Italy given 24-hour ultimatum; use of force denounced
LONDON: US arms experts are to confirm in the next fortnight that Saddam Hussein’s regime had no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction when it was invaded last year, the daily Guardian said yesterday.
In a report, it said it has learned that Iraq Survey Group set up by the US administration – charged with finding proof of Saddam’s quest for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons – will deliver its report “in two weeks’ time”.
“It will draw the final conclusion that there are no WMD in the country, although the threat of Saddam was real,” it said.
The Iraq Survey Group, comprising more than 1,000 mainly US intelligence and weapons experts, fanned out across Iraq in July 2003, four months after the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam.
In an interim report in October last year, its chief David Kay told the US Senate it had yet to find stocks of WMD, but added that it was not at a point where it could say definitely that such weapons did not exist.
Kay reiterated his position when he resigned three months later.
The Guardian said the release of the conclusions would put British Prime Minister Tony Blair in an awkward position just as his governing Labour Party holds it annual conference.
To a greater extent than US President George W. Bush, Blair sought to justify taking Britain into the Iraq war by citing the threat of Iraqi WMD and the danger they might fall into terrorist hands.
In July, a British inquiry into pre-war intelligence said Iraq – which under Saddam defied a string of UN resolutions on WMD – most likely possessed no useable weapons of mass destruction before the March 2003 invasion.
n BAGHDAD: Militants loyal to Al Qaeda’s number two have given Italy 24 hours to promise to release Muslim women prisoners in Iraq in exchange for details about two kidnapped women aid workers, in a statement published on a website yesterday. It was impossible to independently verify the authenticity of the statement.
“We ask Italy to promise unconditionally to release all Muslim women prisoners from Iraqi prisons. In turn we will give a little information about the Italian female hostages,” the Ansar Al Zawahiri group purportedly said.
A spokesman said no women were being detained by the multinational force in southern Iraq, where Italian forces are based, stressing that Rome was unable to comply with the demand even if it wanted to.
“The Italian government has 24 hours to reply to our demands, otherwise Italian people will never discover the fate of the Italian women hostages,” the statement said.
Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, both aged 29, were seized from their Baghdad office at gunpoint on Tuesday.
“We hope the Italian government will understand the lesson... For when we deliver a threat, we carry it out,” it said. The group also threatened Denmark, saying it was “now the Denmark’s turn to have its share of punishment” after “both Italy and Russia have been punished”.
Copenhagen maintains 500 soldiers under British command in southern Iraq.
In a videotape broadcast late Thursday on Al-Jazeera television, Al Qaeda number two Ayman Al Zawahiri forecast a US “defeat” in Iraq and Afghanistan.
n Gunmen disguised as Iraqi police officers shot dead three Lebanese nationals and seriously wounded a fourth in their Baghdad home yesterday, officials in Lebanon and Iraq said.
A spokesman at Iraq’s Interior Ministry said the attack appeared to be crime-related.
“Apparently, they were looking for something. They scattered things around. I don’t think it was the insurgents. I don’t know the motive yet, but I don’t think it is political,” Sabah Kadhim said.
An official at Lebanon’s Foreign Ministry in Beirut identified the dead as Jibran Badin, Karim Khoury and his wife Evelyn Abou Deeb, all of them working in food exports in Iraq.
n A leading Shiite preacher yesterday criticised the heavy use of force by the US military against insurgents in a northern Iraqi city, saying the Americans caused “catastrophes” that could have been avoided if Iraqis had been in charge of security.
Abdelaziz Al Hakim, leader of the biggest Shiite political party in Iraq, was referring to attacks by the US forces in Tal Afar, one of several cities which American officials acknowledged this week had fallen under insurgent control and become “no-go” zones.
Al Hakim, who is close to Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, said Iraqi security forces would be in a better position to deal with the local population. “Since the first day after (Saddam Hussein’s) regime collapsed, Tal Afar had terrorist groups and this is not new,” said the black-turbaned cleric, who heads the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. – Agencies


photo: Iraqis shout slogans against Muqtada Al Sadr in Najaf yesterday. About 1,000 protesters marched through Najaf's old quarter to demand that Al Sadr and his aides leave the city. – AP
Last update on: 11-9-2004