Thousands of Shiite Muslims hit the streets of four Iraqi cities on Tuesday, calling on the US to hand over Saddam Hussein to be tried as a war criminal and demanding a bigger say in their political future.
The fresh rallies followed a march through Baghdad on Monday by tens of thousands of people from the majority Shiite community demanding direct elections to decide who controls Iraq when the US hands back power in June.
PHOTO: AFP
Many of Tuesday's protesters were supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr, a firebrand religious leader who has expressed support for Iraq's most revered cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
Sistani and his followers, long persecuted by Saddam, have proven a thorn for the US by opposing its plans to let regional caucuses appoint a transitional authority to take power at the end of June, instead of letting all Iraqis vote.
"We demand elections or we will bury every American here," said one Shiite cleric, Sattar Jabbar.
In Washington, US President George W. Bush welcomed the current president of the Iraqi Governing Council, Adnan Pachachi, as a guest at his State of the Union address to Congress.
"Sir, America stands with you and the Iraqi people as you build a free and peaceful nation," said Bush, who made no direct reference to the mass demonstrations in Iraq.
Bush did seek to answer US critics of his Iraq policy.
"Some in this chamber, and in our country, did not support the liberation of Iraq," he said. "Objections to war often come from principled motives," he added, while insisting his past claims that Saddam was an imminent threat to the US and the West would be vindicated over time.
"Had we failed to act, the dictator's weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day," he said.
In the southern Shiite city of Basra, several thousand protesters demanded Saddam be executed. "We want Saddam dead or alive. We demand Saddam's execution," they chanted.
In Baghdad and the Shiite holy cities of Kerbala and Najaf, similar numbers demanded Saddam be declared a war criminal and handed over for trial soon.
The US declared Saddam a prisoner of war on Jan. 9 following his capture the previous month. Washington has said he will eventually be handed over to Iraqi authorities to be tried under a special tribunal.
But many Iraqis distrust Washington, and are worried they will not get a chance to bring Saddam to justice.
In New York, diplomats said UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was expected to decide within a week whether to send a political team to Iraq to tackle the Shiite calls for polls.
Washington, which went to war in Iraq without the backing of most of the UN Security Council and for months opposed a wider UN role in Iraq, now wants the world body to help by convincing Iraqis elections cannot be held yet.
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
A passerby could hear the cacophony from miles away in the Argentine capital, the unmistakable sound of 2,397 dogs barking — and breaking the unofficial world record for the largest-ever gathering of golden retrievers. Excitement pulsed through Bosques de Palermo, a sprawling park in Buenos Aires, as golden retriever-owners from all over Argentina transformed the park’s grassy expanse into a sea of bright yellow fur. Dog owners of all ages, their clothes covered in dog hair and stained with slobber, plopped down on picnic blankets with their beloved goldens to take in the surreal sight of so many other, exceptionally similar-looking ones.
‘UNWAVERING ALLIANCE’: The US Department of State said that China’s actions during military drills with Russia were not conducive to regional peace and stability The US on Tuesday criticized China over alleged radar deployments against Japanese military aircraft during a training exercise last week, while Tokyo and Seoul yesterday scrambled jets after Chinese and Russian military aircraft conducted joint patrols near the two countries. The incidents came after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi triggered a dispute with Beijing last month with her remarks on how Tokyo might react to a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. “China’s actions are not conducive to regional peace and stability,” a US Department of State spokesperson said late on Tuesday, referring to the radar incident. “The US-Japan alliance is stronger and more
RSS