SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #854 (22), Tuesday, March 25, 2003
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TITLE: Coalition Moves on Toward Baghdad
AUTHOR: By Ellen Knickmeyer and Chris Tomlinson
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEAR KARBALA, Iraq - Coalition troops pressed toward Baghdad with new wariness Monday as militiamen loyal to Saddam Hussein proved they were not a beaten force and sandstorms snarled the advance.
Iraq claimed to have shot down two U.S. helicopters and taken two pilots prisoner, a day after more than 20 Americans were killed or captured. And a British soldier was killed Monday in southern Iraq, British defense officials said.
Facing a pattern of deadly ambushes and ruses, and with many of Hussein's supporters discarding their uniforms in favor of civilian clothes, coalition forces responded with tough new tactics in the south. U.S. officials also confirmed that forces, including British and Australian troops, were operating in the north and west of Iraq. Some were special forces traveling in small teams.
Hussein, in an appearance that seemed calculated to show he remained at the helm, sought to rally his people Monday with a televised speech.
Iraqi television later showed images of what appeared to be a downed U.S. Apache attack helicopter sitting largely undamaged in a grassy field. Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf claimed peasants had shot down two Apaches, and two pilots were in custody.
U.S. General Tommy Franks, the commander in charge of the allied forces, later confirmed that one helicopter and its two pilots were missing in action.
A brutal sandstorm with howling winds stalled U.S. troops about 80 kilometers south of Baghdad, near Karbala, a city holy to Iraq's majority Shiite Muslims. As the U.S. Army's 7th Infantry Regiment pressed north, Iraqi militiamen shot mortars at a supply convoy. There were no casualties.
Armed members of Hussein's Baath party militia have increasingly been attacking coalition supply lines in this way.
With tension about such attacks mounting, U.S. Marines operating in the south took a tough line with Iraqis they encountered Monday, forcing men from vehicles, questioning them and then slashing their tires to make sure they wouldn't harass other convoys.
But coalition officials rejected suggestions that continued Iraqi resistance or casualties had knocked war plans off balance.
"I think that within three days of real military operations beginning, the idea that somehow people are losing confidence or heart is nonsense," British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon said. "This is a difficult, demanding, complex, sophisticated military operation. It is not going to be over in a matter of days."
British spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Ronnie McCourt confirmed coalition forces had exchanged new fire Monday with Iraqis on the outskirts of Basra, Iraq's main southern city, where the allies earlier captured an airport and a key bridge. Commanders held off storming the city, hoping its Iraqi defenders would give up, but they have held firm.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan warned of a humanitarian crisis in the Iraqi city of Basra, where coalition forces were involved in fierce fighting. "Urgent measures" were needed to restore the city's electricity and water supply, he said.
Despite days of bombardment, Hussein's regime is able to issue orders to its military units, although the command network is "less robust," Franks said. "They still do have a means, a somewhat limited means, of communications," Franks said.
Even though Hussein's government was able to issue instructions, "many orders which have been given by this regime have not been obeyed by a great number of his subordinates," he said.
In another signal the situation remained intense, the coalition canceled press tours of the strategic southern port of Umm Qasr and the Rumeila oil fields, which Iraqi forces set ablaze early in the ground war. Fighting in that area was fierce enough to drive civilian firefighters away.
In London, Hoon said he was not convinced the address was current. "The contemporary events referred to ... did not appear to me to be unambiguously contemporary," he said.
Nine U.S. Marines died and a dozen American soldiers were missing and presumed captured after surprise engagements near An Nasiriyah, a crossing point over the Euphrates River. Additionally, two U.S. Marines were killed in accidents, military officials said Monday.
A British soldier was killed Monday in combat near the port of Az Zubayr in southern Iraq, the first British combat death since the war began, the Ministry of Defense said in London. Sixteen other British service personnel have died in two helicopter accidents and the downing of a British jet by friendly fire from a U.S. missile battery.
In images shown on Iraqi television Sunday, five captured U.S. soldiers - four men and a woman - appeared frightened but resolute. Arab television also showed what it said were four American dead in an Iraqi morgue.
Iraqi officials have offered repeated assurances that the prisoners would be treated according to the Geneva Convention. Franks said his forces have captured about 3,000 Iraqi prisoners. The International Committee of the Red Cross said Monday that it had not been granted access to prisoners held by either side.
In Baghdad, black smoke from fires set to obscure targets concealed the sun and gave the capital a bleak, midwinter atmosphere. Despite violent bombardments early Monday, people were out and some shops were open - though mostly those selling suitcases.
Outside An Nasiriyah, the mood among U.S. Marines was somber as news spread about comrades killed while trying to take in prisoners of war. Lieutenant General John Abizaid of Central Command said the faked surrender had sparked the "sharpest engagement of the war thus far." For leaders of the coalition, thoughts that Hussein's defenders would surrender easily have faded away.
"Clearly they are not a beaten force," said General Richard Myers, chairperson of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. "This is going to get a lot harder."
U.S. officials did herald one promising discovery: a suspected chemical factory near the Najaf, a Shiite city about 160 kilometers from Baghdad. A senior official said the plant is being evaluated and that American forces are chasing down leads from captured Iraqis and documents on other possible chemical and biological weapons sites. But as of Monday, Washington had not confirmed the presence of any weapons of mass destruction, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
In the north, coalition warplanes bombed military barracks near the Kurdish-held town of Chamchamal, not far from the Iraqi oil center of Kirkuk. Frightened residents fled the area. "People are evacuating, but not because of the bombing. They are afraid Saddam will respond with chemical weapons," said Ahmad Qafoor, a teacher.
Elsewhere, a U.S. missile struck a Syrian passenger bus near the Iraqi border, killing five and injuring 10, Syria's official news agency reported Monday. U.S. Central Command said it had no information about the report. The bus, loaded with Syrians fleeing the war in Iraq, was struck Sunday on the Iraqi side of the border, the agency said.
TITLE: Chechnya 'Yes' Vote Arouses Suspicion
AUTHOR: By Timur Aliyev and Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: GROZNY - Turning out in record numbers, Chechens gave overwhelming support for a new constitution that the Kremlin hopes will enhance stability to Chechnya, according to preliminary results released Monday night.
With ballots from 292 of the republic's 418 polling stations counted, 96.1 percent were in favor of the constitution confirming Chechnya's status as part of Russia, the Central Election Commission said on its Web site. Only 2.6 percent voted "no."
A similarly large number of voters on Sunday approved measures paving the way for presidential and parliamentary elections, the commission said.
Turnout was 85 percent.
President Vladimir Putin said the results "surpassed all expectations" and showed the rebels have no popular support.
"All who have not laid down arms are now fighting not only for their false ideals but also against their own people," Putin said at a regular cabinet meeting.
"The Chechen people have done this in a direct and very democratic way," he said.
Observers and analysts said, however, that Moscow has a history of rigging elections in Chechnya and that the preliminary numbers appeared to be too good to be true.
An informal poll of 50 Grozny residents on Monday found that Chechens are split about the credibility of the figures. But they said they were more concerned about peace than vote-rigging.
"The reported turnout of 85 percent is farfetched," said Ruslan Lalayev, a journalist at Grozny's Stolitsa-Plus newspaper. "When I went to a polling station at Grozny's School No. 7 in the afternoon, there were just a few people there."
Ruslan Badalov, head of the pro-rebel Chechen Salvation Committee, said the numbers were inflated and that most of Chechnya's 540,000 eligible voters had boycotted the referendum.
However, Zarema Aubova, an official in the education department at Grozny's City Hall, insisted Monday that the figures appeared to be accurate.
"You could see lines of voters at the polling stations," she said.
The large turnout and huge number of ballots marked "yes" are remarkable for a vote in Russia, said Oleg Orlov, head of the Memorial human rights group.
"What happened in Chechnya can be explained in two ways only: Either the ballot boxes were illegally stuffed with forged ballots or Chechens felt they had no choice but to vote in favor of the constitution," Orlov said.
"In any case, there was no free vote in Chechnya," he said.
No complaints of voting violations were reported Sunday or Monday.
A delegation of observers from the Commonwealth of Independent States declared the vote valid Monday.
"The authorities of the Russian Federation and the Chechen republic gave Chechen citizens the opportunity to participate in a free and independent vote," they said in a statement carried by Interfax.
European countries are waiting to receive a report from observers with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, officials at OSCE headquarters in Vienna, Austria, and at the European Commission's Russia office said Monday.
The findings will not be disclosed for at least several days, an OSCE spokesperson said. Hrair Balian, the head of the OSCE mission to Chechnya, said Sunday that "the organization and conduct of the referendum were not without shortcomings."
Chechnya had a history of rigged elections in the 1990s, and this raises doubts about Sunday's referendum, said Vladimir Pribylovsky, political analyst with the Panorama think tank.
In 1995, during the first Chechen war, the pro-Kremlin Our Home Is Russia party got 48 percent of the Chechen vote in parliamentary elections - more votes than in any other region. A year later, President Boris Yeltsin, who ordered the military campaign, won 73 percent of the Chechen vote in a run-off with Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov.
Putin won half of the Chechen vote in the presidential election in March 2000 - despite his tough talk about Chechnya and his role in the launch of the second military campaign six months earlier. The second-place presidential candidate, Zyuganov, got 11 percent.
Voter turnout tends to fall between 30 percent and 40 percent during regional elections. When a simple majority is required - as on Sunday - winning candidates rarely secure more than 50 percent to 60 percent of the vote. An exception came last year when incumbent Kemerovo Governor Aman Tuleyev won nearly 94 percent of the vote.
Several Chechens interviewed Monday said that regardless of whether the referendum was on the up-and-up, they would support it if it brought order to the republic.
"I'm not asking myself whether the results of the referendum are correct," said Magomed Viskhadzhiyev, a student at Grozny University. "Those of us here think about one thing only: We need law and order. We cast ballots for a constitution that symbolizes order."
TITLE: Lenenergo Boss Says Ready To Run for Governor
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: While no one seems willing to come right out and announce their intention to try to win the job, it appears that the race to succeed Governor Vladimir Yakovlev is starting to take shape.
On Thursday, Andrei Likhachyov, the head of local energy utility Lenenergo and a close ally of national utility UES chief, Anatoly Chubais, said that he had his eyes on the governor's office. Like Valentina Matviyenko, whose appointment as presidential representative in the Northwest region sparked speculation that she was also being positioned for a run at the job, Likhachyov is not making any concrete commitments on the subject.
Without saying that he would run in the May 2004 gubernatorial elections , Likhachyov said that he "would definitely become [governor] some day."
The announcement came on the same day that Likhachyov unveiled for city lawmakers his program for reforming the city's utilities system, suggesting that the state-owned monopoly providers that exist now be broken up into a number of private companies, which would contract services out to professional contractors and be responsible for making sure standards are met.
"This all depends on people's opinions - if people think that the problems I discussed today with the deputies ... are the most vital and have to be solved first, then I think that they would agree that the methods I offered are necessary for St. Petersburg," Interfax quoted Likhachyov as saying on Thursday.
He also admitted that the program would be part of the program of one of the gubernatorial candidates in May 2004, but would not say that he himself would be that candidate.
"The actual supporter of [the program] is not that important," Likhachyov said.
Likhachyov, 37, was the vice governor under Yakovlev responsible for the City Property Committee before moving to his Lenenergo post in 1999, but has had a number of battles with Smolny since leaving.
In 2001, City Hall touched off a battle with Likhachyov and Lenenergo and Likhachyov when it set up St. Petersburg Electric Network, which was to control the city's electricity-transmission infrastructure, leaving the utility to deal strictly with energy generation. The move included the transfer of the 150-million-ruble ($4.7 million) transmission network from Lenenergo to the new entity. Last year, Lenenergo filed suit to have the property returned. In response, Smolny initiated law suits at the end of last year calling for the privatization process at Lenenergo to be reversed. Both cases are still in court.
The office of the present governor had a lukewarm reaction to Likhachyov's comments and the prospect of him running next year.
"I don't have much to comment. Every candidate is allowed to have a program and, if [Likhachyov] has one, that's fine," City Hall spokesperson Alexander Afanasyev said in a telephone interview on Monday. "According to the national [election] laws, everyone of proper age can vote and stand for office. Likhachyov is of proper age, so he can be elected."
But Boris Vishnevsky, a member of the Yabloko faction in the Legislative Assembly, said that Likhachyov would have no chance in winning in a campaign for governor because he heads a company that many city voters associate with constant increases in utilities payments.
"As long as he occupies the position he does now, it won't work. This is a dark shadow that will follow him and he can't do much about it," Vishnevsky said in a telephone interview on Monday. "Over the last three years, electricity bills have jumped by 300 percent, while those for hot water and heating are six times higher now than three years ago. This all happened in a situation where inflation for the three-year period was an estimated 60 percent, and the average income has risen by just 2.5 times."
Leonid Kesselman, a political analyst at the Sociology Department of Russian Academy of Sciences, said that Likhachyov is likely just the first of a string of candidates that will appear on the St. Petersburg political horizon over the next year running up to the elections.
"I think that he has a chance, but a lot will depend on external factors, including the approval of his candidacy by some people located in another Russian city," Kesselman said, referring to Moscow's influence in the coming race, during a telephone interview on Monday, "Usually there are two stages involved in getting this approval. First is the permission to try, and then permission to run. But, before any of this happens, I believe that different candidates could appear, both from here and from Moscow."
According to an All Russia Center for Public Opinion (VTSIOM) poll in September, Likhachyov was the first choice of a mere 4.1 percent, compared to 41.8 percent who favored Yakovlev. That number was more than double the 1.9 percent of people surveyed in August who said that Likhachyov would be their first choice. Yakovlev is not eligible to run for a third term.
Beside Likhachyov and Matviyenko, a number of names have surfaced as possible gubernatorial candidates in political circles, including Zhores Alferov, a physicist and Nobel laureate, who would garner significant support from Communist voters; Lyudmila Narusova, the Federation Council representative for the Tuva Region and the widow of former Mayor Anatoly Sobchak; Sergei Stepashin, former Russian Prime Minister and presently the head of the federal Audit Chamber; and Dmitry Kozak, the deputy head of the presidential administration.
"That bench of [candidates] is long enough to work with," Kesselman said.
TITLE: New Foreigners Law Targets Minorities
AUTHOR: By Robin Munro
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Millions of Russian-speaking former citizens of the Soviet Union play a key part in the Russian economy and send billions of rubles to their own republics by living and working in Russia.
For many it is a key to survival. The better-off build dachas. The poor drive trolleybuses, sell vegetables in open markets and bring in the harvest in agricultural regions.
About a quarter of the households in Armenia and Azerbaijan are dependent on transfers from family members working in Russia, said Zhanna Zaionchkovskaya, head of the Academy of Sciences' Center for Migration Studies. Families in other republics, including Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova and Tajikistan, are count on the money, but there are no reliable figures on the amounts involved, she said in a telephone interview.
Few of the migrants are registered in Russia, leaving them open to exploitation and extortion from employers and the law-enforcement agencies.
Still others are ethnic Russians who did not manage to get citizenship before it became more difficult last year and many have been living and working in the country for years.
The law on foreigners, introduced in November, is intended to either legalize these workers, or kick them out. The first manifestation of the law is the migration card, which became compulsory for anyone entering Russia after February 14.
Nationalities Minister Vladimir Zorin said last year that 2 million Armenian and 1.5 million Azeri migrants are in Russia, while the next-largest groups are from Ukraine, Moldova and Tajikistan, Interfax reported.
Boris Gryzlov, head of the Interior Ministry in charge of the Federal Migration Service, the body that oversees migrant issues, refers to harsh sanctions against those who fail to fulfill the requirements of the law.
A computer database on all foreigners will be in place by the end of the year; this will show "the desirability or undesirability of having a specific foreign citizen on our territory," he said.
The cards will give the authorities some ability to track CIS citizens who, apart from Belarussians and Georgians, do not need visas to enter Russia. It is not clear how the authorities intend to control the nation's long borders, including the 6,846-kilometer border with Kazakhstan and the 1,576-kilometer Ukrainian border, which CIS citizens can cross legally.
The Interior Ministry said the law will protect jobs for Russian citizens and that foreigners are responsible for 40 percent of crime in Moscow.
Part of the clampdown is also aimed at making employers responsible for hiring workers that have no work permits or pay income tax.
"Changes in legislation relating to the arrangement of labor for foreign citizens will result in maximum difficulty for employers wishing to take these workers," Alexander Yermolenko, legal adviser at audit and consulting firm FBK, said at a seminar.
The law on foreigners was passed on July 25, 2002, but almost a year later several accompanying regulations have still not been issued and there are signs of second thoughts from officials.
Labor Minister Alexander Pochinok said in February said that fining employers and insisting they pay taxes on behalf of illegal workers, as envisaged in the law, could drive businesses into bankruptcy.
Natalya Shcharbakova, coordinator of the migration program at the International Labor Organization's Moscow office, said that rather than take jobs away from Russians, the CIS migrants do work that Russians don't want to do, or won't do for the money offered.
Galina Vitkovskaya, head of the migrant labor program at the International Organization for Migrants, and the center for migration studies' Zaionchkovskaya said surveys showed that the average wage of migrants working in the construction industry or on production lines is about $200 per month.
"The migrants come here because there are no jobs at home. Employers are interested in illegal employees because it relieves them of a great number of obligations," Vitkovskaya said.
She doubted that the law would reduce the number of migrant laborers.
"The shadow labor market exists not because of migration, but because our economy is not yet a market economy and is unable to drag the labor market out of the shadows," she said. "Enterprises have a lot of trouble getting labor."
"The sums sent by relatives abroad are undoubtedly important," the Moldavian Embassy said in a written response to faxed question. "Often this is the only means of support for a family."
Representatives of some CIS countries have welcomed the introduction of the law as bringing order, but also express fears that it can be misused by law enforcement agencies.
"There was complete anarchy and lack of human rights for migrants, legal or illegal, in Russia," the Azerbaijani Embassy's Agamaliyev said in a telephone interview. "All the measures taken came a little late - in the meantime crime has developed."
Vitkovskaya said that although the law is similar to those in other countries, it treats Russia as if it were "somewhere in Central Europe" and disregards Russia's links to other countries of the former Soviet Union.
A better way to address concerns would have been to offer a mass amnesty and to create a unified labor market in the CIS, as Russian leaders have sometimes suggested, she added.
TITLE: Senate Set for Swift Arms-Treaty Ratification
AUTHOR: By Jim Heintz
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Russian parliament's upper chamber plans to call Tuesday for the quick ratification of a U.S.-Russian nuclear arms treaty despite objections from the lower house because of the war in Iraq.
The foreign-relations committee of the Federation Council, the upper house, decided Monday to make the move because of the treaty's value to Russia, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
The report quoted Federation Council speaker Sergei Mironov as saying the treaty "affects Russia's interests, including the improvement of our defense capability" and should be ratified as soon as possible.
Last week, the Duma decided to put off consideration of ratifying the so-called Treaty of Moscow because of the imminent prospect of a U.S. assault on Iraq.
Now, with the war under way, the Duma intends to consider the treaty "only after the United States and Great Britain bring the Iraq issue back into diplomatic channels, start coordinating their steps with the U.N. Security Council and take the opinion of the global community into account," the head of the chamber's foreign affairs committee, Dmitry Rogozin, said Monday, according to the Interfax news agency.
The Federation Council's move for a quick ratification vote would be irresponsible because "there is no doubt it will not be ratified amid the current outpouring of outrage over the U.S.-led strike on Iraq," Rogozin was quoted as saying.
Under Russian law, the Duma has to vote to ratify the treaty before the upper house can consider it, so the Federation Council's demand to speed up the process would not be binding.
The postponement reflected the tensions between Washington and the Kremlin, even as the two country's leaders have pursued closer ties. Moscow bridles at what it regards as a U.S. penchant for unilateral action - such as its withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, as well as launching the attack on Iraq without Security Council sanction.
The treaty, signed last year by President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President George W. Bush, was seen as more advantageous to Russia than the now-defunct START II agreement, which specifically banned Russia from deploying land-based missiles with multiple warheads.
The new deal leaves it to each nation to decide which weapons it will scrap. That will allow Russia to keep its Soviet-built multi-warhead SS-18 and SS-19 missiles at the core of its nuclear arsenal.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Not Welcome
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Legislative Assembly deputy Sergei Andreyev is proposing that the legislature pass an official request to President Vladimir Putin to cancel an invitation to U.S. President George W. Bush during the 300th-anniversary celebrations in May.
"Let's make sure that Bush won't get our bread and salt," Andreyev's press service quoted him as saying on Monday.
"This is the only way for St. Petersburg residents to express their opinion iof the actions of the American president: Bush is wreaking havoc Iraq. There are already civilian victims there," he said. "Beside this, the consequences for our economy will be harsh."
According to Andreyev's press-service, the draft request will be submitted for inclusion on the agenda for Wednesday's assembly session.
Monument Defiled
ST. PETERSBURG (AP) - Vandals in St. Petersburg defiled a monument to victims of political repression under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, a human-rights group said Monday.
The Memorial human-rights group said the vandals wrote "Long live the great Stalin!" on the monument.
It was the fourth act of vandalism on the monument since the fall.
"This indicates the general condition of society, which has lost the culture of memory, and understanding of its own past," said Irina Flige, head of the St. Petersburg branch of Memorial. She said Memorial members would clean off the graffiti like after previous incidents.
Pumpkin Lawsuit
MOSCOW (SPT) - A resident of the Moscow region plans to sue a seed firm after he was knocked unconscious by a giant pumpkin he grew on his balcony, the Pravda newspaper reported.
Nikolai Salakhov said the instructions on the seed packet told him to expect "decorative vegetables the size of a pear" on meter-high plants. But instead the plants produced pumpkins weighing almost 20 kilograms, one of which fell on his head and knocked him out as he sat on his balcony, Pravda said.
Andrei Tumanov, chairperson of the Moscow Union of Gardeners, told the newspaper that almost half of all seeds available on the Russian market "did not meet gardening standards."
TITLE: U.S., Russia Tension Rises Over Iraq War
AUTHOR: By Simon Saradzhyan
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Washington and Moscow traded barbs over Iraq on Monday, with U.S. President George W. Bush complaining that Russian companies were selling defense equipment to Baghdad and President Vladimir Putin warning that steps must be taken to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe in Iraq.
In a telephone call initiated by Washington, Bush told Putin he was concerned that a Russian company was helping Iraq jam navigation signals used by U.S. warplanes and cruise missiles, White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer said.
Fleischer said at an earlier briefing that the United States has credible evidence that Russian companies have provided assistance and prohibited hardware to the Iraqi regime, including night-vision goggles, GPS jammers and anti-tank guided missiles.
"These actions are disturbing, and we have made our concerns clear to the Russian government. We've asked the Russian government that any such ongoing assistance cease immediately," he said.
Putin used the phone call to warn Bush about a looming humanitarian catastrophe brought about by war.
"Putin confirmed Russia's stated position on an Iraq settlement and stressed the need to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe in the region," the Kremlin press service said in a statement.
The Kremlin gave no indication of how Putin responded to Bush's complaint, but a number of government and defense-industry officials indignantly denied that Russian companies have supplied defense equipment to the Iraqi regime in violation of UN sanctions.
"Russia rigorously observes all its international obligations and has not supplied Iraq with any equipment, including military, in breach of the sanctions regime," Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said, responding to a Sunday report in The Washington Post.
The newspaper quoted Bush administration sources as saying that the Instrument Design Bureau of Tula, or KBP, and Aviakonversiya in Moscow have supplied Iraq with anti-tank missiles and jamming equipment, respectively. The report said Aviakonversiya staff were in Iraq training specialists how to operate the 3-kilogram devices.
While dismissing the report, Ivanov said that if sanctions violations are found, the guilty parties will be punished in accordance with Russian law. Ivanov's denial was echoed by Putin aide Sergei Yastrzhembsky and the government's deputy chief of staff, Alexei Volin.
Iraq's ambassador to Russia, Abbas Kunfuth, also dismissed the Washington Post report as propaganda.
Aviakonversiya and KBP officials also denied selling any equipment.
KBP's foreign trade chief, Leonid Roshal, told Itar-Tass that no Kornet anti-tank missiles had been sold to Iraq. The company's first deputy director, Alexei Butenko, said "nothing ever" had been sent to Iraq. The United States slapped sanctions on KBP in 1999 after it sent Kornets to Syria.
Aviakonversiya director general Oleg Antonov described the report as "another CIA provocation."
Antonov said in a telephone interview that his company has not supplied Iraq with any jammers or sent any personnel to train Iraqi troops.
He said Russian law enforcement agents checked and cleared his company after the U.S. State Department summoned Russia's ambassador to the United States, Yury Ushakov, in September to protest the alleged sales.
Antonov noted, however, that Aviakonversiya's jamming devices cannot be regulated under Russian law because they are assembled outside Russia. He confirmed his company has an office in Moscow but would not elaborate on where the devices are assembled.
Aviakonversiya has had to deal with accusations of dealing with to Iraq before. Kuwait's Al-Qabas newspaper reported in 2000 that Iraq had used two Aviakonversiya jamming devices to force U.S. fighters to abort a patrol of a no-fly zone.
Russian officials and Antonov denied the report.
The Defense Ministry and Rosoboronexport, the state-owned company that accounts for most of Russia's arms exports, also rejected the Washington Post report.
The White House's claims are far from a sign that a major crisis is brewing in U.S.-Russian ties, said Ivan Safranchuk, a researcher at the Moscow office of the Center of Defense Information.
"There is a cloud, but it is not raining," he said.
Safranchuk noted that Kremlin officials have been careful not to antagonize the Bush administration in their criticism of the U.S.-led campaign in Iraq.
Putin, who condemned the war as "a big political mistake" last week, made what might have been a conciliatory gesture Monday and urged Iraq to obey international conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war.
"We are aware of the conditions in which POWs are being held by the U.S. side," Putin told Cabinet members. "I hope that the Iraqi side will also meet all the requirements of international law on keeping POWs."
Putin spoke after hearing a report by Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu on efforts to set up camps in Iran for Iraqi refugees.
In another sign that Moscow does not want to strain relations with Washington, the Federation Council, the upper house of parliament, announced Monday that it plans to call for the swift ratification of a U.S.-Russian nuclear arms reduction treaty. The lower house of parliament, the State Duma, decided last week to postpone the ratification of the Moscow Treaty to protest the war in Iraq.
Meanwhile, the Foreign Ministry renewed its calls Monday for an end to the military campaign in Iraq and urged that the Iraq crisis be put back on the agenda of the UN Security Council.
"The United Nations and the Security Council cannot, of course, remain without getting involved in what is happening in Iraq," Foreign Minister Ivanov said.
However, even if convened, the council might fail to pass any resolution condemning the war. Russia, France and Germany, which oppose the use of force in Iraq, tried to convene a council session last week, but their bid fell through due to opposition by the United States and Britain.
Acknowledging the threat of a continued deadlock, Ivanov said changes needed to be made to the Security Council. He said Russia and "its partners" were discussing possible changes.
"Russia has stressed before that the UN and its Security Council need to be reformed to reflect the real situation in the world," he said, without elaborating.
Earlier Monday, Deputy Foreign Minister Yury Fedotov suggested that the Security Council provide an assessment of the war - which in diplomatic language means that the council should hold the United States and Britain responsible for the military campaign and its consequences.
TITLE: Iraq's Neighbors Bracing for Refugees
AUTHOR: By Niko Price
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: AL-RUWEISHID, Jordan - The beige tents sit in rows on the cold, wind-swept plain. A giant bubble houses a Japanese health clinic. Water tanks protrude from the black gravel. This refugee camp is ready to receive thousands of fleeing Iraqis.
So far, there isn't a single one.
Refugee officials say poverty, fear, ignorance - and possibly intimidation - are keeping people home, a contrast with the 1991 Gulf War, when some 1.8 million Iraqis fled the country.
"I think everyone's breathing a sigh of relief," said Chris Lom, spokesperson for the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration. "On the basis of the last Gulf War ... everyone's surprised."
Aid officials planned for 600,000 people to flee the country in the initial stages of war - about half to Iran, and the rest to Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria.
But five days into the war, there are no refugees in Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia or Jordan. The only reported refugees are 14 people - two families - who fled the bombing of Mosul in northern Iraq and headed northwest into Syria on Sunday.
At many border crossings, traffic is heavier with people heading into Iraq than going out. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Iraqis have returned in recent days from Jordan, saying they want to help their country fight back the invading army.
"Iraqis are not afraid. Nobody wants to leave their country, their homes," said Makki Qubaysi, a 32-year-old Iraqi driver who crossed into Syria but said he was heading right back home.
Officials fear an exodus could develop as the fighting intensifies.
"We have to plan for people to run in every direction... because of chemical weapons, because of fear, because of lack of food," said Peter Kessler, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. He warned specifically about fierce fighting near the poor southern Iraqi city of Basra.
TITLE: U.S., Turkey Still Struggle Over Troop Intervention
AUTHOR: By Harmonie Toros
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ISTANBUL, Turkey - A U.S. special envoy rushed back to Turkey but failed to reach agreement Monday on Turkey's plans to send troops into northern Iraq.
Fearing friendly-fire incidents with U.S. forces and clashes with Iraqi Kurds, the United States opposes Turkish intervention. U.S. President George W. Bush said Sunday that his administration had made clear that it expected the Turks to keep out of northern Iraq.
U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, who was accompanied by U.S. Ambassador Robert Pearson and American military officials in his meetings with Turkish leaders, said afterward that no agreement had been reached. He pledged to hold more talks Tuesday.
Opposition to a Turkish intervention increased Monday with Germany and Belgium announcing that a Turkish incursion could force NATO to review its mission to boost the country's defenses against a possible Iraqi attack. The countries said such a move would compromise the defensive basis of NATO's deployment of AWACS surveillance planes and other specialist units to Turkey.
The European Union also warned Turkey against entering northern Iraq. Such a move could hurt Ankara's candidacy to join the union.
Even so, Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, discussed a possible Turkish intervention Monday with the country's military leader, General Hilmi Ozkok.
"The Turkish armed forces have made certain plans and preparations in this matter. When the right time and place comes, the necessary decisions will be made and put into effect," Ozkok said after the meeting.
Turkey has had several thousands of troops in northern Iraq since the late 1990s, but wants to beef up its military presence there to prevent a massive refugee flow from Iraq. Up to 750,000 Iraqi Kurds fled to Turkey during the 1991 Gulf War.
Turkey also fears that the fall of Saddam Hussein could lead to the creation of an independent Kurdish state in Iraq. That, in turn, could boost the aspirations of Turkey's Kurdish rebels, who fought a 15-year war for autonomy in southeastern Turkey.
Iraqi Kurdish forces have warned of clashes if Turkey sends in troops.
Safeen Dizayee, an official of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, which controls part of northern Iraq, said Monday that even if Turkey and the United States agreed on an increased Turkish military presence in northern Iraq, that deal would not be binding on the Iraqi Kurds.
The U.S.-Turkey talks come as relations between the NATO allies have been strained over Turkey's refusal to allow 62,000 U.S. combat troops to use Turkey as a staging ground to open a northern front against Iraq.
Despite overwhelming popular opposition to the war, Turkey has allowed the United States to use its airspace to bomb Iraq and fly troops into northern Iraq.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher said the two sides were discussing ways to prevent refugee flows and terrorism, and ensure humanitarian aid so the Turks won't feel compelled to enter northern Iraq.
"We believe strongly the current circumstances do not warrant any intervention by Turkish forces, and we expect all parties involved to be responsive to our concerns," Boucher said.
TITLE: U.S. Missile Confirmed in Tornado Downing
AUTHOR: By Nicole Winfield
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CAMP AS SAYLIYAH, Qatar - Coalition forces suffered their first confirmed "friendly fire" deaths of the Iraq war Sunday, when a U.S. Patriot missile battery downed a British fighter jet near the Iraqi-Kuwait border, killing the two fliers on board.
Military analysts said the downing was rare, since the Royal Air Force Tornado GR4 would have been outfitted with a transponder - an electronic signal device identifying itself as a coalition military aircraft.
The shootdown was a blow for Britain, which already suffered 14 dead in accidents: the crash Friday of a CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter that killed eight and a collision Saturday of two British Royal Navy helicopters that killed six.
Five American service personel also were killed in those crashes.
The Tornado was returning from operations in Iraq when it was targeted by a U.S. Patriot missile battery, the British military said. The Royal Air Force base at Marham, in Britain, confirmed the two crewmembers were dead.
Over Iraq, the fighter had been taking part in strikes that destroyed Republican Guard forces outside Baghdad, U.S. Brigadier General Vincent Brooks said in Qatar.
"I have to say it is not the beginning that we would have preferred," said Group Captain Al Lockwood, British forces spokesperson in the Persian Gulf.
But, he said, "this is not training, this is war. And we expect tragically, occasionally that there are accidents."
In military parlance the phenomenon also is known as "blue on blue," or "fratricide" - the mistake that sends missiles, bullets, bombs or artillery shells hurtling in the wrong direction, inflicting casualties or damage on noncombatants or one's own forces.
"There are so many layers of information on all the layers of the battlefield," said Michael Donovan, a research analyst with the Washington-based Center for Defense Information. "Complex systems unfortunately tend to break down, you can count on it."
Originally an anti-aircraft missile pressed into emergency service during the 1991 Gulf War - and much criticized for failing to destroy Iraqi Scud missiles fired at Saudi Arabia and Israel - the Patriot has been redesigned to strike its targets directly, U.S. officials say.
Previously, like most air-defense missiles, it used a "proximity fuse" that detonated close to the target rather than physically hitting it. That was effective against aircraft but not against the Scuds, whose warheads frequently survived the blast intact and exploded on ground impact.
Paul Beaver, an independent military analyst formerly with Jane's Defense Group, said there was "99-percent no excuse" for shooting down a friendly aircraft.
Like all allied aircraft, the Tornados have an IFF system compatible with all member countries of the coalition. The IFF, also used in civil aviation, sends an automatic response when a radar system queries it.
The Tornado's response "should be sufficient to stand down the [Patriot] system," he said. "The aircraft could have switched its IFF off if it had been returning, having been involved with some enemy action," or because of a technical failure, Beaver said. But in that case it should have been flying in a secret protective air corridor.
The commander of British forces in the Gulf, Air Marshal Brian Burridge, said relations with the Americans were as strong as ever despite the "mistake."
"A military campaign is probably the most intimate alliance you can implement," he told the BBC."You develop a bond of trust because you are taking on responsibility for each other's lives."
TITLE: Officials Agree On War Security
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva and Victoria Lavrentieva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The war in Iraq may be threatening to drive the world apart, but senior Russian officials are united on the short-term effects it will have on the domestic economy - little or none.
"We built our forecasts and our policies in such a way that the economy is currently immune from the various splashes in the world economy," said Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, who is also a deputy prime minister.
"We have such a margin for safety today that we can hedge any short-term risks," said Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref.
"Russia will continue to develop quietly, and no specific measures will be taken due to the war," he added.
Central Bank Chairperson Sergei Ignatyev met with President Vladimir Putin on Thursday to assure him that Russia had plenty of hard-currency reserves that could be deployed to avoid any sharp fluctuations of the ruble rate.
"The Central Bank is prepared for any kind of development," news agencies quoted him as saying.
An unprecedented amount of petrodollars has been flowing into the country in recent months as oil prices rocketed ahead of military action in Iraq, swelling the country's reserves to an all-time high of nearly $55 billion. But the wave of dollars has put downward pressure on the ruble, stoking inflation fears.
Economic Development and Trade Deputy Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said that sustained high oil prices might add one percentage point to this year's inflation level, which the government expects to be between 10 percent and 12 percent, or lead to a "slightly" faster acceleration of the ruble.
But Ignatyev said he was confident that any ruble fluctuations "would not be significant."
Ignatyev, however, agreed with other senior policy makers regarding the long-term implications of America's military actions, saying "it is too early to talk about the future."
Alexander Zhukov, head of the State Duma's influential budget committee, said that, while Russia's economy was well protected from the effects of war, the world economy could be pushed into a crisis that could eventually ensnare Russia.
"If the war lasts longer then planned, then oil prices will soar and one should expect a global crisis," he said.
"For the Russian economy, the most important factor is the behavior of world oil prices," said Zhukov.
On Wednesday, with war a certainty, the Economic Development and Trade Ministry urged the government to raise the average oil price used for calculating budget parameters to $25.50 from $21.50. This prompted the Central Bank to up to $26 its own estimates of the oil price, which it uses for various calculations.
"We expect a fast completion of the operation in Iraq and, by the end of the first half of the year, prices for crude oil will likely stay at $28 to $30 per barrel," Reuters quoted Dvorkovich as saying.
He said that his ministry expected the price to drop to $20 a barrel by the end of the year.
The government has told oil cartel OPEC that a price of $20 to $25 would be ideal.
Kudrin said that oil prices would remain unusually high until the United States "puts Iraq's oil regions and oil extraction facilities under control," which he said would take "a significant period of time."
Kudrin said that under no circumstances would oil fall below $20 this year, which would be high enough to meet federal budget targets.
Looking a little further down the road, Andrei Illarionov, President Vladimir Putin's top economic adviser, warned of the "unpleasant consequences" for the Russian and global economies that America's war in Iraq will have, and he drew parallels to the Islamic revolution that toppled the Shah of Iran at the end of the 1970s.
"These kind of events could lead to a sharp reduction in oil production for up to 20 years," Illarionov said.
If oil fields in Iraq or neighboring countries are damaged, the result will be a global oil shortage, he said.
TITLE: GDP Rises 6.1 Percent in First Two Months of Year
AUTHOR: By Victoria Lavrentieva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The political tensions over Iraq that have driven oil prices sky high this year have also driven Russia's economy to one of its fastest rates of growth since the 1998 crisis.
The five core sectors of the economy - industry, agriculture, construction, transportation and retail - grew 6.1 percent year on year in January and February, the State Statistics Committee said Friday.
"The government is extremely satisfied with the results, and is hopeful that, if the trend continues, economic growth may hit 5 percent in 2003," news agencies quoted Economic Development and Trade First Deputy Minister Ivan Materov as saying.
The government is officially targeting growth of 4.4 percent this year, but most economists say it will likely be higher if oil prices average above $25 for the year.
War fears pushed crude prices above $35 earlier this month, but much of that gain was wiped out last week, as crude prices plunged by nearly a quarter to around $27 - the steepest one-week dip since the last Gulf War.
"I don't think we will see growth at the same pace in the coming months, but we expect GDP to grow 4.5 percent to 5 percent this year, which is higher than the government's forecast," said Yevsey Gurvich, head of the Economic Expert Group under the Finance Ministry.
High oil prices combined with a weakening dollar fueled investments, while a rising euro helped manufacturers compete with European imports.
"To a large extent, economic growth can be explained by a considerable increase in investments, which grew 10 percent year on year in January-February," said Yevgeny Gavrilenkov, chief economist at Troika Dialog.
"Major industrial assets are now distributed among people who are ready to invest," he said, adding that 5-percent growth this year is a realistic target.
Some economists, however, are more skeptical.
"We think that 6.1-percent growth cannot be explained by any qualitative change in the structure of Russia's economy, so we have no grounds to expect higher GDP growth this year," said Alexei Zabotkin of United Financial Group.
The economy grew 4.3 percent in 2002. Alexei Moiseyev Renaissance Capital economist said that neither the current rate of growth nor the high oil prices that are largely fueling it are sustainable, and reiterated his forecast of 3.9-percent growth for the year.
The IMF suggested that the government stimulate the economy by raising taxes on the oil sector and lowering them on other sectors.
The government is, "quite rightly," trying to gradually diversify the economy away from its overdependence on natural resources, John Odling-Smee, Director of the International Monetary Fund's European II Department, which includes Russia, said in a report Friday.
"One way to do that is to lower the tax burden on the non-oil sector and shift it to the oil sector, which carries a lighter burden than oil sectors in comparable countries," he said. "[However,] if the government does this soon, it won't necessarily help, because the problems that the non-oil sector faces are much more deep-rooted than taxation."
TITLE: UN Still Split on Iraq's $40Bln
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: UNITED NATIONS - Security Council members decided on Friday to work through the weekend on a plan to use Iraq's $40 billion in UN-controlled oil money toward humanitarian relief during the war.
The plan, inspired by Washington and London but presented by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan as his own, would put Annan in charge of a replacement for the oil-for-food program that was suspended last week ahead of the outbreak of war.
U.S. and UN officials said a U.S.-British resolution to use Baghdad's crude money to help them pay for food, medicine and other civilian goods for Iraq was "laundered" through Annan in order to make it more palatable to Security Council members.
Although the council agreed that Iraq's dire humanitarian needs must be dealt with immediately, the overtures came a bit too soon for some members still smarting from months of wrangling over whether war was necessary to disarm Iraq.
"It is inappropriate for the aggressors to now act as if they are also the saviors," said one diplomat. "We still have a bad taste in our mouths and cannot swallow this plan just yet."
Russia and other council members want the new resolution to concentrate on immediate humanitarian aid, rather than the future working of the program.
Moscow's ambassador, Sergei Lavrov, told reporters that the resolution had to deal "with immediate concerns of goods already in the pipeline.
Russia, which is steadfastly against the war and has warned Washington against shutting it out of any oil deals in a postwar Iraq, had the largest share of contracts under the previous oil-for-food program.
UN officials say there is some $8.9 billion in goods already ordered and paid for by Iraq but not yet delivered.
"Other ideas of the secretary-general would have to come later," Lavrov said. "We should not jump the gun."
Nonetheless, a resolution was expected to emerge on Monday after discussions among Middle East experts of the 15 members of a council committee set up to monitor the now-suspended oil-for-food program. The plan was created to ease the impact of UN sanctions imposed on Iraq in mid-1990.
More than 60 percent of Iraq's 26 million people are entirely dependent on the oil-for-food program, which has been jointly administered by the United Nations and Iraq since 1996. UN officials estimate that Iraqis have enough food to meet immediate needs, unless they are forced out of their homes.
Annan, in his letter to the council on Thursday, said that Iraq should continue to control the country's oil industry, retaining the right to sign contracts with partners of its choosing.
The proceeds of those sales, however, should be deposited in an account controlled by the United Nations, as they were before the war.
But diplomats said that the resolution would probably avoid reference to oil exports while the war was going on.
Annan had proposed that once exports resumed, the council should leave oil sales in the hands of the Iraqi State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO), which had a sophisticated infrastructure.
The United States and Britain fought for years to eliminate fly-by-night traders from getting contracts from SOMO, believing they were paying illegal premiums to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said over the weekend that Russia would work to insure that the billions of dollars' worth of oil contracts it has with Iraq are honored under any post-Hussein government.
(LAT, SPT, Reuters)
TITLE: Gazprom Proposal Risks Sidelining BP's Gas Deal
AUTHOR: By Catherine Belton
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A Gazprom proposal to develop vast untapped reserves in East Siberia and the Far East could derail plans by BP to develop the huge Siberian Kovytka gas field - one of the crown jewels in BP's mega-merger with TNK.
Gazprom said Monday that it is urging the government to ban producers in regions that include Kovytka from exporting their gas before domestic demand is satisfied.
For years, BP has been planning to produce gas at the vast Kovykta field, which contains 1.9 trillion cubic meters of gas, and pipe it to China and South Korea, where it could fetch several times the price it can get domestically.
Gazprom is proposing that the government adopt its plan as part of Russia's official energy strategy through 2020, which is to be decided in May, and comes just days after Energy Minister Igor Yusufov said that Kovytka's gas should be earmarked for domestic consumption.
He said that the Chayadan field in Yakutia, which has 1.2 trillion cubic meters of gas but is not yet licensed, should be given export priority over Kovykta because of higher extraction costs.
Gazprom and state-owned oil major Rosneft want to develop Chayadan together and are seen as the front-runners in any future tender for the field.
The company also wants to trump oil majors by extending its export monopoly to include sales to Asia from the Far East. But Gazprom and Rosneft are not alone in the race to develop the untapped East and are going head to head with Yukos and the new TNK-BP, both of which already have licenses for fields in the region.
Earlier this month, Gazprom and Rosneft urged President Vladimir Putin to create a new consortium to develop the five biggest oil and gas fields in the east, Chayadan, Kovykta, Verkhny Chonskoye, Talakan and Sredny Botuoba, creating a new super field for which the development rights would be auctioned off.
This comes amid unconfirmed reports that the Natural Resources Ministry has been seeking to revoke the license to Kovytka, held by Russia Petroluem, of which TNK and BP are the major shareholders.
A BP spokesperson in Moscow said that the company would welcome Gazprom as an equity participant in Kovytka, but that such a deal would have to be crafted on commercial terms. "There should be no free rides," he said.
"Gazprom has been getting pretty aggressive over Kovykta," said Adam Landes, oil and gas analyst at Renaissance Capital. "Behind the scenes, and together with Rosneft, it seems they are looking for overall coordination of the sector."
However, Gazprom spokesperson Igor Plotnikov denied reports that the company was seeking to become the developer of all eastern fields.
"Gazprom is not claming that it alone will extract all gas reserves in the Far East and East Siberia. There are a lot of other good oil and gas companies," Plotnikov said.
He said that Gazprom, which is headed by Putin loyalist Alexei Miller, submitted its ideas for developing fields in the east at the request of the government.
"We can't develop the sector alone," he said, adding however that the company, together with Rosneft, intended to compete for all licenses forwarded to develop fields in the region on the basis of equal competition with other companies.
He did, however, confirm that Gazprom is seeking to be the sole distributor of gas sold in the region.
"It is to Russia's advantage for there to be a single export channel," he said. "We need to have this to avoid competition that might lead to lower prices. Because this territory is so huge, and because the costs of developing new infrastructure are so high, without the safety net of a single operator, many fields won't be developed."
TITLE: West Shouldn't Underestimate Iraqi Identity
AUTHOR: By Andrew Cockburn
TEXT: BACK in March 1991, when much of Iraq had risen in revolt against President Saddam Hussein, posters of the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini began appearing in southern Iraqi towns, where the population is overwhelmingly Shiite. Nothing could have been more calculated to give heart palpitations to the first Bush administration, since the posters signaled that the Shiite rebels were mere cat's paws of the ruling Shiite mullahs in Tehran.
Fearful that the Iranians might be poised to help themselves to a large, oil-producing chunk of a disintegrating Iraq, Washington withheld even moral support for the uprising, and Hussein survived to fight another day. So conveniently did the posters fit in with American preconceptions about sectarian loyalties and divisions in Iraq that knowledgeable Iraqis insist they were produced and displayed by Hussein's own agents to stoke paranoia in Washington - and achieved precisely their desired effect.
Twelve years on, inhibitions about displacing Hussein have obviously evaporated, but misconceptions regarding Iraq as a fragile entity, riven with sectarian divisions and prone to disintegration, persist. What might be called the American version of "Iraq 101" depicts an artificial state created 80 years ago by order of the British out of three distinct vilayets - provinces - of the Ottoman Empire, in which the minority Sunni Arab population, most forcefully represented by Hussein, has always dominated the resentful Shiite majority, and the ethnically distinct (Sunni) Kurds in the north, not to mention Turkomens, Assyrians and other small minorities.
Hence, it is conventional wisdom that Iraq could well fall apart if the Shiites - "an underclass through Iraq's modern history," according to Iraq pundit Kenneth Pollack of the Council on Foreign Relations - were ever given the opportunity to secede.
But while non-Iraqi experts may have little problem with the idea of an Iraq with the fractured statehood of Northern Ireland or Lebanon, Iraqis themselves tend to vociferously disagree, often reciting their personal ties to other communities for good measure.
"My mother is Sunni, my father Shia," says Fareed Yassin, who left Baghdad in the mid-'70s and now lives in Boston. "One third of the Muslims in my high school graduating class were from mixed Sunni-Shia marriages, and that was typical of Baghdad - and remember that everyone in Iraq is, at most, two relatives away from Baghdad."
Nor does he think much of the idea that Iraq is too young to be a real country: "So what if Iraq only formally became a nation 80 years ago? De Tocqueville had no trouble discovering an American identity, and the U.S. had only been going 50 years when he visited."
Indeed, Iraqi nationalism could be said to have manifested itself as early as 1920, when most of the territory that had been recently captured by the British from the Turks rose in bloody revolt against the new colonial masters. "The mistake we made in not adopting repressive methods earlier," wrote the British military commander afterwards, "threw ... the Sunni townsmen and the Shiah [sic] countryfolk together."
Hussein Shahristani, a leading Iraqi nuclear scientist and a revered figure in the Shiite community, who suffered years of torture and solitary confinement for telling Saddam Hussein, to his face, that he would not work on a bomb, hotly decries the notion that Kurds, Sunni and Shiites cannot work together in a democracy. Although there have been a handful of instances of inter-communal strife, such as Kurdish-Turkomen riots in Kirkuk in 1959, Shahristani notes that they are rare and politically inspired.
"In Iraq, there has never been a civil war," he points out, citing not only the long centuries of tolerance between different sects, but also different religions and races in what was once called Mesopotamia. "Iraq is a very old nation - multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-sectarian for many millennia."
Violence against particular communities, he insists, has always been the work of a dictatorial government rather than popular movements. Even government campaigns against the ethnically distinct Kurds to quell their perennial efforts to achieve independence, argues Shahristani, never had popular endorsement.
My friend Anwar Diab, a Shiite who can claim a Sunni wife and a half-Kurdish son-in-law in his immediate family, points out that while the Sunni population has tended to hold most of the political power, the Shiites have hardly been confined to the underclass as a group. While the vast slum of Baghdad's Saddam City attests to the poverty of Shiite immigrants from the countryside, the Shiite community spans all social classes.
"Under the Ottomans and the British, the Sunni went to school and became bureaucrats and army officers," he explains. "But the Shia had the economic power, either as big landowners in the south or in business."
Ahmed Chalabi, for example, leader of the opposition Iraqi National Congress, is not only a Shiite, but a scion of what was one of the richest banking families in Baghdad. Nor indeed, have the Shiites always been totally excluded from political influence. A few rose to senior positions in the days of the monarchy. More recently, many have been members in good standing of Hussein's Baath Party, an unfortunate number of whom were torn to pieces, along with their Sunni colleagues, by angry rebel crowds in March 1991.
Iraqis often point to Hussein as the source and instigator of whatever inter-communal tension may exist. The core of his regime has always been exclusively Sunni, but that sectarian affiliation is far less important than the fact that he has ruled through his family, clan, tribe and associated tribes from around his home base of Tikrit.
Around the country these tribal networks, some of which encompass both Sunni and Shiite members, form a potent network of allegiance and power.
Hence, with Sunni tribespeople holding political power in Baghdad, they tended to hand out jobs and patronage to fellow family members and tribespeople.
But "the Shia tribes do the same thing whenever they get the chance," observes Diab.
Hussein, no mere thug but a crafty political manipulator, has always been deft at turning tribal politics and rivalries to his own advantage. He has also, especially lately, shown a keen interest in pumping up otherwise quiescent sectarian rivalries, the better to reinforce his own position as the ultimate umpire of Iraqi politics. For example, in Basra, the staunchly Shiite principal city of the south, there is an enclave of Sunnis, who had traditionally enjoyed harmonious relations with their fellow Basrans.
"After the 1991 uprising had been defeated," explains Laith Kubba, a veteran opposition activist, Hussein "used the Sunnis to punish or execute Shia prisoners. The idea was to make them terrified of their neighbors and, therefore, readier to fight for Saddam in any future uprising just to survive."
Given Iraq's history of relative sectarian harmony, Kubba is worried by reports circulating among the opposition that the United States plans to govern Iraq in the immediate postwar period with the help of a "Group of Ten" Iraqis, each selected to represent a particular sect or ethnic group.
"If Saddam planted the seeds of sectarianism in Iraq," he laments, "this will nurture them."
Kubba cites the ominous precedent of Lebanon, the political system of which was originally organized by the French on a similar sectarian basis.
"Despite a strong, well-educated middle class," he points out, "the Lebanese have never been able to shake off this legacy."
He fears that a misplaced belief that Iraq is merely a collection of distinct communities may lead his country to the same fate.
On the other hand, the coming months may show that Iraqi statehood is greater than the sum of its parts - even the Kurds are now seeking a more powerful role in central government, rather than independence, as a means of guaranteeing their liberties. If that is the case, then anyone who attempts to rule over the Iraqis should recall the rebel hymn chanted by the Sunnis and Shiites who came together to fight the British in 1920: "O you people of Iraq, you are not prisoners/To submit your shoulders to the chains ... ."
Andrew Cockburn is co-author of "Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein." He contributed this piece to the Washington Post, where it first appeared.
TITLE: Time To Calm Down About Stalin History
TEXT: AS March winds down, so does the flood of publications devoted to the 50th anniversary of Joseph Stalin's death on March 5, 1953. It comes as no surprise that fans of Generalissimo Stalin have churned out reams of praise for their idol. But the innumerable articles that have appeared in the liberal press are a worthy object of analysis, if not psychoanalysis.
The feature common to all these articles is their hysterical tone. Regardless of who wrote the article or where it appeared, the thrust is the same: The number of Stalin's supporters is growing, and their dream is to rehabilitate the late dictator. Horrors!
I find it amazing that none of these authors seems to wonder why anyone would still admire Stalin, much less want to rehabilitate him, after 50 years of government progaganda aimed at exposing the horrors of Stalin and Stalinism. After tens of millions of dollars have been spent in this effort, after thousands of hours of television programs and untold tons of newsprint. The reputation of the "Leader of Peoples" had hit rock bottom by the end of the 1980s. But in post-Soviet Russia, his popularity has rebounded. Our intellectuals put this down to Russia's rotten society and repulsive people. But our ideologues would do well to take a closer look at themselves. They might just find that they're part of the problem.
Stalin ordered the murder of millions of people. This is an historical fact which even the dictator's admirers no longer deny. But why do liberals constantly talk about "tens of millions" of victims? Why do they throw out totally absurd numbers when the real numbers are more than terrible enough? You'd think that Stalin's actual crimes were bad enough. This need to exaggerate Stalin's crimes, to swell them beyond all imagining, demonstrates the deep-seated psychological problem that afflicts Russia's liberal commentators. Why are 5 million victims not enough? Why the compulsion to promulgate the lie about 50 million victims? The murder of a single innocent person is a crime. From the moral point of view, Stalin would have been guilty even if he had executed only Nikolai Bukharin and Grigory Zinovyev. As Dostoevsky wrote, all the happiness of the world isn't worth the tears of a single child.
The point is that Stalin is discussed not in moral or historical terms, but from the standpoint of political expediency. Under Stalin, everyone knew for a certainty that the White terror was bad and that the Red terror was good. In an attempt to secure some measure of moral justification for their own position, our liberals cast their opponents not merely as criminals (in our heart of hearts we know that we are no different), but as monsters, agents not simply of evil, but of absolute evil. The battle against such evil, in and of itself, justifies us in committing any and all crimes, and resorting ourselves to evil.
This is the logic behind the current campaign to expose Stalin. The Red terror is now evil simply because it is Red. The foul deeds of General Augusto Pinochet, or ordering tanks to fire on parliament, are nothing compared to the Gulag. Starving masses in Africa and our own freezing pensioners don't even count. After all, they're dying not behind barbed wire, but in freedom! They must constantly recall the horrors of Stalinism in order to appreciate their current good fortune and the blessings of our remarkable democracy.
When the time came to deal with political rivals, Stalin and his henchmen did not merely declare them to be enemies. They declared that anyone who strayed from the party line was sprinkling broken glass in the workers' sour cream, blowing up mine shafts and derailing trains. All of this nonsense was necessary to provide "moral" justification for the terror. This was the practice that Trotsky famously denounced as the "Stalinist school of falsification."
Unfortunately, many contemporary ideologues of Russian liberalism graduated from the same school. It is an irony of history that Stalin himself has posthumously been "victimized" by his own methods.
There is a certain historical justice in all this. But it's a shame that our society is still a long, long way from escaping the tyranny of falsehood.
Boris Kagarlitsky is director of the Institute of Globalization Studies.
TITLE: Global Eye
TEXT: Memory Lane
Long before Genghis W. Bush and his Boardroom Horde launched their campaign of rapine against the clapped-out Iraqi regime, there was a little incident involving hijacked planes, famous buildings and the mass slaughter of innocent people on American soil that caused a good deal of commotion at the time. You might remember; it happened on Sept. 11 a couple of years back.
True, Genghis does mention it occasionally, as part of his successful bamboozling of the shell-shocked American people into blaming Iraq for the atrocity, which was, of course, financed and carried out by faithful followers of the extremist variant of Islam propagated worldwide by the Bush Family's longtime pals and patrons, the Saudi royals. The attacks were also facilitated at least in part (and perhaps - let's be charitable - indirectly) by extremist elements in the Pakistani secret service, the ISI, a longtime ally of the Bush family firm, the CIA. The connections between these Bush cronies and the Taliban, al-Qaida and the killers of journalist Daniel Pearl are extensively documented in the public record.
Of course, the American public is told nothing of this record. Their own history - even the recent horror that exploded live on their TV screens that fateful September morning - is being falsified and obliterated by the Bush Regime and its cowed, corrupted and ignorant enablers in the media. Dazzled by the glitzy video-game graphics of the wardrumming television networks, and battered by a ceaseless barrage of lies from their leaders - even from the sainted Colin Powell, whose much-ballyhooed "case for the prosecution" at the UN has since been revealed as a farrago of fake documents, doctored tapes and plagiarized schoolwork - a full 45 percent of Americans now believe the transparent lie that Saddam Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. Yet in the first months after the assault - before the Bush fog machine went to work - only 3 percent of the public believed this lunatic conspiracy theory, the Christian Science Monitor reports.
This week we saw how the national amnesia, induced by the Bush blizzard of bull, is serving another useful purpose for the unelected junta: obscuring its hugger-mugger strangulation of the "Independent Commission" appointed to investigate the Sept. 11 attacks.
Of course, Genghis long resisted any outside probe into the catastrophic failure of his beloved secret services to thwart the plotters - not to mention the Horde's strangely tepid response to the attack itself. Even after severe public pressure forced Bush to convene an independent panel, he tried to sandbag the proceedings by appointing accused war criminal and self-proclaimed master of the public lie, Henry Kissinger, as chairperson. But Hank exited the scene, rather than submit to disclosure rules that would have revealed the extent of his role as bagman for the Saudis and other interested parties.
Finally, a less controversial bagman for Saudi interests, Thomas Keane - an oil-business partner of Osama bin Laden's financier and brother-in-law, Saudi magnate Khalid bin Mahfouz - was appointed to head the panel. At last, it seemed the commission's Establishment worthies could actually get down to work. But one should never underestimate - or even mis-underestimate - the ingenuity of professional liars like the Bush boys. For they quietly found another way to hobble the commission: subjecting the panel members - who were picked, remember, because of their reputations for impeachable probity and public service - to months-long security checks before allowing them access to the secret documents at the heart of the probe, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports.
Most commissioners already have security clearance from their previous government service, but the Horde has decided to put many of them - those not directly appointed by Bush, apparently - through the glacially-paced FBI background checks yet again. How long will this take? Coy FBI officials will say only that the usual length for such checks is 10 months. But here's the beauty part: The panel is required to deliver its report to congress in just 14 months - leaving only enough time for the kind of rush-rush, hush-hush whitewash the Horde has always wanted.
Family Quarrel
Of course, America's carefully cultivated amnesia also covers the entire background history of the Bush rampage in Iraq. Few Homeland folks realize that the current "war of liberation" is nothing more than a falling out among thieves, old comrades in crime. For just like Osama bin Laden and Daddy Bush's former punching bag, Panama's Manuel Noreiga, Hussein is a son of the CIA: He and his brutal Baathist Party were put in power by the American spy agency in 1963, as historian Roger Morris detailed last week in The New York Times.
Operating from secret bases in Kuwait (where future CIA boss Daddy Bush was drilling for oil with his business partners, the Kuwaiti royals), the agency directed Baathist rebels as they laid some "regime change" on an Iraqi strongman who'd gotten a bit too uppity for Washington's refined sensibilities. After seizing power, Hussein and his fellow CIA proxies launched a blood-Baath, systematically murdering hundreds of people from lists supplied by helpful American agents. Five years later, the CIA gave Hussein and his family another boost, helping their faction oust rivals in an internal power struggle. And, still later, that future CIA boss would be the most lavish and fawning of Hussein's many American sugar daddies - even after Hussein "gassed his own people."
No, these dark forces - these secret agencies, these corrupt political families, who gorge themselves on plunder and proxy murder - have never been "liberators." They are not liberators now.
For annotational references, see the "Opinion" section at www.sptimesrussia.com
TITLE: Scientists Closer to Cure for New Disease
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: HONG KONG - The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Sunday a killer pneumonia virus had yet to be conclusively identified, but new findings have fueled hopes that the globe-trotting disease could be curbed.
Hong Kong researchers said on Saturday they had isolated the virus, found it was new, and designed the first diagnostic test, meaning patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) can be identified, and therefore treated, much faster.
On Sunday, the WHO praised the Hong Kong team's findings, but sounded a note of caution.
"The race to identify the SARS causative agent is by no means over. Although the virus has now been isolated, its identity remains elusive," the global body said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Singapore on Monday ordered about 740 people who may have been exposed to victims of the mysterious flu-like illness to stay home for 10 days in a bid to contain the disease. Health Minister Lim Hng Kiang said he was invoking the Infectious Diseases Act for what could be the first time since Singapore gained independence in 1965.
The city state of 4 million people has recorded 65 cases of SARS, including 14 new cases reported on Monday, Lim said. Twelve patients are in serious condition in an intensive care unit, he added.
"The number in ICU will increase, unfortunately, and there may be fatalities," Lim told reporters. "A stronger wall is now created to break the chain of infection."
Any quarantined person caught outside their home could face a fine of up to $2,825 for a first infraction and $10,000 for a second offense, officials said.
Those on the quarantine list include people who may have had exposure to infected people, including children at a school and a daycare center, which will be closed for the duration of the quarantine.
Entire households will be quarantined, and the government plans to arrange to deliver groceries to them and compensate people who could suffer financial difficulties due to lost income, Lim said.
National Environment Agency officers will monitor the quarantined people daily, checking for symptoms of the disease, the health ministry said in a statement.
SARS has made 386 people around the world ill and killed 11 people in the past three weeks, according to WHO figures. The bulk of cases are in Hong Kong.
Experts suspect it is linked to an earlier outbreak of an unidentified disease in China, where officials say 305 people have fallen ill and five have died.
Controlling the spread of SARS has been a headache for health authorities and airlines, which have introduced screening procedures for passengers showing any flu-like symptoms.
The illness begins with a high fever, dry cough, chills, and severe breathing difficulties. A healthy and athletic adult can end up on a respirator within five days.
The majority of cases are medical workers who have been in close contact with patients or victims' family members.
"What we are trying to prevent is the cases going from family members and health workers to others who are not in the family. If that would occur, it would be a community outbreak," the WHO said on its Web site last week.
The WHO said researchers around the world are trying to pin down to which family the virus belongs. Identification will help researchers develop a vaccine or specific cure.
Scientists in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Germany and Canada, identified viruses taken from patients as paramyxoviruses, a large family of microbes that includes germs that cause measles, mumps and respiratory infections.
The WHO said other research groups in the network of collaborating labs were producing hints that the virus might belong to another family but also expressed hope of bringing the epidemic under control.
"In less than a week, [researchers] have produced results which, in other circumstances, would likely have taken months or more. This rapid advance is fueling the hope that SARS can and will be contained," it said on its Web site.
The University of Hong Kong's researchers said on Saturday they had designed the world's first SARS diagnostic test, which detects a patient's antibodies, which could confirm, between five to 14 days after infection, that the victim had the disease. Hong Kong doctors have been treating patients with ribavirin - an anti-virus drug - and steroids. They say the regimen works for most patients if treated early.
Currently, doctors diagnose a patient with SARS only by looking at symptoms and tracing the victim's history of contacts and response to antibiotics, the researchers said.
Hong Kong Hospital Authority director Ko Wing-man said on Sunday that one more patient had died in Hong Kong, bringing the death toll in the city to eight. The number of infections in Hong Kong rose to 247 on Sunday, including 242 suffering full-blown pneumonia.
(Reuters, AP)
TITLE: Tensions on Iraqi War Hit School Exchanges
AUTHOR: By Stephen Graham
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BERLIN - The U.S.-German clash over war in Iraq has filtered down to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where a high school has canceled precisely the kind of student exchange that is supposed to promote mutual understanding.
More than a dozen students from Hamburg's Sachsenweg School were to depart this Tuesday until their hosts suggested they stay home rather than bring "anti-American feeling," said Sachsenweg English teacher Jutta Kuehn. The German agency that coordinates educational exchanges said other programs have also been called off.
Despite efforts by officials, including the American ambassador to Germany, to play down such incidents, the cancelation was another indication that the disagreement over Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's anti-war stand is beginning to strain German-American friendship at its heart.
Germans, from Schroeder down to Sachesenweg's English teacher, have been stung by accusations that the opposition to war stems from anti-Americanism, and are baffled by calls to boycott French and German goods.
Flag-burning and comparisons between U.S. President George W. Bush and Adolf Hitler during anti-war protests this week prompted German President Johannes Rau to appeal to demonstrators not to "stir hate against America."
"These are just the sort of misunderstandings that 30 years of educational and cultural exchanges between the United States and Germany are meant to bridge," said Sabina Margalit, executive director of the German American Partnership Program in New York.
To confront German stereotypes, the German Foreign Ministry grants about $1 million a year to student exchange programs. This year some 6,000 students from each country are to participate in exchanges, recovering to pre-Sept. 11 levels.
Gottfried Boettger, an official at the government agency that coordinates the exchanges, said other programs have been scuttled by war, but declined to elaborate.
Kuehn, the teacher, said she could understand Americans who consider the Germans ungrateful. "But it is sad when the kids have to bear the brunt of political events."
Tim Tackett, the principal of the Oakland High School in Murfreesboro, denied the war played a role in calling off the Germans' trip to Tennessee and his students' plans to travel to Hamburg in the summer. Security was the main issue, he said.
While those concerns were shared, Kuehn and students alike said they got clear messages that the war was the deciding factor. Kristina Milina, a 16-year-old student, said her pen pal was candid.
"She said her teacher didn't want to do it because Germany wasn't supporting the war," Milina said. "We were really shocked and felt like we'd been taken for a ride."
U.S. Ambassador to Germany Dan Coats insisted that no retribution was intended and expressed regret that the exchange had been canceled.
"I think the children should have gone to Tennessee," he told the Hamburg Journal television program. "We need to continue these exchanges. That's what maintains our good relations."
TITLE: Slovenia Referendum Backs Membership of EU, NATO
AUTHOR: By Vanessa Gera
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LJUBLJANA, Slovenia - Slovenia strongly endorsed membership in NATO and the European Union over the weekend, a sound victory for pro-Western leaders who hope joining the bodies will give their tiny country a say in international politics.
Unofficial final results from Sunday's referendums showed 89.61 percent of Slovenes in support of membership into the EU, while 66.02 percent said yes to entry in the military alliance.
Although the ballot for entry into the EU was never in doubt, the vote for NATO was uncertain. Opinion polls showed almost 80 percent of Slovenes are opposed to the U.S.-led war in Iraq, with many expressing unwillingness to join an alliance which they view as strongly dominated by Washington.
The country's newspapers Monday hailed the outcome as historic.
"Future generations will tell us whether the decision we made was the right one," the daily Dnevnik wrote in an editorial. "But we can say for ourselves that our generation is a brave generation, perhaps even a little bit adventurous."
The daily Delo said the outcome "marked the beginning of a new era in Slovenia's history" just as "the war in Iraq symbolically marked the beginning of a new era in world history."
President Janez Drnovsek, who served as prime minister for a long time before being elected to the presidency last year, called the referendum "the crowning achievement of a decade of efforts," particularly in light of strong anti-war sentiment in his country.
"There were quite a few misgivings, especially concerning NATO, but it is a good result," Drnovsek said Sunday after the results were revealed. "The future is always unpredictable, but in the company of democratic countries, we can assure a better future for Slovenia with fewer risks."
Analysts suggested that the result of the NATO vote indicated that fear of remaining excluded from the alliance in the long term prevailed over anxieties about the current war.
EU and NATO officials were quick to welcome the referendum outcome.
"I welcome the vote of confidence Slovenians have given NATO and also their willingness to accept the obligations of membership," said NATO Secretary General Lord George Robertson.
The EU's head office, the European Commission, said: "In these times of war, such a commitment to the European project, which is devoted to peace, stability and prosperity, has a special significance."
TITLE: Evidence Shows al-Qaida Has Deep Links in Africa
AUTHOR: By Andrew England
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOMBASA, Kenya - Fazul Abdullah Mohammed may offer the most chilling example yet of just how deep al-Qaida's roots run in East Africa.
The young Islamic teacher, the target of a search by African authorities, is believed to be an architect of both the Nov. 28 terrorist attacks on Kenya's Indian Ocean coast and the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings that killed 224 people, sources say. Their allegations are the clearest indication to date of a link between the two sets of attacks.
The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the fugitive al-Qaida operative charged in the embassy bombings was identified by his Kenyan wife from photos on the FBI's most-wanted terrorist list.
The FBI describes Fazul, a slight man in his late 20s or early 30s, as a computer genius who speaks many languages, including French, Arabic and English.
Born in the Comoros Islands off the coast of Mozambique, he also carries a Kenyan passport and is said to have trained with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.
Al-Qaida claimed responsibility for the Nov. 28 suicide bombing of a hotel crowded with Israelis as well as the simultaneous missile attack on an Israeli jetliner as it took off from Mombasa airport. Ten Kenyans and three Israelis were killed in the blast at the hotel, 20 kilometers north of Mombasa. The missiles missed the airliner.
Detective Joseph Narangwi, a senior member of the investigation, confirmed that police "believe some of the suspects who are being sought by police for the 1998 bombings have links with the Nov. 28 attacks."
He would not say if Fazul was one of them but added that investigators, including U.S. personnel, continue to "conclusively connect" the attacks.
U.S. officials in the capital, Nairobi, refused to comment, but a State Department official in Washington said it was logical to assume those behind the attacks are connected.
"There's the same pattern of action," said the official, who did not want to be named.
The U.S. indictment charging Fazul in the 1998 attack on American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania says he spent time in Somalia, believed to be a haven for terrorists.
On Wednesday, Kenyan police said they were holding a suspected member of al-Qaida for questioning about several terrorist attacks in East Africa. The suspect, who was seized Tuesday in Mogadishu, the capital of neighboring Somalia, was not identified. Police gave no further details.
Fazul's whereabouts are unknown but, until recently, he was teaching at an Islamic school in Kenya's coastal district of Lamu, where he went by the name of Abdul Karim.
Largely isolated, Lamu is predominantly Muslim and many residents are of Arab descent. Somalia is nearby, and boats often arrive in Lamu from the Persian Gulf.
Abdul Karim disappeared shortly after he married Amina, a local teenage girl, on Dec. 30.
Mohamed Kubwa, Amina's half-brother, has no doubts the young man is Fazul. Kubwa, who denies involvement in the attacks, has repeatedly been questioned by police in recent weeks. He was picked up again Monday, along with his father, Kubwa Mohamed, and remained in custody Friday.
Police say Abdul Karim is a suspect, Kubwa said recently: "In fact, they say he was involved in the 1998 bombing."
Police also showed Mohamed Kubwa photographs of other suspects wanted in the 1998 attack. He said he had met two of them in Mombasa and called them Sheikh and Fahad.
Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan and Fahid Mohammed Ally Msalam have been indicted in the 1998 bombings and are fugitives. Both were born in Mombasa.
It was Abdul Karim's cellular phone that led police to Kubwa and his relatives.
After tracing calls made to and from a phone that turned out to be the one Abdul Karim left with Amina, police questioned Mohamed Kubwa, his father and his sister, Swalha - who ended up with the phone.
When Swalha had the phone, she received a number of international calls from unknown people speaking Arabic, Kubwa said.
Kubwa said his family still doesn't know where Abdul Karim is from; all they know is that he had relatives in Mombasa's Tudor neighborhood - the place where police believe the car bomb used in the Nov. 28 hotel attack was built.
Some of the calls investigators traced to Abdul Karim's cellular phone were made by Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, sources close to the investigation said.
Nabhan is one of eight suspects sought by police in the Nov. 28 attacks.
TITLE: Congo Ferry Sinks, 111 Dead
AUTHOR: By Aloys Niyoyita
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BUJUMBURA, Burundi - An overloaded ferry traveling between rebel-held ports in eastern Congo sank over the weekend in Lake Tanganyika, killing 111 people, officials said Monday.
The M.V. Kashombwe sank late Saturday as it was en route from Kalemie, a rebel-held port town in Katanga province, to Uvira, 300 kilometers to the north, said Emil Ngoy, head of territorial administration for the rebel Congolese Rally for Democracy, or RCD. The RCD controls the lake ports.
Burundian navy sailors counted the bodies of 111 people who were on the ferry when it sank near Nyanza Lac, 110 kilometers southwest of Bujumbura, Burundian army spokesperson Colonel Augustin Nzabampema said.
"Our [navy] team is regularly patrolling on Lake Tanganyika and was able to rescue 41 people, the others were just corpses on the shore; others were still under water," Nzabampema said.
Lake Tanganyika touches Congo, Burundi, Tanzania and Zambia.
Ngoy said the ferry is privately owned and was sailing in Burundian waters to avoid rival tribal fighters.
RCD spokesperson Jean-Pierre Lola Kisanga said the boat's manifest had 64 names on it, but port authorities in Kalemie said the boat was carrying more than 150 people, including many women and children. The ferry had a capacity of less than 100 passengers, rebels said.
Ferries are the most common and cheapest means of transportation between lakeside towns in a country where the infrastructure has been destroyed by a succession of armed rebellions and neglect by corrupt and greedy leaders.
Ngoy said the rebels would try to recover the bodies of those who drowned.
TITLE: Zenit Shocks Loko in Moscow
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: Zenit continued its winning start to the season with a stunning upset 2-1 road win over defending champion Lokomotiv Moscow in the Premier League on Saturday.
Midfielder Konstantin Konoplyov's clinical strike at 41 minutes, after a superb pass from Andrei Arshavin disected the defense, cancelled Loko's 11th-minute opener from Russia international striker Ruslan Pimenov.
Zenit took the initiative the the second half, and sealed a deserved victory with a scrappy goal by striker Alexander Kerzhakov, again from a pass by Arshavin, at 65 minutes.
Loko's play was noticeably physical throughout, and it had Dmitry Sennikov sent off near the end for a second bookable offense after he hauled down Zenit substitute Sergei Osipov.
The game was further marred by the behaviour after the final whistle of Loko goalkeeper Sergei Ochinnikov, who attempted to attack Zenit players and staff, and now faces a lengthy ban.
Elsewhere, former champion Spartak Moscow continued its disappointing start to the new season with a surprise 2-1 home defeat to Spartak-Alaniya Vladikavkaz on Sunday.
Alania midfielder Georgi Bazzayev broke a 1-1 deadlock midway through the second half to give the 1995 champions their first win of the season.
Italy. Inter Milan fell to a 2-1 defeat to Udinese on Sunday allowing defending champion Juventus to maintain its three-point lead at the top of Serie A.
After Juve's 2-1 defeat to AC Milan on Saturday, second-placed Inter had a chance to draw level, but it could not complain about the result against Udinese, which has lost just once at home this season.
Udinese, who had hit the post in the first half through Vincenzo Iaquinta, took the lead three minutes after the break when Czech midfielder Marek Jankulovski fired home from the right after a low cross from Thomas Manfredini. Iaquinta then made it 2-0 with a close-range finish after a strong run and cross from Roberto Muzzi.
Ivan Cordoba scored for Inter.
Spain. Real Madrid beat Deportivo la Coruna 2-0 at the Bernabeu on Sunday to take full advantage of a dreadful slip from title rival Real Sociedad and move three points clear in the Primera Liga.
Ronaldo set up Zinedine Zidane for the opening goal a minute before halftime and five minutes after the break the roles were reversed, the Brazilian striker taking the Frenchman's pass to slip a shot past Jose Molina.
Sociedad had been on course to replace Real Madrid at the top for a few hours but was held to a 2-2 draw at home to Villarreal despite leading 2-0 with the 90 minutes up.
Darko Kovacevic had side-footed Sociedad into the lead on 26 minutes, with the former Juventus striker making it 2-0 from the penalty spot on 74.
Victor pulled one back for Villarreal in the second minute of added time, though, and in a frantic finale Jorge Lopez blasted in to earn his side a point.
England. Skipper Patrick Vieira restored Arsenal's two-point lead in the Premiership on Sunday after scoring the winner in a 2-1 victory over Everton at Highbury.
France's midfielder smashed the ball home in the 64th minute after a superb solo strike by Everton teenager Wayne Rooney had cancelled out Pascal Cygan's first goal for Arsenal.
(SPT, Reuters)
TITLE: Duncan's 27 Paces Spurs to Win, Season Sweep Over Lakers
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SAN ANTONIO - Tim Duncan had 27 points and Tony Parker scored 16 of his 18 points in the second half as the San Antonio Spurs beat the Los Angeles Lakers 98-89 Sunday to complete a four-game regular-season sweep of the defending NBA champions.
"We came out aggressive and really stuck with it," Duncan said. "They really challenged us ... We just did a lot of good things as a team."
San Antonio took control by making 10 of 15 shots in the third quarter. The Spurs led by as many as 19 points in the quarter as the Lakers shot 6-for-31. Parker had eight points on 3-for-3 shooting in the period, then added eight free throws in the fourth.
Shaquille O'Neal, who had 32 points and 12 rebounds, had a basket and a three-point play that closed the Lakers to 71-61 with 10 minutes remaining. But Manu Ginobili countered eight points to help the Spurs maintain a double-digit advantage.
"We made some silly mistakes and that cost us," O'Neal said. "We beat ourselves more than they did."
Spurs coach Gregg Popovich held back from giving his team full credit for sweeping the Lakers, who needed only nine games to oust San Antonio from the postseason during the past two playoffs.
"We've only beaten them twice - Shaq has only played in two of the games," Popovich said, remembering that O'Neal had been sidelined by foot surgery. "They are still the best team on the planet until proved different in the playoffs."
The Spurs had last swept a season series against Los Angeles in 1993-1994.
Sacramento 109, Houston 108. Chris Webber scored 24 points before missing two free throws with 0:05.1 left, but Steve Francis missed a long 3-pointer at the buzzer as the Sacramento Kings held on for a victory over the Houston Rockets on Sunday night.
Francis had 38 points and nine assists in a virtuoso performance. After hitting a 3-pointer from a step behind the line with 0:06 left, he got one last chance to steal a win in the NBA's toughest road arena.
But his 3-pointer from two steps past midcourt clanged off the front of the rim. He stood at midcourt with his arms extended in disbelief as the crowd erupted in cheers.
"I had no doubt. I thought it would go," Francis said.
The miss sparked a relieved celebration for the Kings, who became the NBA's second team to win 50 games this season. Again demonstrating his newfound hunger to take Sacramento's big shots in the clutch, Webber hit a long jumper with 1:31 left and an inside shot with 34 seconds to play.
"I need to be taking those shots, and I need to be at the line late in the game," Webber said. "I wish the results could have been better. I was just glad to see that miss."
Mike Bibby scored 23 points and Peja Stojakovic had 21 as the Kings won their fourth straight. Webber also had nine rebounds and six assists, while Bobby Jackson made three free throws in the final 0:23.
Sacramento, with the NBA's best home record (31-6), won at Arco Arena for the 11th time in 12 games. Theatrics aside, the Kings finished a tough stretch with three impressive wins in four nights over likely playoff teams.
"That finished off a really good week for us," Sacramento coach Rick Adelman said. "We seemed to be in control and 10 points ahead most of the time. We just couldn't break away. They're trying to make the playoffs, and they almost pulled it off."
TITLE: Upset Stomach, Bad Weather Can't Stop Rampaging Tiger
AUTHOR: By Doug Ferguson
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ORLANDO, Florida - Sickened by some bad pasta that caused him to vomit through the night and a rainy Sunday, Tiger Woods still managed to win the Bay Hill Invitational for the fourth straight year by going the final 44 holes without a bogey and winning by 11 strokes.
It will only look routine in the record books.
"If I wasn't in contention, I wouldn't have gone. There's no way," Woods said. "It was a joke. Every single tee shot hurt because my abs were obviously sore from last night, and I continued on while I was playing."
"The night was long, and the day was probably even longer," he said. "That being said, I'm very happy with the way I played."
Woods closed with a 4-under 68 to become the first player in 73 years to win the same tournament four straight times.
It also was the fourth time in his career he has won by double digits, another dominant performance despite the piteous scenes of him running to the bushes and behind courtesy vans as he tried to find a private place to be sick in front of 10,000 fans.
Woods came down with food poisoning Saturday night after a pasta dinner prepared by his girlfriend, Elin Nordegren. Only a day earlier, she collapsed outside the clubhouse from food poisoning and dehydration.
Nordegren spent the night in the hospital. Woods didn't think he had that option.
"The problem is, it's so easy to check into a hospital, but getting out is the hard part," Woods said. "I wanted to get my fluid levels up in case today was hot and humid, but I didn't didn't know if they were going to let me go. So, I decided not to do that."