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| Violence disturbs reconstruction in Iraq |
| | www.chinaview.cn 2004-06-11 11:13:49 |
by Jamal Hashim
BAGHDAD, June 10 (Xinhuanet) -- Escalated violence continued to disturb the political and economic reconstruction of this war-ravaged country, 20 days ahead of the handover of power to the Iraqi caretaker government.
On Thursday, seven Iraqis were killed and 14 others injured in ongoing clashes that erupted overnight in Iraq's holy city of Najaf between fighters loyal to rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and Iraqi policemen.
Among the killed were three policemen, two fighters of Sadr's Mehdi militia and two civilians, according to Falah al-Muhanna, head of Najaf's Health Directorate.
Muhanna said six more policemen, four Mehdi fighters and four civilians, including a woman and a child, were wounded in the fighting.
The clashes started at 10:30 p.m. (1830 GMT) Wednesday when policemen arrested a cleric close to Sadr and kept him in al-Ghari police station, near the city's Revolution of 1920 Square in Najaf,witness Muhsen Jawad at the scene told Xinhua by telephone.
Fighters loyal to Sadr attacked the police station in an attempt to rescue the arrested cleric but the Interior Ministry's Rapid Reaction Forces, armed with rocket-propelled grenades launchers, mortars and sniper rifles, raced to the battlefield to take part in the fighting.
The fighting came only days after Sadr agreed to disarm his fighters, pull them back from the Islamic shrines in Najaf and Kufa and hand over security to Iraqi police. Thursday's clashes were the first between Sadr's militia and the Iraqi police since the ceasefire.
Sabotage on Iraq's oil infrastructure, on the other hand, has severely affected Iraq's economic reconstruction in the past months.
Iraq has lost more than 200 million dollars in its vital revenues of oil over the past seven months due to 130 attacks on Iraq's oil pipelines, according to the newly appointed prime minister Iyad Allawi.
"More than 200 million dollars has been stolen out of the pockets of a sovereign Iraqi government through the loss of oil revenues resulting from attacks to pipelines," Allawi told
reporters in Baghdad.
"These saboteurs are not freedom fighters, they are terrorists and foreign fighters, opposed to our very survival as a free state," Allawi said.
On Wednesday, insurgents attacked the countries vital oil installations when they blew up a pipeline carrying oil from Kirkuk fields to the country's biggest refinery in Baiji north of baghdad.
Iraq's oil infrastructure has, since the US-led invasion, long been exposed to sabotage aimed at disturbing the reconstruction of the war-torn country.
The political process in Iraq was also jeopardized by the anger of Kurds who threatened Wednesday to push their Kurdish members of Iraq's caretaker government to quit after they accused the latest UN resolution of failure in recognizing Kurdish autonomy.
The resolution ratifies the transfer of power to Iraq's recently-formed government by June 30, while allowing US and other coalition forces to remain in Iraq.
But it does not mention Iraq's interim constitution, approved in March, which recognizes special Kurdish autonomy in three northern Iraq provinces, a clause fought hard for by Iraq's two Kurdish leaders, Jalal Talabani and Masud Barzani.
However, Iraq's most influential Shiite leader Grand Ayat Allah Ali al-Sistani warned the United Nations against any reference to the basic charter in its resolution, threatening dire complications if they did.
In a fresh effort to quell the dispute, Allawi said Thursday that Iraq has resolved a dispute over Kurdish autonomy.
"This issue has been resolved," Allawi told reporters, saying he had discussed it with Kurdish leaders in Baghdad. He gave no further details. Enditem |
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