Iraqi Parliament: US involved in terrorist acts
Even the US puppet government in Iraq is starting to speak...
Iraq: US involved in terrorist acts
Sun, 21 Oct 2007 22:19:30
Iraq's parliament says the US is involved in terrorist acts.
A report by Iraq's parliament confirms that the US military had cooperated with terrorists in a raid on a village in Diyala province.
Ali Adib, an MP form the United Iraqi Alliance, in a report to the Iraqi National Assembly on Sunday said that a probe launched by the parliament into the incident had proved that the US army helped terrorists attack the Shia village of Jizani al-Imam on October 15.
At least 26 civilians, including women and children, were killed in the raid, one of the bloodiest massacres since the US invasion of Iraq.
According to IRNA, after the report, Iraqi MP's considered a bill to end the presence of foreign forces in Iraq.
The report and the decision by the MPs represent another challenge to the embattled Bush's administration which is under fire over the unpopular war in Iraq.
The Iraqi parliament also condemned an attack on Baghdad's Sadr city by the US military which left 49 civilians dead.
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Iraqi leaders turn against US-created 'militias'
Oct 4, 2007
BAGHDAD (AFP) — The Iraqi government lashed out on Thursday at a US military initiative that pits civilians against Al-Qaeda fighters, accusing it of creating new militias in the war-weary nation.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's media adviser Yasin Majeed said the Shiite-led government was now trying to bring armed groups set up by the US military under the control of the Iraqi army.
"There are groups which have set up checkpoints without coordinating with the government," he said. "Apparently they coordinated with the (US military). They should be placed under army control."
Maliki and his Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) parliamentary bloc this week sharply criticised what it said was a US policy of creating armed groups outside the control of the central government.
"The (project) involves founding new militias outside the law. It is also an interference in the security and political affairs of the country and creates a serious situation now and in the future," the UIA said on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, Maliki delivered his own stinging condemnation of the US-led initiative.
"There shall be no handing over of weapons away from the control of the state," he told a news conference. "The state and the reconciliation committee formed by the government should be aware of those holding weapons."
The only volunteers, he added, should be "the security units of army and police where the sons of the region are taking part in its protection."
US Colonel Robert Menti told AFP this week that about 50,000 Iraqi civilians had joined 150 different initiatives across the country aimed at putting Al-Qaeda operatives to flight and restoring normal life to neighbourhoods.
Initiatives range from powerful tribal leaders banding together to hunt down extremists to local programmes in which volunteers wearing orange sashes and armed with AK-47s tip off police about suspect activity, or round up suspects.
The process was started by Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Reesha, a Sunni tribal leader in western Anbar province, who formed a powerful coalition of 42 tribes against Al-Qaeda, known as the Anbar Awakening Conference, in September 2006.
Abu Reesha was killed by a roadside bomb on September 13 of this year in an attack in the Anbar capital of Ramadi that was claimed by Al-Qaeda, which warned it would target others involved in similar initiatives.
On Thursday, a senior member of the Salaheddin Awakening Council, a coalition of tribes in northern Tikrit district based on the Anbar Awakening model, was seriously hurt when a roadside bomb exploded underneath his convoy near the central city of Samarra, a senior police officer told AFP.
Five of his bodyguards were killed in the attack.
Iraq's main Sunni Arab political bloc, the National Concord Front accused the UIA of sectarianism.
"It is regrettable that security is administered singlehandedly by one sect," the Front said in a statement.
"For four years our beloved country has been plagued by crimes of foreign terrorists which only retreated when the tribes interfered," it said.
"The Front sees the UIA statement a strategic retreat by the Alliance from important issues like national reconciliation."
According to influential Shiite MP Ali al-Adib, the Shiite backlash against the mainly-Sunni initiative was sparked by the actions of a group of tribesmen from Anbar who were brought into Baghdad's dangerous Saydiya neighbourhood to clamp down on Shiite militias.
"The groups started installing checkpoints and claiming to be members of 'Iraq's Awakening,'" Adib told AFP.
"They wear civilian clothes and are masked. Soon after they took to the streets of Saydiya, kidnappings of Shiites started," he said.
Menti, the US colonel who is deputy head of the military's Reconciliation Cell in Iraq, was adamant that the process is being driven by Iraqis and not the US military, which however funds the groups.
"These people are not militias," he said. "We are not arming them or giving them ammunition. We are not creating paramilitaries."
