, "Iraq should pay for it." Now, through the consortium, Carlyle could end up controlling $1 billion of those payments.

The role of the Albright Group raises similar questions. As Secretary of State and Ambassador to the UN, Madeleine Albright participated personally in drafting UN Resolution 986, which created the oil-for-food program, diverting 30 percent of Iraq's revenue from oil sales to war reparations. "It's a great day for the United States because we were the authors of Resolution 986," she said on The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer on May 20, 1996. Now, as a private citizen, Albright is a leading member of a consortium that is exploiting her connections to try to profit from the very reparations she helped secure. Albright also enforced the brutal sanctions campaign against Iraq, one of the effects of which was the hobbling of Iraq's state companies.

Now, she is part of a plan to use Iraq's reparations payments to buy the very firms that her sanctions program helped to debilitate.

But it is Baker's envoy post that raises the most serious questions for the White House, especially because a Special Presidential Envoy is the President's personal representative, meeting with heads of state in the President's stead and reporting back directly to the President. If a President's envoy has a conflict of interest, it reflects directly on the highest office. Clark says, "There is absolutely a conflict of interest. Baker is aligned with two parties--the US government and Carlyle--that are not aligned with each other."

As envoy, Baker's job is to do his best to clear away Iraq's debts, lessening the burden on Iraqis and on US taxpayers. Yet as a businessman, he is an equity partner in a company that is part of a deal that would achieve the opposite result. If Baker the envoy succeeds, Baker's business partners stand to fail--and vice versa.

Have these conflicts influenced Baker's performance as envoy? Has he pushed as hard as he could have for debt forgiveness? We know that Iraq's steep war reparations to Kuwait have largely escaped public scrutiny--if Baker has steered the Bush Administration away from the reparations issue, for whom was he working at the time? The White House? Or Carlyle? Clark says questions like these are precisely why conflict-of-interest regulations exist. "We have reason to doubt that Baker is doing everything he could be doing on behalf of the United States because he has an interest in another side of the transaction."

This issue is all the more pressing because the file that President Bush handed to Baker is in disarray--ten months on, there is significantly less goodwill toward forgiving Iraq's debt than when Baker arrived. When President Bush appointed him, he praised Baker's "vast economic, political and diplomatic experience." And at first, Baker seemed to be making fast progress: After top-level meetings, France, Russia and Germany appeared open to canceling a large proportion of debt owed to them by Iraq, and Saudi Arabia and Kuwait seemed ready to follow.

But now, the negotiations are not only stalled, they seem to be going backwards. Kuwait, for its part, has hardened its position. "Debts remain debts," Foreign Minister Mohammad Sabah Al-Salem Al-Sabah said recently. And it has intensified its demands for Gulf War reparations, joining with Saudi Arabia, Iran, Jordan and Syria to claim an additional $82 billion from Iraq in environmental damages.

And the Europeans? At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on September 15, Senator Joseph Biden Jr. asked Ronald Schlicher, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iraq, about the status of the international negotiations.

"Has a single nation in the G8...formally said or requested of their parliaments to forgive Iraqi debt?" Biden asked.

"Not yet. No sir," Schlicher replied.

Not only has Baker failed to deliver any firm commitments for debt forgiveness, at the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund on October 2, it emerged that France had done an end run around Washington and was pushing a debt-relief deal of its own. French Finance Minister Nicolas Sarkozy announced that he had lined up Russia, Germany and Italy behind a plan to cancel only 50 percent of Iraq's debts--a far cry from the 90-95 percent cancellation Washington had been demanding. Yet Baker was nowhere to be found.

Busy negotiating the rules of the presidential debates, Baker has been MIA on the debt issue. Since he returned from his trip to the Middle East in January, the President's envoy has issued only two public statements on Iraq's debt, and he has been completely silent on the topic for the past six months--despite having publicly committed to getting the debt issue sewn up by the end of the year.

While this is bad news for Iraqis and for US taxpayers, it could be good news for Carlyle. A swift resolution to Iraq's debt crisis works against its financial interest: The longer the negotiations drag on, the more time the consortium has to convince the reluctant Kuwaiti government to sign on the dotted line. But if Iraq's debt is successfully wiped out, any proposed deal is off the table.

Baker's position as envoy has certainly been useful to his colleagues in the consortium. Whether Baker has helped solve Iraq's debt crisis is far less clear.

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27) Controversy over Iraq debt deepens
US investment firm linked to Bush envoy may never have told White House of planned backstairs deal
David Leigh
The Guardian
October 14, 2004

Allegations against the Carlyle Group, the giant US investment firm linked to President George Bush's Iraq debt envoy, James Baker, took a fresh turn last night.

It emerged that the firm may never have disclosed to the White House a planned backstairs deal in which Mr Baker figured.

A Carlyle consortium offered behind the scenes to use its influence to help Kuwait lay hands on $27bn (£15bn) in reparations.

This was regardless of pleas for international debt forgiveness which Mr Baker himself was uttering in an official capacity while touring the globe on behalf of Mr Bush.

Mr Baker is an "equity partner" in Carlyle, with a large shareholding of undisclosed size.

He has been accused of a conflict of interest since the Guardian published confidential documents on its website yesterday revealing the deal.

The files disclosed that last January a consortium including the Carlyle Group submitted a 65-page confidential proposal to Kuwait.

The consortium offered privately to use its high-level connections in Kuwait's favour, on the same day that Mr Baker himself flew there with the publicly announced intention of demanding that Kuwait forgive Iraq the bulk of its crushing debts.

A signed financial disclosure statement which Carlyle submitted to the White House on Mr Baker's unpaid appointment made no mention of the intended deal, although planning for it had been under way since a preliminary agreement with the Kuwaitis the previous July.

Asked if the White House had been informed at any point of Carlyle's dealing with the government of Kuwait, Carlyle's spokesman, Chris Ullman, at first said: "I'll get back to you". But 24 hours later he said he was still unable to answer.

Carlyle is an investment firm which has boasted a string of top political figures in its pay, including not only Mr Baker, but also George Bush Sr and the former Conservative prime minister John Major.

After the Guardian's publication of the documents, Carlyle yesterday sought to change position. It claimed that it "withdrew" from the consortium on Mr Baker's appointment.

This contradicted, however, its own spokesman's position the previous day, in which he said Carlyle had merely "restricted" its role in the consortium at that point

It also contradicts the consortium's own letter to Kuwait, in which it listed the Carlyle Group as a full consortium member.

Meanwhile, Kuwait itself has been sending indications that it may drop out of the deal. Yesterday the Kuwait ambassador to Washington, Salem Abdullah al-Jaber al-Sabah, said: "As far as my information is concerned, my government is not considering such proposals".

This has followed long delays in Kuwaiti responses, and increasingly frantic letters and visits from the consor tium. Last April the Kuwait foreign minister met another former secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, who was recruited to take a more prominent role in the consortium cause after Carlyle took a temporary back seat.

But the documents show she was unable to persuade the Kuwaitis to sign up to the consortium's scheme.

The entire debt forgiveness issue is still unresolved around the world, nearly a year after Mr Baker set out on what Mr Bush called his "noble mission".

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28) Potential conflict surfaces in US bid to ease Iraq's debt
By Farah Stockman
Boston Globe 
October 14, 2004

WASHINGTON -- When President Bush appointed a close family friend, former secretary of state James A. Baker III, as a special envoy to help reduce Iraq's foreign debt, Baker's monumental task was clear: to persuade the governments of the world, including Kuwait, to forgive billions that Iraq owes them.

But even as Baker traveled this year to Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, the company in which he is a partner stood to earn a lucrative fee through its involvement with a consortium of companies offering to help Kuwait collect $27 billion owed it by Iraq, according to individuals involved in the deal.

Baker, a voluntary envoy who reports directly to the president, is an equity partner with a significant financial stake in The Carlyle Group, a Washington-based merchant bank where Baker serves as a senior counselor.

A 65-page proposal to the Kuwaiti government by the unnamed consortium, which includes the Albright Group, touted the connections of Carlyle Group officials, including Bush's father, a former Carlyle adviser, and Baker himself, according to copies posted on the Internet by The Nation, a liberal weekly news magazine.

The proposal stated that Kuwait was in danger of losing billions that Iraq owes in both debt and war reparations, and said the consortium's "personal rapport with the stakeholders in the anticipated negotiations" will help "reach key decision-makers in the UN and in key capitals."

Yesterday, the Carlyle Group issued a statement saying it "does not want to participate in the consortium's work in any way, shape, or form."

Christopher Ullman, the Carlyle Group's vice president of corporate communications, also said that no one in the Carlyle Group had seen the proposal before it was submitted to Kuwait in January 2004, and did not agree with all that it said.

However, Ullman acknowledged that Frank Carlucci, a former defense secretary who is chairman emeritus of the group, had long been involved in discussions with Kuwait about the deal and that the consortium's proposal would have given Carlyle a lucrative arrangement.

He said, however, that Carlyle opted not to officially become part of the consortium because of the appearance of a conflict of interest with Baker and that, had the deal gone through, measures would have been taken to ensure that any gains the company would have gotten from the agreement would not have flowed to Baker.

"We were in discussions with these folks. There were legal documents that in the end we decided not to sign because of Baker's post," Ullman said.

Baker, secretary of state under Bush's father and head of the former president's campaigns, was appointed a volunteer envoy for President Bush last December. At the time, many critics expressed concern about a possible conflict of interest arising between his job as envoy and his widespread business contacts, which include a Texas law firm, Baker Botts, that represents numerous clients in the Middle East, as well as Halliburton.

Thomas Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a conservative ethics watchdog, spoke out against Baker's appointment in December and expressed dismay yesterday at the news of a potential conflict of interest.

"If it is true, it is the type of activity that ought to give pause to those concerned about ethics in government," Fitton said. "You have a revolving door of high-level officials . . . leaving government and going into that company. The Bush administration has been slow to realize the problems of using individuals linked to Carlyle or quickly going to Halliburton. They have got to understand that appearances matter."

The White House had no immediate response to the story, which broke hours before the final presidential debate. Fred Jones, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said he did not know if the White House was aware of the proposal by the private consortium, which does not appear to have been accepted by the Kuwaitis.

In a statement, Albright Group spokeswoman Jamie Smith confirmed that firm's involvement in the consortium and the authenticity of the proposal. The firm is headed by Madeleine Albright, former secretary of state.

"Our purpose in joining the consortium proposal was to help secure justice for victims of [Saddam Hussein's] invasion of Kuwait and ensure that compensation to Kuwaiti victims, fully consistent with US policy, be used to promote reconciliation, environmental improvements, and investment in Kuwait, Iraq, and the region," Smith said.

Numerous calls to Mark Curran, spokesman for the Coudert Brothers, another consortium member, were not returned yesterday. Calls to Baker's law firm also were not returned.

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29) U.S. to audit Halliburton Iraq contracts
Reuters
October 14, 2004

UNITED NATIONS - Washington has agreed to commission a special audit of sole-source Pentagon contracts granted to Halliburton Co. and paid for with Iraqi oil money, an international watchdog agency said on Thursday.

The U.S. government agreed to order the audit after complaints from the International Advisory and Monitoring Board about contracts the Pentagon awarded to Halliburton -- headed by Vice President Dick Cheney from 1995-2000 -- using Iraqi funds and without competitive bidding during the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.

The monitoring board, created by the U.N. Security Council to watch over U.S. management of Iraq's natural resources during the occupation, also released an audit of Iraq's oil accounts during the final six months of the occupation. It expressed reservations about the occupation authorities' tracking of cash receipts and oil export sales.

"We expressed a qualified audit opinion on the completeness of cash receipts. We further expressed a qualified audit opinion on the completeness of export sales of petroleum and petroleum products," KPMG said in a letter to the board.

The board has previously accused the Coalition Provisional Authority, which governed Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein up until last June, of sloppily managing billions of dollars of Iraqi oil money and moving at a glacial pace to guard against corruption.

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30) U.N. to Fund Oil-For-Food Investigation
By EDITH M. LEDERER
Associated Press
October 13, 2004

UNITED NATIONS - Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Wednesday said the United Nations will use $30 million in revenue from the U.N. oil-for-food program for Iraq to pay the initial bill for the independent investigation of corruption allegations in the program.

In a letter to the U.N. Security Council, Annan said money for the probe  headed by former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker  would come from an account earmarked to pay U.N. administrative and operational costs for the humanitarian program.

Volcker said in August he doesn't know how long it would take to complete the investigation, but estimated it would cost at least $30 million in the next year.

The United Nations paid several million dollars in the investigation's initial costs from its regular budget, to which all 191 U.N. member states contribute.

But U.N. associate spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the regular budget, now about $1.4 billion annually, couldn't absorb the inquiry's cost.

Since voluntary contributions were unlikely to pay for the Volcker panel, Annan decided to tap the oil-for-food account for administrative and operational costs. Dujarric said the account contains $300 million.

The oil-for-food program, which began in December 1996 and ended in November 2003, was launched by the U.N. Security Council to help Iraqis cope with U.N. sanctions imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Saddam Hussein's regime could sell unlimited quantities of oil provided the money went primarily to buy humanitarian goods and pay reparations to victims of the 1991 Gulf War.

Corruption allegations surfaced in January in the Iraqi newspaper Al-Mada, which published a list of about 270 former government officials, activists, journalists and U.N. officials from more than 46 countries suspected of profiting from Iraqi oil sales as part of the U.N. program.

Last week, a report by Charles Duelfer, the top U.S. arms inspector in Iraq, alleged the Iraqi government manipulated the U.N. program to acquire billions of dollars in illicit gains and to import illegal goods, including parts for missile systems.

He also accused the former head of the program, Benon Sevan, of accepting bribes in the form of vouchers for Iraqi oil sales  an allegation he has denied. He also charged the program was rife with alleged kickbacks for European and Arab countries and officials.

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31) Editorial: That Cloud Over the United Nations
New York Times
October 14, 2004

So much flak has been thrown at United Nations programs to constrain Saddam Hussein's oil revenues and weapons purchases by those charging corruption that the average citizen must be reeling in confusion. The report issued last week by Charles Duelfer, the chief United States weapons inspector, indicates that Iraq generated $11 billion in illicit revenue, imported forbidden military equipment and bribed companies, individuals and government officials around the world to support its efforts to end sanctions. The emerging scandal is already under multiple investigations in this country, in Iraq and at the United Nations. But nothing that has surfaced so far suggests that the sanctions were failing in their main purpose, that the Bush administration's precipitous invasion was necessary or that the United Nations is fatally hobbled by corruption or incompetence.

The sanctions imposed on Iraq after the first gulf war banned all Iraqi oil exports and prohibited imports of military value, including both conventional arms and "weapons of mass destruction." As the Iraqi population's suffering became apparent, the United States supported a program that allowed Iraq to sell oil. The proceeds went to a special account and were doled out by U.N. officials to buy food, medicine and other civilian items. That now-maligned program not only saved the lives of countless Iraqis, but it also kept the sanctions alive politically for years, right up until the invasion.

Now it seems clear that Iraq evaded the sanctions in two important ways. Mr. Hussein managed to sell oil outside the program, mostly by smuggling it to neighboring countries like Jordan, Turkey, Syria and Egypt. He also managed to import some conventional arms and components. None of these imports were related to nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. The sanctions, backed by the presence of weapons inspectors, did their main job.

Mr. Duelfer has expressed his personal opinion that the sanctions could not have been sustained indefinitely, and many Republicans now use that argument to justify the invasion. But any erosion of support for sanctions occurred before 9/11. Then the sentiment against Iraq hardened, and pricing rules in the oil-for-food program were tightened. Despite President Bush's claim that Mr. Hussein was gaming the program to get rid of sanctions, there was a diminishing likelihood that the sanctions would have been lifted anytime soon.

The most disturbing news so far points to the possible corruption of U.N. officials. Iraq was allowed to sell its oil under the U.N. program to any buyer it chose. One allegation is that Iraq would set a below-market price on its oil, thus allowing the recipient to resell it at a higher price and pocket the difference. This money may have been intended to encourage recipients - private individuals, companies and politicians - to favor ending the sanctions. Among the reported beneficiaries is the U.N. official in charge of running the oil-for-food program. Secretary General Kofi Annan has wisely asked the respected Paul Volcker to head an investigation.

A more difficult issue is posed by the behavior of U.N. Security Council members. Prominent figures in Russia and France were reportedly made the main beneficiaries of Iraq's largesse, presumably in the hope that they would influence their governments to favor Iraq. But these nations were sympathetic to Iraq from the start. And the accused French and Russians legitimately complain that the Duelfer report listed their names before any guilt had been established, while the names of American companies and individuals who got oil vouchers were kept secret, emerging only in news reports.

Security Council members ought to conduct their own investigations - and cooperate with Mr. Volcker's - to ascertain whether Iraqi oil money poked holes in the sanctions that all member nations were supposed to uphold. It's important to track down any corruption so future international efforts have the highest level of confidence. At the same time, however, everyone needs to remember that on the most critical count, sanctions worked.

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32) Iraqi TV delivers twists on reality and reality shows
By César G. Soriano
USA TODAY
October 13, 2004

BAGHDAD  In the living room of a modest downtown home, a 6-foot-tall drag queen is trying to kiss a 4-foot-tall man. Their antics are interrupted when they are caught by a woman who claims to be the drag queen's mother. "Cut!" the director yells. The room roars with laughter.

 This is the set of Iraq's most popular television show. Caricateera or Caricatures is Iraq's answer to Saturday Night Live, a variety show driven by biting political satire. It's must-see TV for millions of Iraqis every Friday at 2:35 p.m. Thousands more catch the show on bootleg videodiscs, which sell for less than $1.

The show's popularity stems from the shots it takes at topics ranging from Iraq's interim government and the nation's violence to the lack of electricity and the U.S. military presence. Such criticism was taboo under the regime of former leader Saddam Hussein.

Creator, director, writer and producer Ali Hanoon doesn't consider the show political satire.

"This is our existence," he says. "If the Ministry of Health isn't doing its job ... Iraqis may die. That's not a matter of politics. It's a matter of life.

"We're not laughing at our problems, we're laughing with them. We have a message to send. Our main duty is to put these issues in the spotlight to make the responsible people watch, and hopefully they will fix the problems."

Caricateera airs on Al-Sharqiya, or "The Eastern," Iraq's first independently owned satellite channel. The network was launched June 11 by Iraqi media mogul Saad al-Bazzaz. He is best known as the founder of Al-Azzaman, a London-based newspaper for Iraqi exiles. Al-Bazzaz has invested $30 million in the network, one of five in Iraq. But Al-Sharqiya is the only one with original, non-news programming.

Iraqi reality TV

Al-Sharqiya's lineup is laden with reality TV shows. In an Iraqi twist on ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, a show called Labor and Materials stars a home improvement crew that each week surprises a family by rebuilding its war-damaged home. On Ration Card, the network gives $1,000 to the lucky family whose food ration card number is drawn from a bin.

Shows premiering this month include Blessed Wedding, which pays $6,000 of a poor couple's wedding expenses. In exchange, the couple lets cameras film them from engagement to married life. The Gentlemen, a sort of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous meets Cribs, profiles Iraqis who have prospered from the booming economy.

There are a few dramas, including Al-Hawasin, a crime show about gangs and thieves. But Caricateera is the most-watched program. Hanoon, who also directs Labor and Materials, wakes at 4 a.m. on Tuesdays.
"Within four to five hours, the ideas appear on paper," he says. Rehearsals and taping are on Wednesdays.

Caricateera stars three Sunni Muslims, three Shiites and one Kurd. "It's just coincidence. We're all Iraqis.
We're all suffering through the same things," says Saed Khalifah, 41, who is a little person. He began his career in children's theater; now he's widely recognized. "I love giving autographs, especially to women," he says with a grin.

The others also have colorful backgrounds. Bushra Ismael, who declines to give her age and is the sole female cast member, is a radio DJ at night. Wallid Hassan, 45, was a combat cameraman during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88). Later, he entertained Iraqi troops in a traveling comedy show à la Bob Hope.

Equal-opportunity bashing

Every Wednesday, the cast assembles at a dusty house in a residential, palm-tree-lined neighborhood. Except for the news satellite truck parked in the driveway, there's no sign outside identifying what goes on inside the house, which serves as the network's administrative offices and studio. (The news studio and transmission site are in an office building several blocks away).

Over cigarettes and tea, the actors crowd around Hanoon's desk for the "table reading." They pore over the script, exchange ideas and alter the lines as they go, pausing frequently to compose themselves after breaking into hysterics. "The Iraqi citizen loves to laugh. They need a distraction," says actor Ali Jadar, 40.

The first skit today is an exaggerated parody of telenovelas, Latin American soap operas that are popular in the Middle East. Zuhair Rashid, wearing a dress with balled-up newspapers for breasts, plays Maria, a young woman in love with Khalifah's character.

Their cheesy lines are interspersed with commentary. A talkative character is told to go outside and make himself useful by operating the generator, a jab at Baghdad's decrepit power grid. Ismael's character tells Maria that her real mother was run over and killed by a government-owned truck, a reference to Iraq's failure to control poor drivers.

In the second skit, a government spokesman can't conduct a press conference because he has laryngitis, a biting attack on the tight-lipped Iraqi interim government.

Asked if such a show could have aired before the U.S.-led invasion, makeup artist and script contributor Nawar Saed makes a hand motion of her throat being cut. "Are you kidding? No way!" she says.

Caricateera is an equal-opportunity basher; no political party or ethnic group is free from ridicule. So far, only a few midlevel officials have called to complain on behalf of their bosses, who are never named on the show.

"Once, after we made fun of the Iraqi telephone network, the manager called and threatened to cut the telephone line in my house," says Hanoon. I told him, 'OK, go ahead. The line never works anyway.' "
Sometimes the complaints are written into the following week's script; few now dare to call.

After two hours of rehearsing, cast members don their costumes and move to the "studio," the living room and reception area of the house. Young men push the furniture aside and drape the windows with blankets and a mattress to block the light.

Hanoon yells "Cue!" to roll the lone camera. He frequently stops the action to give cast members tips or complain about their acting ability.

It takes two hours to film five minutes of footage. The crew finally finishes after midnight. A second crew will edit the show right up to its airtime.

"People consider this show a window into Iraq's problems," says Hanoon. "This program is a channel between the people and the government. Until there is a democratically elected government, we will represent the people."


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Washington Kurdish Institute

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