Tue, Mar 30, 2004 page6

• Iraq minister escapes attackers

  UNSTABLE SITUATION The public works minister, the only woman in the government, survived an attempt on her life in which three of her body guards were shot to death

  • AFP
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  A British and a Canadian were killed while an Iraqi minister escaped assassination amid ongoing violence Sunday, as the US Congress reportedly launched an investigation into activities of a prominent member of the Iraqi Governing Council.

  Meanwhile, US overseer Paul Bremer handed over the keys of a first ministry to Iraqi officials as part of a gradual handover of power.

  Most of the violence took place in the northern city of Mosul, where the foreign security guards were killed in a drive-by shooting, Iraqi police said.

  A spokesman for the US-led coalition said the two victims of the attack were "security detail contractors" for companies, without giving further details.

  In London, the Foreign Office said one of the victims in Mosul was British. A foreign ministry spokesman in Ottawa later said the second foreigner was a Canadian national.

  Earlier, Iraqi police said masked men attacked the guards as they were traveling in a two-car convoy headed to a power station serving the east of Mosul where the foreigners worked.

  Three British engineers in the first car managed to drive into the compound as the shooting began and escaped unharmed but the second car got caught up in the automatic weapons fire, Captain Jalal Mohammad Mahmud said.

  And Iraq's interim public works minister Nasreen Barwari, a 37-year-old Kurd and the only woman in the government, escaped an assassination bid east of Mosul in which three of her bodyguards were killed, police said.

  Police later said a fourth bodyguard was wounded.

  Also in Mosul, two US soldiers and four Iraqis were wounded in a shootout with gunmen in Al-Hadbaa district, the US military said.

  A police chief meanwhile survived an assassination attempt on the outskirts of Mosul but several people were hurt when his bodyguards traded fire with the assailants, according to police.

  In Baghdad, Bremer turned over the keys of the first of Iraq's 25 ministries to interim health minister Khidr Abbas at a ceremony, less than a fortnight before the first anniversary of the ouster of Saddam Hussein's regime.

  "You are in the driver's seat on the road to sovereignty," said Bremer, who was expected to hand over sovereignty of three other ministries by April 1 as part of the transition process.

  But hundreds of followers of a firebrand Shiite Muslim leader burned an American flag in an angry protest in the capital Sunday after the coalition shut down his newspaper for 60 days for inciting violence.

  A spokesman for the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority confirmed that the shutdown order signed by Bremer was delivered to the offices of Moqtada Sadr's weekly Al-Hawza al-Natiqar.

  Sadr spokesman Sheikh Mahmud Sudani said Bremer was angered by the publication's harsh condemnation of Israel's assassination last week of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual guide of the Palestinian radical Islamic movement Hamas.

  Meanwhile, Newsweek magazine reported the investigative branch of the US Congress is looking into whether Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi broke the law by using US money to attempt to sway US opinion in favor of ousting Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

  At issue are tens of thousands of dollars Chalabi and his group received in 2001 and 2002.

  Chalabi agreed in writing to use State Department-supplied funds to "implement a public information campaign to communicate with Iraqis inside and outside of Iraq and also to promulgate its message to the international community at large," according to the report.

  But the terms "strictly exclude" activities that are "associated with, or that could appear to be associated with, attempting to influence the policies of the United States government or Congress or propagandizing the American people."

  Yet the INC itself told Congress in 2002 that there were more than 100 news stories published between October 2001 and May 2002 containing information collected by INC informants -- informants who had their expenses paid with State Department money, the magazine said.
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