Iraqnam- New Shi'ite "Government", OIC Summit: "U.S. should leave"

posted by ewing2001 on Saturday October 11, @11:01AM

Islamic nations tell U.S. to leave Iraq

Sky News -Sat 11 October

Iraq's Shi'ite leader claims he has formed a new government which will begin operating immediately...

Photo: Shi'ite leader Moqtada Sadr, U.S. Soldiers in Iraq

Reuters -Sat 11 October

PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia (Reuters) - Muslim nations have demanded "eviction of all foreign forces from Iraq" as they began a summit in Malaysia, with only Turkey defending plans to deploy its troops alongside the U.S.-led alliance.

Abdelouahed Belkeziz, Secretary-General of the 57-member Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), said occupying forces should quickly withdraw from Iraq to give the United Nations a chance to reconstruct the country.

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The OIC Summit, being held in Malaysia's new administrative capital of Putrajaya, began on Saturday with meetings of senior officials. Foreign ministers will meet on Monday and the leaders' summit takes place on October 16-17.

Up to 35 heads of state are expected to attend in what will be the largest gathering of Muslim leaders since the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan is also scheduled to attend, along with non-members Russian President Vladimir Putin and Philippines President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who both rule over large, rebellious Muslim minorities.

Iraq plunged into turmoil

SkyNews -October 11

Iraq's Shi'ite leader claims he has formed a new government which will begin operating immediately.

Moqtada Sadr's announcement came at the end of a week of protests directed at the US-led coalition forces.

Sadr, who has rejected the country's US-instigated Governing Council, has created a list of ministries, although he has not named any ministers.

In other developments, a fire broke out on a pipeline in the Kirkuk oil fields in northeastern Iraq. Saboteurs have been blamed.

The country is said to be losing $7m a day through bomb damage to the main export pipeline to Turkey.

A Shi'ite warning to America

Muqtada commands a militia called the Jaysh al-Mahdi: on a recent religious holiday in Najaf, Asia Times Online experienced face-to-face its thuggish behavior. The militia is not nearly as well disciplined as the Badr Brigades. Both militias anyway remain infinitely more powerful than the badly equipped Iraqi police. Muqtada's acolytes and the Jaysh al Mahdi enforce a policy according to which no Iraqis may drink alcohol, and all Iraqi women should be veiled.

What they said about... the Rumsfeld-Rice rift

Guardian -Saturday October 11, 2003

...Tensions within the Bush administration over postwar Iraq were exposed this week after a major rift emerged between Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, and Condoleezza Rice, President George Bush's national security adviser.

On Monday Mr Bush announced a new body, the Iraq stabilisation group (ISG), led by Ms Rice, to oversee the rebuilding of Iraq. The following day Mr Rumsfeld, who was hitherto responsible for reconstruction, gave an interview to four European newspapers in which he said he had not been consulted and only learned of the new body after receiving a classified memo from Ms Rice.

"I said I don't know. Isn't that clear? You don't understand English? I was not there for the backgrounding," he erupted after being pressed by a German reporter.

"Mr Rumsfeld is upset with the national security adviser... and he has shared his annoyance with the world," explained the New York Times, which put it down to "[his] being chastised for botching postwar Iraq".

The defence secretary had responded "with schnauzer-like testiness", reckoned Jim Hoagland in the New York Post, and identified it "as an acknowledgement that Mr Bush realises he has a huge problem with the way things are being reported and with how things are going in Iraq"...