UN experts met Iraqi leaders for the first time to discuss the chances of holding early elections as Britain's Prince Charles made a surprise visit and Japan expanded its first military deployment to a combat zone since World War II.
In fresh violence, insurgents attacked separate US Army convoys with explosives, killing one soldier and wounding three others, witnesses said. The soldier was killed when a roadside bomb exploded near Mahmudiyah, 32km south of Baghdad, a military spokesman said. No other details were available.
Prince Charles, wearing desert camouflage and a black beret, made a surprise visit to British troops, the first member of the British royal family to go to Iraq since Saddam Hussein's ouster.
PHOTO: AP
At a former Saddam palace in the southern city of Basra, the prince mingled with about 200 soldiers, shaking hands, sipping tea and praising them for their role in keeping security in southern Iraq.
"This part of the world doesn't have much chance unless their armed force can learn a lot from your experience ... not only in the military but in the hearts and minds," the prince said, according to the British Press Association.
Security was tight for the prince's 5-hour visit. His staff only allowed journalists to report that he'd been to Iraq after he left for Iran -- the first member of a British royal family to visit that country in 33 years.
In southeastern Iraq, a heavily armored convoy of Japanese soldiers arrived as part of Tokyo's first military deployment in a hostile region since 1945.
The ground troops, mostly engineers, lead a deployment that will eventually reach about 800 soldiers in a humanitarian mission to improve water supplies and other infrastructure projects around Samawah.
The UN team, led by veteran diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, sat down with the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council to start determining whether legislative elections can be held by June 30, when the Americans plan to transfer sovereignty to Iraqis.
The current US plan is to choose legislators in regional committees, or "caucuses" -- a move opposed by the country's most powerful Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani. If early elections are deemed unfeasible, the UN team will offer alternatives to the American plan.
Failure to find a formula for establishing a new Iraqi government acceptable to al-Sistani and Iraq's other religious and ethnic communities could sabotage US plans for scaling back the US role here at a time when criticism of President George W. Bush's Iraq policy has become an issue in the US presidential election campaign.
After keeping the UN at arm's length in Iraq, the US administration asked for world body help last month to resolve the dispute with al-Sistani and find a way to constitute a new Iraqi government by July 1.
UN and Iraqi officials said little about the substance of the first day's talks. Brahimi, a special adviser to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said after the meeting that the UN would "do everything possible" to help the Iraqi people "regain independence and sovereignty."
However, Iraqi sources said that the initial session was taken up mostly by Governing Council members expressing their views on elections.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
At a calligraphy class in Hanoi, Hoang Thi Thanh Huyen slides her brush across the page to form the letters and tonal marks of Vietnam’s unique modern script, in part a legacy of French colonial rule. The history of romanized Vietnamese, or Quoc Ngu, links the arrival of the first Christian missionaries, colonization by the French and the rise to power of the Communist Party of Vietnam. It is now reflected in the country’s “bamboo diplomacy” approach of seeking strength through flexibility, or looking to stay on good terms with the world’s major powers. A month after Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) visited,
RSS