Iraqi Prime Minister Announces Cabinet Choices

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al- Maliki, left, arrives to attend the Iraqi parliament session in Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, Dec. 20, 2010

December 20, 2010 (KATAKAMI / VOA) --- Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al- Maliki, left, arrives to attend the Iraqi parliament session in Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, Dec. 20, 2010

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki submitted a list of his new Cabinet members late Monday, putting Iraqis one step closer to a new government after a 9-month political stalemate.

Iraq's Parliament Speaker Osama al-Nujaifi announced he had received a list of 42 ministers and top government posts.  He said parliament will vote on the new ministers on Tuesday.

Mr. Maliki submitted 13 "acting ministers" to fill his list until permanent choices were agreed upon.  Temporary members will fill Iraq's top three security posts.

Late last month, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani asked Mr. Maliki to form a new government as part of a deal to end the political stalemate after inconclusive elections.  Mr. Talabani gave the prime minister 30 days to choose a new Cabinet.

The Cabinet announcement comes a day after former prime minister Ayad Allawi said he will join Mr. Maliki's coalition government.

Mr. Talabani's request followed a power-sharing agreement among Iraq's Shi'ite, Kurdish and Sunni political leaders that put Mr. Maliki, a Shi'ite, on track for a second term as prime minister.

Mr. Allawi's Iraqiya coalition won two more seats than Mr. Maliki's State of Law coalition in the March 7 elections, but neither won enough for a parliamentary majority.

Mr. Allawi said Sunday he has agreed to accept a job in the government as head of a newly created strategic policy council that will limit Mr. Maliki's authority on various issues.  But he warned that his support could end if there is any change to the current power-sharing deal. (*)

Iraq's Iyad Allawi says will join Maliki government

Iyad Allawi, former prime minister and head of the secular Iraqiya coalition, speaks during a joint news conference with Speaker of Parliament Ayad al-Samarai (not in picture), in Baghdad October 7, 2010. (Photo :Reuters)

December 19, 2010 (KATAKAMI / Reuters) --- Former prime minister Iyad Allawi, whose cross-sectarian coalition won the most seats in Iraq's March election, said Sunday he will join Prime Minister Nuri
al-Maliki's government.

Allawi's decision, after weeks of wavering, cleared another potential hurdle in long and contentious negotiations between Iraq's Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish political blocs to form a new government after an inconclusive election.

Maliki is to unveil his cabinet in parliament Monday.

The participation of Allawi and Iraqiya could help ease concern about renewed bloodshed as Iraq emerges from years of war and U.S. troops withdraw completely by the end of 2011.

Allawi, a secular Shi'ite, had wanted to unseat Shi'ite premier Maliki after his Iraqiya bloc won 91 seats in the new parliament with strong backing from Iraq's minority Sunnis. He had warned that any attempt to marginalize his coalition could reinvigorate a weakened but still lethal insurgency.

Washington and Iraq's Sunni Arab neighbors were anxious to ensure that Allawi's bloc was represented in the government.

Allawi said he would accept a job as head of a national strategic policy council that was offered in a power-sharing deal involving Maliki and Kurdish president Masoud Barzani on November 10.

"We will accept the leadership of this council based on the agreements that have occurred and have been signed between me and Mr Barzani and Mr Maliki," Allawi told a news conference. "So this is concluded. If there is any change to the agreements on power, then there will be a different story all together."

Allawi had been indecisive about joining the government after the November 10 accord between the political factions that put Maliki on course for a second term as premier. The accord also returned Kurd Jalal Talabani to the presidency and gave Sunni Osama al-Nujaifi the speaker's post in parliament.  (*)

Russia calls on U.S. to probe human rights violations in Iraq

Russia calls on U.S. to probe human rights violations in Iraq, says Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko

October 28, 2010 (KATAKAMI / RIA NOVOSTI) --- Moscow has called on Washington to hold an investigation into mass human rights violations committed by U.S. servicemen during the military campaign in Iraq between 2004 and 2009, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said on Thursday.

Over 400,000 documents related to the U.S. military operation in Iraq were published on the whistleblower WikiLeaks website on Saturday. Some 1,500 other war logs will be published later.

"We call on the government of the United States to hold an investigation and hope that the results will be made public and the rights community and all interested international structures will be informed [of the results]," Nesterenko said in a statement on the website of the Foreign Ministry.

"Of course, information on the murders of civilians, torture and other degrading treatment of detainees which, according to the media, U.S. military commanders knew about, needs detailed investigation," Nesterenko said.

"This move will demonstrate the adherence of the United States to high standards in the sphere of human rights, which they [the United States] always call on other countries to maintain," Nesternko's statement read.

The move will also help the United States "pass a serious test" which the country will have to undergo soon under the United Nations Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review.

The Pentagon has repeatedly called on WikiLeaks to refrain from publishing war logs because, according to the U.S. administration, they threaten the safety of both servicemen and civilians in Iraq.

MOSCOW, October 28 (RIA Novosti)

British Deputy PM: Investigate Iraq Abuse Claims

Britain's Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg (File Photo)

 

 

October 24, 2010 (KATAKAMI / VOA) --- British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg says allegations of prisoner abuse and civilian killings in Iraq from a cache of leaked U.S. secret military documents are "extremely serious" and must be investigated.

Clegg told BBC television (The Andrew Marr Show) Sunday that while the actions of British forces in Iraq "need to be looked at," it would be up to the U.S. administration to answer for the behavior of its own troops.

Britain's Guardian newspaper has examined the files released by the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks in detail and says it found two cases in which Iraqis reported being abused by British soldiers.

Clegg's Liberal Democratic Party opposed the invasion of Iraq, and he has called the war illegal. His party, in opposition when the war began, is now part of Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative-led ruling coalition.

The Conservatives supported former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's decision to join the U.S. invasion.

Britain's Defense Ministry has joined U.S. officials in condemning the release of nearly 400,000 classified U.S. military documents from the Iraq war, saying it could put soldiers' lives at risk.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says the decision to release the documents "is about the truth" and that the documents contain no names or information harmful to any group or individual.

Among the revelations, the documents indicate more than 100,000 people were killed following the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, and that more than 60 percent of them were civilians. They also report 15,000 unknown or unreported deaths.

The files contain raw accounts from the battlefield, including incidents in which American soldiers killed civilians at checkpoints or fired on insurgents who had tried to surrender. The new documents also exhibit cases in which Iraqi forces abused Iraqi detainees.

The files indicate that while American forces informed Iraqi officials of the problems, they took no direct action to stop the abuse. There are also reports revealing Iran's role in the war - such as incidents in which detainees spoke of having Iranian help - and the discovery of Iranian-supplied weapons.

Earlier this year, WikiLeaks published some 77,000 secret documents relating to the war in Afghanistan, including the names of Afghan informants.

WikiLeaks data shows U.S. failed to probe Iraqi abuse cases

The Al-Jazeera television channel website, containing news coverage on secret US documents obtained by WikiLeaks, is seen on a computer screen at a cafe in Silver Spring, Maryland, on October 22, 2010. At least 109,000 people were killed, 63 percent of them civilians, in Iraq between the US-led invasion of March 2003 and the end of 2009, Al-Jazeera on Friday reported secret US documents obtained by WikiLeaks as saying. (Photo : JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images)

October 23, 2010 (KATAKAMI / Reuters) – WikiLeaks released nearly 400,000 classified U.S. files on the Iraq war on Friday, some detailing gruesome cases of prisoner abuse by Iraqi forces that the U.S. military knew about but did not seem to investigate.

The Pentagon decried the website’s publication of the secret reports — the largest security breach of its kind in U.S. military history, far surpassing the group’s dump of more than 70,000 Afghan war files in July.

U.S. officials said the leak endangered U.S. troops and threatened to put some 300 Iraqi collaborators at risk by exposing their identities.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said the documents showed evidence of war crimes, but the Pentagon dismissed the files as “ground-level” field reports from a well-chronicled war with no real surprises.
“We deplore WikiLeaks for inducing individuals to break the law, leak classified documents and then cavalierly share that secret information with the world,” Geoff Morrell, Pentagon press secretary, said.
The Iraq war files touched on other themes, including well-known U.S. concerns about Iranian training and support for Iraqi militias. The documents, which spanned 2003 to 2009, also detailed 66,081 civilian deaths in the Iraqi conflict, WikiLeaks said.

Assange told Al Jazeera television the documents had provided enough material for 40 wrongful killing lawsuits.

“There are reports of civilians being indiscriminately killed at checkpoints … of Iraqi detainees being tortured by coalition forces, and of U.S. soldiers blowing up entire civilian buildings because of one suspected insurgent on the roof,” WikiLeaks said in a statement.

In one 2007 case, according to the documents, an Apache helicopter killed two Iraqis suspects who had made signs that they wanted to surrender. The document said, “They can not surrender to aircraft and are still valid targets.” It can be seen here: here

Although the Iraq conflict has faded from U.S. public debate in recent years, the document dump threatens to revive memories of some of the most trying times in the war, including the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal.

CRACKED RIBS AND EXECUTIONS

Those media organizations given advance access to the database — 10 weeks in one case — broadly concluded that the documents showed that U.S. forces had effectively turned a blind eye to torture and abuse of prisoners by Iraqi forces.

In one case, an Iraqi policeman shot a detainee in the leg. The suspect was whipped with a rod and hose across his back, cracking ribs, causing multiple lacerations and welts.

“The outcome: ‘No further investigation,’” the Guardian wrote.

The documents also cited cases of rape and murder, including a videotaped execution of a detainee by Iraqi soldiers. That document can be seen here: here

The New York Times said that “while some abuse cases were investigated by the Americans, most noted in the archive seemed to have been ignored.” It said soldiers had told their officers about the abuses and then asked Iraqis to investigate.

Amnesty International condemned the revelations in the documents and questioned whether U.S. authorities had broken international law by handing over detainees to Iraqi forces known to be committing abuses “on a truly shocking scale.”

“These documents apparently provide further evidence that the U.S. authorities have been aware of this systematic abuse for years,” said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International’s director for the Middle East and North Africa.

The document release could also renew debate about foreign and domestic players influencing Iraq, which has been in a political vacuum since an inconclusive election in March.

Military intelligence reports released by WikiLeaks detail U.S. concerns that Iranian agents had trained, armed and directed death squads in Iraq, the Guardian reported.

It cited an October 31, 2005, report stating that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps “directs Iranian-sponsored assassinations in Basra.”

The U.S. envoy in Iraq said in August he believed groups backed by Iran were responsible for a quarter of U.S. casualties in the Iraq war.

More than 4,400 U.S. soldiers have been killed since the start of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. All U.S. forces are set to withdraw from Iraq by the end of next year.