The radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Monday blasted US President George W. Bush for signing a deal with Baghdad agreeing to a longer-term US military presence in Iraq.
"I say this to the evil Bush -- leave my country," Sadr said in a statement issued by his office in the Shiite holy city of Najaf.
"We do not need you and your army of darkness," he said. "We don't need your planes and tanks. We don't need your policy and your interference. We don't want your democracy and fake freedom. Get out of our land."
PHOTO: AFP
Sadr's salvo comes a week after the US president and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced a deal ensuring a long-term presence of US forces in the country.
Bush and Maliki decided to end the UN mandate for foreign troops' presence in Iraq next year and replace it with a bilateral pact between the two countries for a US military presence beyond next year.
The leader of Iraq's biggest Shiite party on Monday said he hoped an expected security agreement with the US would ultimately leave the country free of foreign troops.
Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who leads the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, described the proposed agreement as part of a larger effort to return Iraq to "complete sovereignty."
"For me, personally, I'm looking forward to seeing Iraq as not having any presence of foreign troops just like all the free people around the world," he said through an interpreter at a forum in Washington hosted by the United States Institute of Peace.
"I don't think that any [free people] will have the desire to see foreign troops on their soil," said Hakim, whose political party is a cornerstone of the Shiite alliance behind Maliki.
There are 166,000 US troops in Iraq, including extra forces sent this year to quell sectarian violence in and around Baghdad as part of Bush's so-called surge strategy.
Meanwhile, troops unearthed a mass grave with the remains of 12 people including a paramedic who disappeared more than a year ago, Iraqi officials said, the latest grisly discovery in a former stronghold of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Morgue workers wearing masks to protect them from the stench of decomposing bodies dug through bags of bones and tattered clothes on Monday as they sought clues to the identities of those killed.
More than 100 bodies, including women and children, have turned up since October in the remote desert terrain surrounding Lake Tharthar, a man-made body of water straddling the predominantly Sunni provinces of Anbar and Salahuddin about 100km northwest of Baghdad.
Most of the victims had no identity documents, but officials have said they were likely abducted and murdered by al-Qaeda in Iraq and other insurgents.
The US military has claimed significant progress since last summer in forcing al-Qaeda in Iraq out of Anbar Province with the help of Sunni tribal leaders and local officials. Iraqis forces have taken advantage of these recent security gains to step up patrols in areas previously considered no-go zones.
But Lake Tharthar, which used to be a resort popular with officials under Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime, has remained one of the hardest areas to control. The newly discovered mass grave was located between the lake and the Anbar city of Fallujah.
Two of the bodies found on Sunday were beheaded, according to an official at Fallujah General Hospital, where the remains were taken. Hospital officials said some appeared to have been killed as recently as four months ago, while others dated to 18 months ago.
A Health Ministry card that belonged to the missing paramedic provided a rare solid identity clue.
Two other mass graves were found near the lake last month -- one containing 40 bodies and another with 29. Twenty-five other bodies, some decapitated, were found in October, and authorities said the victims apparently died within the previous three months.
Authorities have also found mass graves in other parts of the country where violence has decreased. Seventeen corpses were unearthed last month at a site near Baqubah.
The areas where the bodies were found are both former al-Qaeda strongholds, suggesting the terror network was behind the killings.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS