Julia Thorne, John Kerry’s Ex, Dies of Cancer

Julia Thorne, author and ex-wife of Sen. Kerry, dead at 61 (Boston Globe)

Julia Thorne, an author and the former wife of U.S. Sen. John Kerry, has died of cancer at a friend’s home in Concord. She was 61.

Thorne, who died Thursday, wrote the 1993 book, “You Are Not Alone: Words of Experience and Hope for the Journey through Depression,” with Larry Rothstein. She also wrote, “A Change of Heart: Words of Experience and Hope for the Journey through Divorce,” published in 1996. Her first book told her experience with depression, something she suffered from during much of the 1980s. She later founded The Depression Initiative, a nonprofit education foundation.

“She was a phenomenal mother,” Vanessa Kerry, of Cambridge, told The Boston Globe. “And she affected many others, too. So many people have come up to me over the years, even on the campaign trail, to say how much of a difference her books made for them.”

John Kerry called Thorne “a great friend to a lot of people.” “She was the best mom two daughters could want,” he said. “She was completely committed to the kids and their future.”

Thorne met Kerry in 1963 at her family’s estate on Long Island, when Kerry, a Yale classmate of Thorne’s twin brother, came for a visit. Kerry was clearly smitten, Thorne recalled in an interview with the Globe. “He just kind of stood there and looked,” she said. They married in 1970. The couple had two daughters, Vanessa and Alexandra. They divorced in 1988. Thorne and Kerry remained friendly and she supported his 2004 presidential bid. Thorne married Richard J. Charlesworth in 1997 and they moved to Bozeman, Mont. She was being treated for transitional-cell carcinoma, a former of cancer, in the Boston area.

Thorne never felt comfortable with the demands of being a political wife, said Douglas Brinkley, author of “Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War.” “What she disdained more than anything was politics,” Brinkley said. “(Thorne) didn’t enjoy the breakfasts, the lunches, the shaking of hands: the upbeat rigamarole of politics. She loathed the back-stabbing of it. She went on her own journey, one based on spirituality and nature.”

Local al-Qaida Leader in Iraq Killed

Local al-Qaida Leader in Iraq Killed (THOMAS WAGNER, Associated Press)

Iraqi forces killed a local al-Qaida in Iraq leader and two other insurgents in a raid north of Baghdad on Friday, and roadside bombs killed an American soldier and an Iraqi policeman, officials said. Iraqi commando forces acting on a tip raided a house where Hamid al-Takhi and the two other insurgents were hiding in Samarra, a city 60 miles north of Baghdad, said police Capt. Laith Mohammed. All three were killed in a gunbattle. Mohammed said al-Takhi had been responsible for many insurgent attacks against coalition forces and civilians in the area.

Bin Laden Says U.S. Waging War on Islam

Bin Laden Says U.S. Waging War on Islam (SALAH NASRAWI, Associated Press) 2:44 AM ET

Osama bin Laden issued new threats in an audiotape broadcast on Arab television Sunday and accused the United States and Europe of supporting a “Zionist” war on Islam by cutting off funds to the Hamas-led Palestinian government. He also urged followers to go to Sudan, his former base, to fight a proposed U.N. peacekeeping force.

His words, the first new message by the al-Qaida leader in three months, seemed designed to justify potential attacks on civilians — something al-Qaida has been criticized for even by its Arab supporters. He also appeared to be trying to drum up support among Arabs by accusing the West of targeting Hamas, a militant group that fights against Israel and now heads the Palestinian government. Citing the West’s decision to cut off aid to the Hamas-led government because it refuses to renounce violence or recognize Israel, bin Laden said Washington and Europe were waging war on Islam. “The blockade which the West is imposing on the government of Hamas proves that there is a Zionist, crusaders’ war on Islam,” bin Laden said.

President Bush was told about the tape Sunday morning. The intelligence community has informed the White House that it believes the tape is authentic, said Bush’s spokesman, Scott McClellan. “The al-Qaida leadership is on the run and under a lot of pressure,” McClellan said at a Marine base in Twentynine Palms, Calif., where Bush was having lunch with military families. “We are on the advance. They are on the run.”

Al-Qaida is not believed to have direct links to Hamas, which is an outgrowth of the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri was quick to distance the group from bin Laden, declaring that “the ideology of Hamas is totally different from the ideology of Sheik bin Laden.” The groups do, however, share an anti-Israel ideology that calls for the destruction of the Jewish state. And recent reports in Middle East media have said al-Qaida is trying to build cells in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Lebanon and Sudan. Israel has indicted two West Bank militants for al-Qaida membership.

Israeli government spokesman Raanan Gissin said it appeared bin Laden decided to issue the verbal assault to deflect growing Arab animosity toward al-Qaida. That criticism peaked in December when the leader of the al-Qaida in Iraq group, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for the bombings of Jordan hotels that killed many Arabs. “This is something the Arab world can agree upon,” Gissin said. Bin Laden “has been criticized for the destruction and carnage he’s causing the Muslim nation. He’s looking for another justification,” Gissin said. “Criticizing Israel sounds more politically correct.”

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad — a former ambassador to Afghanistan — said the tape was another attempt by bin Laden to gain attention for his cause. “He wants to be relevant to the situation, wants to get attention that he still is a player,” Khalilzad said on CNN’s “Late Edition.”

The voice on the tape sounded strong and resembled that on other recordings attributed to bin Laden, but its authenticity could not be verified independently. Al-Jazeera television appeared to have had the tape long enough to make significant edits, with its news reader providing background comments. The network broadcast about five minutes of the tape in all.

Bin Laden’s remarks touched on the full range of issues that anger militant Arabs and other Muslims. Many of them see a renewal of a Christian- and Jewish-inspired Western “crusade” to dominate the Islamic world and to confiscate Muslim lands and resources — particularly oil.

Bob Ayers, a security expert with the Chatham House think tank in London, said the tape may be bin Laden’s way of playing cat-and-mouse with those hunting him. “It’s when people have kind of forgotten about him, when he’s not been on the news, that the tapes emerge,” Ayers said. “It’s kind of his way of thumbing his nose at the U.S. and saying, ‘Hey, I’m still out here, and you haven’t caught me and you can’t.’ That’s what he’s saying.”

Concerning Sudan, bin Laden called on “mujahedeen and their supporters, especially in Sudan and the Arab peninsula, to prepare for long war again the crusader plunderers in Western Sudan. Our goal is not defending the Khartoum government but to defend Islam, its land and its people.” “I urge holy warriors to be acquainted with the land and the tribes in Darfur,” he said, adding they should be aware that the rainy season approaches and that will hamper their movement.

West is on a crusade - Bin Laden (BBC) Sunday, 23 April 2006, 20:37 GMT 21:37 UK

The West’s moves to isolate the new Hamas-led Palestinian government prove it is at war with Islam, a tape attributed to Osama Bin Laden declares. The tape also described the situation in Iraq and Sudan’s troubled Darfur region as further evidence that a “Zionist-crusader war” was being waged. The recording was broadcast by Arab satellite TV al-Jazeera on Sunday. The White House said US intelligence believed the tape was authentic. If so, it is the first message from Bin Laden since January 2006, when he threatened more attacks on the US.

The speaker on the tape said that along with their governments, the people of the West bear responsibility for what he called a “Zionist-crusader war against Islam”. “The war is a responsibility shared between the people and the governments. The war goes on and the people are renewing their allegiance to its rulers and masters,” he said. “They send their sons to armies to fight us and they continue their financial and moral support while our countries are burned and our houses are bombed and our people are killed.” He said that the decision by some Western powers to cut funding to the Palestinian government since the militant group Hamas won elections there was further proof of this anti-Islamic campaign.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the tape had been assessed as authentic by intelligence agencies. “The al-Qaeda leadership is on the run and under a lot of pressure,” he told reporters. “We are continuing to take the fight to the enemy abroad and making it difficult for them to plan and plot against Americans.” But the US ambassador in Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, warned that Bin Laden still posed a threat. “I believe we need to take him seriously,” he said in an interview with CNN, adding that Bin Laden wanted to show he was “still a player”.

The Hamas government moved quickly to distance itself from the tape, saying it was keen to maintain good relations with the West.

The speaker also criticised Western involvement in the troubled Darfur region of Sudan, saying it was part of the “crusades against Islam” and called for militants to journey there to join the fight. “I call on mujahideen and their supporters, especially in Sudan and the Arab peninsula, to prepare for long war again the crusader plunderers in Western Sudan,” the voice said. “Our goal is not defending the Khartoum government but to defend Islam, its land and its people.”

On Tape, Bin Laden Warns of Long War He Accuses the West Of Acting as ‘Crusader’ (Craig Whitlock, Washington Post Foreign Service, Page A01)

Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden urged his followers to prepare for a drawn-out conflict with the Western world in a new audiotape broadcast Sunday, blaming what he called “a Crusader-Zionist war” for a long list of attacks on Islam in places from Darfur to Denmark. “Your aircraft and tanks are destroying houses over the heads of our kinfolk and children in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya and Pakistan. Meanwhile, you smile in our faces, saying: ‘We are not hostile to Islam; we are hostile to terrorists,’ ” bin Laden said, according to excerpts of the audiotape attributed to him and broadcast by the al-Jazeera network.

It was the first time bin Laden had been heard from since Jan. 19, when he offered “a long-term truce” if the United States and its allies withdrew their forces from Iraq and Afghanistan and allowed Islamic fundamentalists to rebuild those countries instead.
Before that, the 49-year-old Saudi had been publicly silent for more than a year. His face has not been seen since he appeared in a video recording broadcast a few days before the 2004 U.S. presidential election. Intelligence sources said they believe he is hiding in Pakistan, despite a global manhunt and a $25 million reward for his capture posted shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

In the new remarks, bin Laden complained about Western interference in shattered Muslim regions around the world. He urged Muslims to go to the war-torn Darfur region of western Sudan to fight international peacekeepers, saying their real mission was “to occupy the region and steal its oil under the cover of maintaining security there,” according to a translation of the audiotape by the BBC. The United States and other Western countries are supporting a plan to send U.N. peacekeepers to Darfur, where Arab militiamen backed by the Sudanese government are fighting rebel groups. Both sides are Muslim. Tens of thousands of people have died in the conflict, and 2 million have been displaced.

He also referred to the strife in the Russian republic of Chechnya and to the lawless country of Somalia. “What is the meaning of the silence over the horrible Russian crimes in Chechnya and the lynching of Muslims and tearing apart of their bodies? What does the humiliation of Muslims in Somalia and the killing of 13,000 of our brother Muslims there mean?” bin Laden said. He did not elaborate on the reference to the deaths in Somalia.

He cited decisions by the United States and European nations to cut off aid to Palestinians after the recent legislative election victory by the militant group Hamas, formally known as the Islamic Resistance Movement, as evidence of a Christian-Jewish conspiracy against Muslims. “They are determined to continue with their Crusader campaigns against our nation, to occupy our countries, to plunder our resources and to enslave us,” he said.

Al-Jazeera did not divulge how it obtained the tape, and it was unclear when it was recorded. But it appears to have been made in the past five weeks because bin Laden referred to a raid by Israeli forces on a Palestinian prison in Jericho on March 14.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said U.S. intelligence officials believe the tape is authentic. “The al-Qaeda leadership is on the run and under a lot of pressure,” McClellan told reporters traveling with President Bush in California. “We are continuing to take the fight to the enemy abroad and making it difficult for them to plan and plot against Americans.”

Counterterrorism analysts said bin Laden was trying to portray himself as a champion of oppressed Muslims around the world, even though al-Qaeda has avoided involvement in many of the conflicts that he has decried. For example, bin Laden has largely ignored events in Sudan since he and his network were expelled from the country a decade ago. Similarly, al-Qaeda has no record of activity in the Palestinian territories. “Bin Laden is a master craftsman at recognizing issues and knowing how to exploit these issues for his own purposes,” said M.J. Gohel, a London-based analyst and chief executive of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, a security policy group. “He’s trying to enlarge the global conflict and is trying to incite and anger the Muslim world against the West.”

Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism specialist and director of the Washington office of the Rand Corp., a California-based research group, said al-Qaeda is confronting the same challenge that all terrorism networks face: how to remain relevant as a radical movement over time. “It’s entirely cynical,” he said of bin Laden’s rallying cry on behalf of Darfur and Hamas. “He’s got to say something about someplace. They’ve got to keep talking or else they’re going to be irrelevant, especially when they’re not directly involved in the fighting.” “These are contentious contemporary issues that he can glom onto and milk for his own ends,” Hoffman added. “It’s more rhetorical than factual. Bin Laden is no friend of the Sudanese. They told him to leave in 1996 and took his money. And Hamas has basically told al-Qaeda to mind its own business.”

Counterterrorism officials and analysts said al-Qaeda’s leaders have also become more outspoken in recent months because they fear losing their influence in the fragmented world of Islamic fundamentalism. Bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian physician, have been effectively sidelined since the Sept. 11 attacks while other radical groups and figures, such as Hamas and Jordanian fighter Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, have stolen the limelight, the analysts said. Zawahiri, for instance, has issued a dozen audio and video recordings in the past year, attempting, as bin Laden has, to insert al-Qaeda into a host of regional conflicts and urging Muslims to boycott elections in Iraq, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Although Zawahiri has frequently shown his face on television, bin Laden has not appeared in a video since October 2004. Terrorism analysts and Islamic fundamentalist leaders are divided as to why. Some speculated that bin Laden may have been injured or could have altered his appearance to avoid detection. Others said bin Laden fully reveals himself only on special occasions for maximum effect, such as his cameo days before the U.S. presidential election.

Despite being on the run, bin Laden and Zawahiri have both devised a reliable and secure system for distributing messages to a global audience that intelligence agencies have failed to trace. Appearing Sunday on Fox News, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, said bin Laden’s most recent tape was part of al-Qaeda’s “ongoing and very sophisticated communications effort” and that the terrorists realize much of today’s fighting “is about winning the hearts and minds of moderate Islam, and they are focused on that.” Hoekstra said his committee was planning hearings on al-Qaeda’s Internet activities shortly after Congress returns from its Easter recess. “They use the right words,” Hoekstra said. “They use instantaneous response. They are quick in getting new messages up on the net.”

Bin Laden Says West Is Waging War Against Islam (MICHAEL SLACKMAN, NYT)

Osama bin Laden denounced what he called a “Zionist-crusaders war on Islam” in an audiotape broadcast Sunday, pointing to the isolation of the Hamas-led Palestinian government, talk of a Western peacekeeping force in Sudan and Muslim outrage over Danish cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad as new evidence of a clash of civilizations. His voice sounding strong and combative, Mr. bin Laden implied that killing American civilians was justified, beseeched Muslims to fight any Sudan peacekeeping force and called for the creators of the offensive cartoons to be turned over to Al Qaeda for punishment.

The audiotape, broadcast by Al Jazeera and deemed authentic by American intelligence officials and terrorism experts, was Mr. bin Laden’s second in three months and the first in which he has raised Sudan as a possible new battleground where Muslims should go to fight. The tape appeared intended not only to re-establish his role as a sort of supreme guide for Al Qaeda, but also to inform his enemies that he is acutely aware of current news events that reflect violent confrontation between Islam and the West.

While Al Qaeda had previously criticized Hamas leaders for participating in Palestinian elections, Mr. bin Laden sought to tap into the wide public support among Arabs for Hamas, which Israel, the United States and the European Union regard as a terrorist organization. “The blockade which the West is imposing on the government of Hamas proves that there is a Zionist-crusaders war on Islam,” he said.

Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, told reporters traveling with President Bush in California that the White House believed the bin Laden tape to be authentic and that the president had been informed of its existence early Sunday morning. Mr. McClellan also said that “the Al Qaeda leadership is on the run and under a lot of pressure.”

Although there was no way to absolutely confirm the tape’s authenticity, terrorism experts said it was credible in part because it hewed closely to Mr. bin Laden’s ideological and tactical profile. While Mr. bin Laden did not mention the American occupation of Iraq in the portions of the tape that were broadcast, he focused on three issues that have resounded across the Arab and Muslim worlds: efforts of the West to isolate Hamas; calls for sending Western peacekeeping troops into the Darfur region of Sudan to stop the killing of civilians; and the outrage over the Danish cartoons.

As in the past, Hamas sought to distance itself from Al Qaeda and its leadership. But Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for Hamas, said Western financial penalties against the Palestinian Authority government it now leads were a source of anger for Muslims around the region. “We have warned many times that the siege upon Hamas and the policy of hunger will create a situation of hatred in Arab and Muslim nations,” Mr. Zuhri said. “It will create the impression there is a Western war against the Islamic world.”

In the case of Sudan, Mr. bin Laden sought to portray talk of bringing in peacekeeping troops as another attempt by the United States to divide Arab lands and to impose a foreign military on an Islamic country. “I call on mujahedeen and their supporters, especially in Sudan and the Arab peninsula, to prepare for a long war against the crusader plunderers in western Sudan,” Mr. bin Laden said. “Our goal is not defending the Khartoum government but to defend Islam, its land and its people.”

In the audiotape three months ago, Mr. bin Laden suggested that there could be peace between the West and Al Qaeda. But that notion was absent from this tape, replaced with a call to arms and what appeared to be a rationale for attacking civilians. “They send their sons to armies to fight us and they continue their financial and moral support, while our countries are burned and our houses are bombed and our people are killed,” he said.

Even before rising to international notoriety with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Mr. bin Laden had long sought to unite a culturally, politically and socially fragmented community of Muslims behind a common enemy: Israel and the West. With his most recent tape, analysts said that Mr. bin Laden held true to form, not only by embracing Hamas, but in particular by pointing to Sudan. “He is using the hottest topics in the Arab world — Hamas, for example — he knows that the Arab street is very angry as America is cutting off Hamas aid, and he is using this issue to fuel the situation even further and incite young people to join his cause,” said Muhammad Salah, Cairo bureau chief for the pan-Arab newspaper Al Hayat and an expert in Islamic extremism. “What is new in this tape is the issue of Sudan,” Mr. Salah added. “He had lived in Sudan and invested his money there and he knows that the Arab people and government are against international intervention in Sudan.”

Experts in Islamic-related terrorism said the tape appeared intended as a finger in the eye to the White House, and a chance to use American foreign policy initiatives to support his notion that the United States is waging a war against Islam. “He is asserting his presence,” said Diaa Rashwan, an expert on Islamic groups with the government-financed Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Egypt. “He is keen to show that he is aware of what’s going on in the world. He is well informed so he is not isolated or hiding in some crack underground.”

Michael Scheuer, former chief of the Central Intelligence Agency’s bin Laden unit, said the segments of the tape he had read about suggested that Mr. bin Laden “is at the top of his game” largely because of America’s own foreign policy. “We cut off Hamas after we had a fair election,” he said. “It looks like we are going to intervene in another Muslim country with oil, in Sudan; we followed Israel’s lead with Hamas. His most important ally is American foreign policy.”

But while Mr. bin Laden’s name still resonates around the world, it is not entirely clear that he can reclaim the mantle as the leader of the Qaeda terrorism network. And there has been no videotape seen of Mr. bin Laden since the last American presidential campaign.

“My initial impression is he is clutching at straws,” said Michael Chandler, former head of the United Nations unit on counterterrorism. “If he really wants to show leadership, the way you show leadership is to show yourself. So why haven’t we had a videotape?”

Transcript: Bin Laden accuses West (Al Jazeera) Monday 24 April 2006, 0:26 Makka Time, 21:26 GMT

The following is an edited translation of an audiotape attributed to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, parts of which were aired by Aljazeera on April 23, 2006. (It is not known where or when the recording was made.)

Praise be to Allah, Lord of the world, prayer and peace be upon our prophet Muhammad, his kin and all his companions.

Peace, Allah’s mercy and blessing be upon you, as I am directing this speech to all the Islamic Umma, to continue talking and urging them to support our prophet Muhammad, and to punish the perpetrators of the horrible crime committed by some Crusader-journalists and apostates against the master of the predecessors and successors, our prophet Muhammad.

The holy verses of the Quran and the holy prophetic teachings have all clarified the need for according love, respect and obedience to our prophet. Allah, the Almighty, has made it a taboo to offend him, saying in the Quran those who harm Allah and his messenger would be damned and severely punished.

It was also confirmed by an authentic source that prophet Muhammad said no one could be faithful until he loves me more than he loves his parents, his sons and all other people. Therefore, the Umma has reached a consensus that he who offends or degrades the messenger would be killed. Such offence is regarded as kufr (infidelity).

We ask Allah to give his blessings to whoever decried the behaviour of the infidels who have offended the prophet in every part of the world, and blessings to those who have died in the process, while we vow to Allah to avenge for those whose blood have been spilled.

The West is incapable of recognising the rights of others. It will not be able to respect others’ beliefs or feelings. The West still believes in ethnic supremacy and looks down on other nations. They categorise human beings into white masters and coloured slaves.

This is why they established institutions and enacted laws to maintain their supremacy by creating the United Nations and the veto power … . They regard jihad for the sake of God or defending one’s self or his country as an act of terror. US and Europe consider jihad groups in Palestine, Chechnya, Iraq and Afghanistan as terrorist groups, so how could we talk or have understanding with them without using weapons?

On their part, the rulers of our region consider the US and Europe as their friends and allies while looking at the jihad groups that fight against the Crusaders in Iraq and Afghanistan as terrorist groups as well. So how can we reach understanding with those rulers who deny us the right to defend ourselves and our religion without carrying arms?

The net result of their thinking is for us to abandon jihad and acquiesce to remaining as their slaves. This is impossible, God willing.

The Palestine question is a manifestation of such injustices when the allied forces of the Crusaders and the Zionists decided to hand over Palestine to the Zionists to establish a state after committing massacres, displaced the indigenous Palestinians and brought Jews from all over the world to settle in Palestine.

The ongoing injustice and aggression did not stop in the last nine decades, while all attempts to reclaim our rights and exact justice on the Israeli oppressors, were blocked by the leadership of the Crusaders and Zionists’ alliance by using the so-called veto power.

Such attitudes were also reflected by their rejection of the Hamas movement and its victory in the elections … . Their rejection to Hamas has reaffirmed that they were waging a crusade against Islam.

The US sought to reach southern Sudan, recruited an army of southerners, supported them with weapons and funding and directed them to seek separation from Sudan. Then it exercised pressure against Khartoum government to sign an unjust agreement which permits south Sudan to gain independence from the north within six years.

[Sudanese President Omar] al-Bashir and [US President George] Bush should have been aware that this agreement is not worth the ink by which it was written, and we do not accord the least concern to it. Nobody, whoever he was, has the right to accede an inch of the land of Islam and the south will remain an inseparable part of the land of Isalm, God willing, even if the war continued for decades.

The US was not satisfied by all the sedition and crimes, but went on to incite sedition, the largest of which was the west Sudan sedition by exploiting some disputes between the tribes and sparking a savage war between them that will spare nothing, prior to sending in Crusader troops to occupy the region and steal its oil wealth under the pretext of peacekeeping.

This is a continuous Crusader-Zionist war against Muslims. In this respect I am inviting the mujahidin and their supporters in the Sudan and other countries around, including the Arabian peninsula in particular, to prepare all that is needed for a long-term war against the Crusaders and thieves in western Sudan.

Our objective is obvious, that is defending Islam, the people and the land but not Khartoum government since our differences with them are so enormous, mostly when it backtracked in implementing the Sharia law and abandoned south Sudan.

I urge the mujahidin to get acquainted with Darfur state tribes and land and its surroundings, keeping in mind that the region is about to face the rainy season that hampers means of transport.

This is one of the reasons why the occupation was adjourned for six months. So it is imperative to speed up action and benefit from the time factor by stocking a large amount of landmines and anti-armour grenades such as RPGs [rocket propelled grenades].

What was the aim behind barring arms from the unarmed people in Bosnia and letting the Serb army to massacre Muslims and spill their blood for years under UN cover? It was a Crusader war against Muslims.

What was the aim of the pressure against Indonesia by the Crusaders countries until East Timor, 24 hours after a warning by the UN? A Crusader-Zionist-Hindu war against Muslims.

Meanwhile, a UN resolution passed more than half a century ago gave Muslim Kashmir the liberty of choosing independence from India and Kashmir. George Bush, the leader of the Crusaders’ campaign, announced a few days ago that he will order his converted agent [Pakistan President Pervez] Musharraf to shut down the Kashmir mujahidin camps, thus affirming that it is a Zionist-Hindu war against Muslims.

With respect to Pakistan, some Muslims have done a good job by assisting their fellow Muslims, God bless them, but the Pashtun tribes must be aided after the Pakistan army devastated their homes in Waziristan in order to satisfy the US.

What does the silence over Russian atrocities inside Chechnya mean, along with mutilating their bodies by tying them to tanks while the so-called free world gives its blessings and even secretly supports the aggression ? This is a Zionist crusade.

What does the humiliation of Muslims in Somalia and killing 13,000 Muslims mean, along with torching Muslims’ bodies? This is a Zionist-Crusaders war.

I will remind Muslims to fear God and to save their brothers in the African Horn from the famine that hit them.

What does the destruction of the infrastructure in Iraq mean and the tragedy that befell them mean? And the use of depleted uranium, besieging Iraq for years, causing the death of more than one million children which amazed all who had visited Iraq, including the Westerners themselves? It is a malicious crusade against Muslims.

What does the reoccupation of Iraq mean by using lies and deception along with murder, destruction, detention, torture and creation of huge military bases to dominate the whole region? It is a Zionist crusade against Muslims.

What about the continuous cultural domination through the setting up of radio stations and TV channels along with the Voice of America, London and others to continue the cultural domination of Muslims, combat our beliefs, change our values, encourage vice and even interfere with school curricula?

How can we explain France’s stance on the headscarf and the banning on wearing it at schools, its relentless dealing with the Muslim community and its plan to establish a TV channel in Morocco to combat Islamic awareness there? This is a Zionist-Crusader war.

In conclusion, a war is under way to offend the messenger of Allah, his religion and his Umma (nation). The Muslim preparedness and their jihad should be on a par with these events. The duty of our Muslim nation over this Crusaders’ campaign with its different aspects is to focus on supporting the prophet, his religion and the Umma to the best of our ability in all fields.

Despite the numerous Crusader attacks against our Muslim nation in military, economic, cultural and moral aspects, but the gravest of them all is the attack against our religion, our prophet and the our Sharia tenets. The epicentre of these wars is Baghdad, the seat of the khalifate rule. They keep reiterating that success in Baghdad will be success for the US, failure in Iraq the failure of the US.

Their defeat in Iraq will mean defeat in all their wars and a beginning to the receding of their Zionist-Crusader tide against us. Your mujahidin sons and brothers in Iraq have taught the US a hard lesson while in the fourth year of the Crusaders’ invasion, they are steadfast and patient and keep killing and wounding enemy soldiers every day.

It is a duty for the Umma with all its categories, men, women and youths, to give away themselves, their money, experiences and all types of material support, enough to establish jihad in the fields of jihad particularly in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Sudan, Kashmir and Chechnya. Jihad today is an imperative for every Muslim. The Umma will commit sin if it did not provide adequate material support for jihad.

O fellow Muslims, pay no heed for the number of the enemy and their arsenal of arms because victory is a gift of God while the enemy, praise be to God, is experiencing a critical situation.

Pentagon to Fight Terrorism Beyond War Zones

New Plans Foresee Fighting Terrorism Beyond War Zones - Pentagon to Rely on Special Operations (Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post, Page A01)

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has approved the military’s most ambitious plan yet to fight terrorism around the world and retaliate more rapidly and decisively in the case of another major terrorist attack on the United States, according to defense officials. The long-awaited campaign plan for the global war on terrorism, as well as two subordinate plans also approved within the past month by Rumsfeld, are considered the Pentagon’s highest priority, according to officials familiar with the three documents who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about them publicly.

Details of the plans are secret, but in general they envision a significantly expanded role for the military — and, in particular, a growing force of elite Special Operations troops — in continuous operations to combat terrorism outside of war zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Developed over about three years by the Special Operations Command (SOCOM) in Tampa, the plans reflect a beefing up of the Pentagon’s involvement in domains traditionally handled by the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department. For example, SOCOM has dispatched small teams of Army Green Berets and other Special Operations troops to U.S. embassies in about 20 countries in the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America, where they do operational planning and intelligence gathering to enhance the ability to conduct military operations where the United States is not at war. And in a subtle but important shift contained in a classified order last year, the Pentagon gained the leeway to inform — rather than gain the approval of — the U.S. ambassador before conducting military operations in a foreign country, according to several administration officials. “We do not need ambassador-level approval,” said one defense official familiar with the order.

Overall, the plans underscore Rumsfeld’s conviction since the September 2001 terrorist attacks that the U.S. military must expand its mission beyond 20th-century conventional warfare by infantry, tanks, ships and fighter jets to fighting non-state groups that are, above all, difficult to find.

The plans each run more than 100 pages and cover a wide range of overt and clandestine military activities — such as man-hunting and intelligence gathering on terrorist networks; attacks on terrorist training camps and recruiting efforts; and partnering with foreign militaries to eliminate terrorist sanctuaries. Together, they amount to an assignment of responsibilities to different military commands to conduct what the Pentagon envisions as a “long war” against terrorism. The main campaign plan sets priorities, allocates resources such as manpower and funding, and coordinates operations among regional military commands to implement the Pentagon’s broader National Military Strategic Plan for the War on Terrorism, published in unclassified form in February. It lays out nine key goals, such as targeting terrorist leaders, safe havens, communications and other logistical support, and countering extremist ideology.

A second detailed plan is focused specifically on al-Qaeda and associated movements, including more than a dozen groups spread across the Middle East, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and Africa. Such groups include the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and Ansar al-Islam in the Middle East, Jemaah Islamiya in Indonesia, and the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat in Saharan Africa.

A third plan sets out how the military can both disrupt and respond to another major terrorist strike on the United States. It includes lengthy annexes that offer a menu of options for the military to retaliate quickly against specific terrorist groups, individuals or state sponsors depending on who is believed to be behind an attack. Another attack could create both a justification and an opportunity that is lacking today to retaliate against some known targets, according to current and former defense officials familiar with the plan. This plan details “what terrorists or bad guys we would hit if the gloves came off. The gloves are not off,” said one official, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject.

[...]

Special Operations Command, led by Gen. Doug Brown, has been building up its headquarters and writing the plans since 2003, when Rumsfeld first designated it as the lead command for the war on terrorism. Its budget has grown 60 percent since 2003 to $8 billion in fiscal 2007. President Bush empowered the 53,000-strong command with coordinating the entire military’s efforts in counterterrorism in 2004. “SOCOM is, in fact, in charge of the global war on terror,” Brown said in testimony before the House last month. In this role, SOCOM directs and coordinates actions by the military’s regional combatant commands. SOCOM, if directed, can also command its own counterterrorist operations — such as when a threat spans regional boundaries or the mission is highly sensitive — but it has not done so yet, according to Olson, and other officials say that is likely to be the exception to the rule.

To extend its reach to more countries, SOCOM is increasing by 13,000 the number of Special Operations troops, including Special Forces soldiers skilled in language and working with indigenous militaries, and Delta Force operatives and Navy SEAL teams that form clandestine “special mission units” engaged in reconnaissance, intelligence gathering and man-hunting. Already, SOCOM is seeing its biggest deployments in history, with 7,000 troops overseas today, but the majority have been concentrated in Iraq and Afghanistan, with 85 percent last year in the Middle East, Central Asia or the Horn of Africa.

But SOCOM’s more robust role — while adding manpower, specialized skills and organization to the fight against terrorism — has also led to some bureaucratic tensions, both inside the military with the joint staff and regional commands, as well as with the CIA and State Department. Such tensions are one reason SOCOM’s plan took years. When SOCOM first dispatched military liaison teams abroad starting in 2003, they were called “Operational Control Elements,” a term changed last year because “it raised the hackles of regional commanders and ambassadors. It was a bad choice of language,” said one defense official, adding: “Who can pick on Military Liaison Elements?”

State Department officials, meanwhile, said that although, for the most part, cooperation with the military teams has been good, they remain concerned over continued “gray areas” regarding their status. “Special Ops wants the flexibility and speed to go in there. . . . but there’s understandably questions of how you do that and how you have clear lines of authority,” one U.S. official said. There remains “continuing discussion, to put it politely, in terms of how this is going to work,” the official said. SOCOM says the teams work for the regional commanders

Lawyer: Rice Leaked Defense Info

Lawyer: Rice Allegedly Leaked Defense Info (MATTHEW BARAKAT, Associated Press) 12:59 AM

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice leaked national defense information to a pro-Israel lobbyist in the same manner that landed a lower-level Pentagon official a 12-year prison sentence, the lobbyist’s lawyer said Friday. Prosecutors disputed the claim. The allegations against Rice came as a federal judge granted a defense request to issue subpoenas sought by the defense for Rice and three other government officials in the trial of Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman. The two are former lobbyists with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee who are charged with receiving and disclosing national defense information.

Defense lawyers are asking a judge to dismiss the charges because, among other things, they believe it seeks to criminalize the type of backchannel exchanges between government officials, lobbyists and the press that are part and parcel of how Washington works. During Friday’s hearing, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III said he is considering dismissing the government’s entire case because the law used to prosecute Rosen and Weissman may be unconstitutionally vague and broad and infringe on freedom of speech.

Rosen’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said the testimony of Rice and others is needed to show that some of the top officials in U.S. government approved of disclosing sensitive information to the defendants and that the leaks may have been authorized. Prosecutors opposed the effort to depose Rice and the other officials. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin DiGregory also disputed Lowell’s claim, saying, “She never gave national defense information to Mr. Rosen.”

EU: No Evidence of CIA Prisons

EU official: No evidence of illegal CIA action - Antiterror chief advises committee (Jan Silva, Associated Press) April 21

Investigations into reports that US agents shipped prisoners through European airports to secret detention centers have produced no evidence of illegal CIA activities, the European Union’s antiterrorism coordinator said yesterday. The investigations also have not turned up any proof of secret renditions of terror suspects on EU territory, Gijs de Vries told a European Parliament committee investigating the allegations.

The European Parliament’s probe and a similar one by the continent’s leading human rights watchdog are looking into whether US intelligence agents interrogated Al Qaeda suspects at secret prisons in Eastern Europe and transported some on secret flights through Europe. But so far investigators have not identified any human rights violations, despite more than 50 hours of testimony by human rights activists and individuals who said they were abducted by US intelligence agents, de Vries said. ”We’ve heard all kinds of allegations, impressions; we’ve heard also refutations. It’s up to your committee to weigh if they are true. It does not appear to be proven beyond reasonable doubt,” he said. ”There has not been, to my knowledge, evidence that these illegal renditions have taken place.”
[...]

The US has never confirmed or denied the renditions. The committee plans to go to Washington to interview former and current CIA officials and Bush administration officials. The parliament committee is seeking firsthand testimony from people who say they were kidnapped by US intelligence agents and from human rights activists and EU antiterrorism officials to get a better picture of the reported US ”extraordinary rendition” flights.

No Proof of Secret C.I.A. Prisons, European Antiterror Chief Says (DAN BILEFSKY, NYT) April 21

The European Union’s antiterrorism chief told a hearing on Thursday that he had not been able to prove that secret C.I.A. prisons existed in Europe. “We’ve heard all kinds of allegations,” the official, Gijs de Vries, said before a committee of the European Parliament. “It does not appear to be proven beyond reasonable doubt.”

But Mr. de Vries came under criticism from some legislators who called the hearing a whitewash. Kathalijne Buitenweg, a Dutch member of Parliament from the Green Party, said that even without definitive proof, “the circumstantial evidence is stunning.”
“I’m appalled that we keep calling to uphold human rights while pretending that these rendition centers don’t exist and doing nothing about it,” she said.

Many European nations were outraged after an article in The Washington Post in November cited unidentified intelligence officials as saying that the C.I.A. had maintained detention centers for terrorism suspects in eight countries, including some in Eastern Europe. A later report by the advocacy group Human Rights Watch cited Poland and Romania as two of the countries. Both countries, as well as others in Europe, have denied the allegations. But the issue has inflamed trans-Atlantic tensions.

Mr. de Vries said the European Parliament investigation had not uncovered rights abuses despite more than 50 hours of testimony by rights advocates and people who say they were abducted by C.I.A. agents. A similar investigation by the Council of Europe, the European human rights agency, came to the same conclusion in January — though the leader of that inquiry, Dick Marty, a Swiss senator, said then that there were enough “indications” to justify continuing the investigation.

A number of legislators on Thursday challenged Mr. de Vries for not taking seriously earlier testimony before the committee of a German and a Canadian who gave accounts of being kidnapped and kept imprisoned by foreign agents.

The committee also heard Thursday from a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, who said: “I can attest to the willingness of the U.S. and the U.K. to obtain intelligence that was got under torture in Uzbekistan. If they were not willing, then rendition prisons could not have existed.” But Mr. Murray, who was recalled from his job in 2004 after condemning the Uzbek authorities and criticizing the British and American governments, told the committee that he had no proof that detention centers existed within Europe. He said he had witnessed such rendition programs in Uzbekistan, but he seemed to back up Mr. de Vries’s assertion when he said he was not aware of anyone being taken to Uzbekistan from Europe. “As far as I know, that never happened,” he said.

While he was ambassador, Mr. Murray made many public statements condemning the government of President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan for its poor human rights record. At the time, the Bush administration was using Uzbekistan as a base for military operations in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr. Murray, who has remained an outspoken critic of American and British policy toward Uzbekistan, has since been criticized by Foreign Secretary Jack Straw of Britain for breaching diplomatic protocol.

New Iraqi Parliament Meets after PM Deadlock Broken

New Iraqi Parliament Prepares to Meet (QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press)

A breakthrough in months of political deadlock cleared the way Saturday for Iraq’s parliament to launch the process of putting together a new government aimed at pulling the country out of its sectarian strife.

[...]

On Friday, the Shiite alliance nominated a tough-talking Shiite politician, Jawad al-Maliki, as prime minister in a move that broke the long impasse over forming a new government. Sunni Arab and Kurdish politicians signaled they would accept al-Maliki, clearing the way for parliament on Saturday to elect top leadership positions, including the president.

Al-Maliki replaces outgoing Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, whose attempt to stay for a second term had raised sharp opposition from Sunnis and Kurds and caused a deadlock that lasted months as the country’s security crisis worsened in the wake of last December’s election. U.S. and Iraqi officials are hoping that a national unity government representing Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds will be able to quell both the Sunni-led insurgency and bloody Shiite-Sunni violence that has raged during the political uncertainty. If it succeeds, it could enable the U.S. to begin bringing home its 133,000 troops. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the Bush administration is hopeful that the latest political developments in Iraq will lead to significant progress in forming a permanent government. “We hope to see good progress in the coming days,” McClellan told reporters traveling with President Bush to California. “We’ll be watching.”

[...]

Al-Maliki has a reputation as a hardline, outspoken defender of the Shiite stance — raising questions over whether he will be able to negotiate the delicate sectarian balancing act. From exile in Syria in the 1980s and 1990s, he directed Dawa guerrillas fighting Saddam Hussein’s regime. Since returning home after Saddam’s fall, he has been a prominent member of the commission purging former Baath Party officials from the military and government. Sunni Arabs, who made up the backbone of Saddam’s ousted party, deeply resent the commission. Al-Maliki was also a tough negotiator in drawn-out deliberations over a new constitution that was passed last year despite Sunni Arab objections. He resisted U.S. efforts to put more Sunnis on the drafting committee as well as Sunni efforts to water down provisions giving Shiites and Kurds the power to form semiautonomous mini-states in the north and south.

[...]

Shiite lawmaker Ridha Jawad Taqi said all sides were agreed on a package deal for the top spots in the parliamentary vote expected Saturday: Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, would remain as president for a second term, with Sunni Arab Tariq al-Hashimi and Shiite Adil Abdul-Mahdi holding the two vice-president spots. Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, a Sunni, would become parliament speaker with two deputies — Khalid al-Attiyah, a Shiite, and Aref Tayfour, a Kurd.

The new prime minister nominee will now face the task of putting together a national unity government, meaning divvying up the ministries among Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish parties. One source of conflict is likely to be the powerful Interior Ministry, which currently held by SCIRI. Sunnis will probably push for a change and demand the uprooting of Shiite militias from the ministry’s security forces.

Once the president is approved by parliament, he will designate al-Maliki to form a government within 30 days. Lawmakers must then approve each member of the government by a majority vote.

Top Shiites Nominate A Premier For Iraq - Al-Maliki Opposed Hussein And the U.S.-Led Invasion (Nelson Hernandez and K.I. Ibrahim
Washington Post Foreign Service, Page A01)

Jawad al-Maliki, an experienced political operator and advocate for Iraq’s Shiite Muslims, won the approval of Shiite party leaders for the post of prime minister on Friday, a day after the parties’ original nominee bowed out under political pressure. The move could end the political paralysis that has gripped Iraq since national elections were held on Dec. 15. Maliki, a senior member of the coalition of Shiite parties that holds the largest number of seats in Iraq’s parliament, is now on course to lead Iraq’s first long-term government since the fall of Saddam Hussein. If ultimately chosen, the former exile would inherit grave challenges, among them an economy in tatters, an insurgent movement that continues to attack Iraq’s government and its U.S. backers, and ethnic and sectarian tensions that threaten to tear the country apart.

Leaders of the Shiite coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance, said Friday night that Maliki’s nomination by the alliance’s political committee would face a vote by the full membership on Saturday morning. If approved, his name would be formally presented to Iraq’s parliament, along with a list of nominees for other top posts, that afternoon. But events rarely proceed so smoothly in the Iraqi political process, which has been held up for months by the debate over who would be prime minister. The incumbent, Ibrahim al-Jafari, won the alliance’s nomination in February, only to be opposed by Sunni Arab and Kurdish political parties. Jafari, who like Maliki is a leader of the Dawa party, gave in to weeks of heavy pressure and surrendered his nomination on Thursday.

On Friday night, leaders of the Shiite alliance said they had gained support for Maliki from the leaders of the Sunni Arab and Kurdish political blocs. The Associated Press quoted Adnan al-Dulaimi, head of the main Sunni Arab coalition in parliament, as saying: “If anyone is nominated except al-Jafari, we won’t put any obstacles in his way. He will receive our support.”

The Shiite leaders also said they had reached an understanding with other factions over who would hold other top posts in the next government, including those of the president and two deputy presidents, who hold the formal power to nominate a prime minister. An aide to Jafari, Adnan Ali al-Kadhimi, said the Shiites had agreed to yield the presidential post to the incumbent, Jalal Talabani, a Kurd. His two deputies, they said, would be Tariq al-Hashimi, a leader of the Sunni Arab coalition, and Adel Abdul Mahdi, a Shiite economist who had been a rival to Jafari.

Maliki appears to hold a stronger mandate within the Shiite alliance than did Jafari, who was chosen over Abdul Mahdi in February by a single vote. Maliki’s only remaining opponent among the Shiite parties is Nadim al-Jabiri, a candidate of the Fadhila Party, whose representative abstained from the political committee’s vote on Maliki. Party officials said Maliki won the support of the other six members of the alliance’s political committee, including representatives of the alliance’s most powerful factions — the Dawa party; the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which had supported Abdul Mahdi; and the group led by the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who had backed Jafari. Maliki was “chosen for his acceptability both by groups inside the alliance and outside it,” Ridha Jawad Taqi, a spokesman for the Supreme Council, said at a news conference broadcast on Iraqi television. “We want to have a government of national unity and partnership, a government that includes all components of Iraqi society, one that will be accepted by any ethnicity or group.”

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, said the choice of Maliki was “a good step in the right direction. He’s an Iraqi patriot. He’s a strong leader.”

Yet Maliki, born in 1950 near the Shiite holy city of Karbala, possesses credentials that may not endear him to Sunni Arabs or U.S. officials wary of foreign influence. He joined the Shiite-dominated Dawa party in 1968, soon falling foul of Iraq’s Baath Party government. He fled Iraq in 1980, a year after Hussein rose to the presidency, and spent his years in exile in Iran and Syria. He was sentenced to death in absentia, returning to Iraq only after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Hussein in 2003.

Although he was a strident opponent of Hussein, he also opposed the invasion that ultimately forced the ruler from power. “The danger to Iraq lies in the possibility of the U.S. administration making mistakes in its supervision of this crisis,” he said in an interview with the Lebanese newspaper al-Nahar in December 2002 that was translated by the U.S. government’s Open Source Center. “Those who will rule Iraq after Saddam Hussein cannot be envied. Don’t fight for ruling an Iraq full of widows and orphans and burdened with heavy debt.”

After Hussein fell, Maliki and the Dawa party quickly claimed a powerful role in Iraqi politics. Like many Shiites, Maliki supported the removal of Baathists from the government. In 2004, he served as a mediator in talks between U.S. representatives and Sadr, a popular leader who led a Shiite uprising. Maliki also served as deputy chairman of the committee that wrote the Iraqi constitution. He has argued against splitting Iraq along ethnic and sectarian lines — a stance that could lead to conflict not only with the Kurds in the north, who have governed their own region for years, but with Shiite parties that favor establishing their own mini-state in the south.

Shiites Settle on Pick for Iraqi Premier (RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr., NYT)

Shiite leaders on Friday selected Jawad al-Maliki, one of their more conservative, forceful and outspoken officials, as their nominee for prime minister, opening the door for him to become the leader of Iraq’s first full-term government since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Despite earlier misgivings, Kurdish and Sunni Arab leaders said they intended to support Mr. Maliki, 56, a hard-nosed negotiator and close ally of the departing prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari. The prime minister’s agreement on Thursday to step aside broke a two-month political deadlock that had worsened Iraq’s instability and contributed to an increase in sectarian killings across the nation.

Though Sunni Arab leaders voiced support for Mr. Maliki on Friday, he has been a backer of strict policies intended to keep former supporters of Mr. Hussein’s Sunni-dominated government out of power. He pushed for de-Baathification, a program to remove former Baath Party members from important jobs in post-invasion Iraq. And in contrast to more moderate Iraqi leaders who have sought to bring insurgents into the political process, Mr. Maliki pushed proposals aimed at the Sunni-dominated insurgency that called for the death penalty not only for those who commit murder but also for anyone, he said last year, found to “finance, propagate, cover up, support or provide shelter for the terrorists, no matter how involved they are.”

If the Iraqi National Assembly can agree on other senior government leaders, Mr. Maliki, a senior member of the Islamic Dawa Party who fled to Iran and then Syria after being threatened with death by Mr. Hussein’s government, will be asked to form a cabinet. Several key political leaders said in interviews on Friday night that agreement had been reached on posts the Assembly must first approve, including president and Assembly speaker. They said the current president, Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, would retain his job, while a top Sunni Arab leader, Mahmoud Mashhadani, was expected to become speaker despite concerns from some Kurds and Shiites who sought someone more moderate.

If legislators make the selections formal at Saturday’s Assembly session, it will signal a turnabout in the political process from just a few days ago, when Mr. Jaafari, with the support of Moktada al-Sadr, the firebrand Shiite cleric, had resolutely refused to give up his job despite growing pressure from Sunnis, Kurds, some Shiites and the United States. Even so, more difficult political fights may remain before a new government is formed. Mr. Maliki will have to put together a cabinet that includes officials overseeing powerful ministries, including interior, defense, finance and oil. For Sunnis, perhaps the most divisive issue is the Interior Ministry, which includes the police and is now run by a hard-line Shiite with close ties to Iran. Sunnis say men wearing police uniforms have accounted for large numbers of sectarian tortures and murders, where men are arrested but their bodies are found days later — sometimes with holes drilled in their head or limbs.

“Today was a major positive, but there are tough days ahead, especially with regard to the selection of ministers,” Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to Iraq, said in an interview. He said he told Mr. Maliki on Friday of the importance of independent ministers, and of the need to eliminate militias from the Iraqi security forces and to scale back the Shiite-backed program that bars former Baathists from many jobs in the Iraqi government and institutions. “I met with him for a long time today and he was very positive,” Mr. Khalilzad said.

Born in 1950 in Hindiya, between the cities of Karbala and Hilla, Mr. Maliki was educated in Iraqi Kurdistan and was exiled to Iran after Mr. Hussein vowed to eliminate leaders of the Islamic Dawa Party. Mr. Maliki later traveled to Syria and returned to Iraq after the American invasion three years ago. “He is very close to Jaafari,” said the acting Assembly speaker, Adnan Pachachi. “He is known for his tough stands on issues like the Baathists and terrorism. He is an elegant speaker and is very forceful in espousing his views.”

A Western diplomat in Baghdad said a major difference between Mr. Jaafari, who is also a Dawa member, and Mr. Maliki was that Mr. Maliki appeared to be more “competent.” “The overall impression one has for him from his experience and background is that he’s a strong leader and that he will be able to do a better job,” the diplomat said. “Mr. Jaafari was tested and demonstrated that he was not able to be an effective leader, but Mr. Maliki is a strong leader and is tough minded.” The diplomat also said Sunni leaders took some comfort in knowing that Mr. Maliki had fewer ties to Iran than some Shiite leaders did, including his top rival for the prime minister’s job, Ali al-Adeeb, the son of an Iranian.

[...]

The need to avoid another drawn-out battle over the prime minister’s job, and the hope that a new government could help stabilize the country, appeared to be significant factors in the decision by Kurdish and Sunni Arab leaders to support Mr. Maliki. “We don’t have many options, and we would like to push the political process forward,” said Tariq al-Hashemi, leader of the Iraqi Consensus Front, the largest Sunni Arab group, on Friday. “We will cooperate with him and we will support him tomorrow.” In an interview Friday night, Mahmoud Othman, a senior member of the Kurdish political alliance, said of Mr. Maliki, “We have no objection to him and we wish him success.” He also said the Kurds would support Mr. Mashhadani. The day before, Mr. Othman had described Mr. Mashhadani as an “extremist” not suitable to become speaker. Bickering political factions could conceivably raise objections to any nominee, Mr. Othman explained, but he said that now there was “no time” for that because of Iraq’s current condition. “This needs to move forward, so we had no objection,” he said.

U.S. Death Rate in Drastic Decline

U.S. Records Drastic Decline in Death Rate (MIKE STOBBE, Associated Press) Wed Apr 19, 7:56 PM ET

In what appears to be an amazing success for American medicine, preliminary government figures released Wednesday showed that the annual number of deaths in the U.S. dropped by nearly 50,000 in 2004 — the biggest decline in nearly 70 years. The 2 percent decrease, reported by the National Center for Health Statistics, came as a shock to many, because the U.S. is aging, growing in population and getting fatter. In fact, some experts said they suspect the numbers may not hold up when a final report is released later this year.

Nevertheless, center officials said the statistics, based on a review of about 90 percent of death records reported in all 50 states in 2004, were consistent across the country and were deemed solid enough to report. The center said drops in the death rates for heart disease, cancer and stroke accounted for most of the decline. “We were surprised by the sharpness of the decrease. It’s kind of historical,” said statistician Arialdi Minino, lead author of the report. The government also said that U.S. life expectancy has inched up again to 77.9 years, a record high but still behind that of about two dozen other countries.

The preliminary number of U.S. deaths recorded for 2004 was 2,398,343. That represents a decline of 49,945 from the 2,448,288 recorded in 2003. U.S. deaths ordinarily rise slightly each year. The last decline in annual deaths occurred in 1997, a modest drop of 445 deaths from 1996, Minino said.

The number of deaths has not dropped this steeply since 1938, when there were about 69,000 fewer than in 1937. A drop in 1944 came close — about 48,000 fewer deaths than the previous year. Health officials could not immediately say why the number of deaths fell so sharply in either of those years. “These are preliminary data,” said Paul Terry, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Atlanta’s Emory University. “But if it holds up, it’s obviously very good news.”

To see such a giant drop after years of annual increases was a little hard to swallow for some. “We will not make much of this until the final data come out,” said Elizabeth Ward, director of surveillance research for the American Cancer Society.

Overall, age-adjusted death rates fell to a record low of 801 deaths per 100,000 population in 2004, down from almost 833 deaths per 100,000 in 2003. Heart disease continues to be the leading cause of death, accounting for 27 percent of the nation’s deaths in 2004. Cancer was second, at about 23 percent, and strokes were third, at 6 percent. The good news: The age-adjusted death rate for all three killers dropped. The heart disease rate declined more than 6 percent, the cancer rate about 3 percent, and the stroke rate about 6.5 percent.

Improvements in medical care, particularly in medications aimed at preventing heart disease, at least partly explain the improvements in the heart disease death rate, said Ken Thorpe, an Emory professor of health policy. Also, the flu season for 2004 was milder than 2003, which helped explain the more than 7 percent drop in the influenza death rate, Minino noted.

The death rates for 11 of the 13 other leading causes of death also declined, with only Alzheimer’s disease (the No. 7 killer) and high blood pressure and kidney disease related to high blood pressure (No. 13) inching up.

Even officials at the National Center for Health Statistics were “really kind of concerned” when they first saw their own numbers, said Bob Anderson, the agency’s chief of mortality statistics. But the fact that decreases in the death rate were found nationwide gives them confidence that the findings are legitimate, and not the result of something like changes in data collection.

The government also reported that a baby born in 2004 could expect to live to nearly 78 — an increase of almost half a year from 2003. Women now have a life expectancy of 80.4, up from 80.1. Male life expectancy is 75.2, up from 74.8.

The life expectancy for whites — 78.3 — was up only slightly from the previous year. The increase for blacks was larger, with a rise from 72.7 to 73.3.

The government also reported that the infant mortality rate has dropped to 6.76 deaths per 1,000 births, down from 6.85 the year before. But a huge racial disparity persists. The rate for whites was 5.65 per 1,000 births, for blacks, 13.65.

Japan, Monaco and San Marino had the highest life expectancy, 82 years, in 2004, according to World Health Organization statistics. Australia, Iceland, Italy, Sweden and Switzerland have a life expectancy of 81. Canada, France, Israel, Norway, Spain and Britain are among the other countries with life expectancies above 78.

Iraqi PM Allows Vote That Could End Deadlock

Iraqi Premier Allows Vote That Could End Deadlock (RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr., NYT)

In a sudden reversal, embattled Iraqi prime minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said today that he was willing to relinquish his job, a move that was hailed by some other political leaders as a potential breakthrough in the stalemate has fueled the country’s bitter sectarian violence. After his announcement, a planned session of Parliament was canceled to allow for the Shiite coalition to which Mr. Jaafari belongs to choose another candidate.

At a news conference outside the legislative hall, President Jalal Talabani expressed confidence that with the hurdle of the prime minister past, other disputes over top government jobs could be quickly overcome. “There will be a friendly atmosphere and there will be a national unity government,” he said.

In the long months of haggling that have dragged on since last December’s parliamentary elections, there have been many potential breakthroughs that came to naught, and other stubborn disputes remain before a government can take office. But the fight over the choice of a new prime minister has been the biggest stumbling block. Despite strong opposition from the two of Iraq’s three main political blocs — the Sunni Arabs and Kurds — Mr. Jaafari had refused as recently as Wednesday to even consider stepping down.

Then today, with pressure building from within his own Shiite political alliance as well as from American officials, Mr. Jaafari released a letter stating that he would quit if Shiite officials now “deem appropriate” another candidate. Shiite leaders are “highly likely” to choose another candidate for prime minister in the next few days, a senior Shiite alliance official said this afternoon. The candidate may come from Mr. Jaafari’s Islamic Dawa Party, the official said. “There are many stories circulating and the field is opening up, but it will still likely be someone from Dawa,” he said.

[...]

The decision to postpone the session of Parliament, which has met only once, and briefly, since its members were elected Dec. 15th, allowed for other disputes to be postponed as well. The session’s first order of business would have been to select a permanent speaker, but the Shiites, who control 47 percent of the seats, have rejected the favored candidate of the Sunni Arab political bloc, Tareq al-Hashemi, arguing that he is too sectarian and hard line. However, Mr. Hashemi, the head of the Iraqi Consensus Front, said he had bowed to Shiite opposition and agreed to take himself out of the running for the post. Instead, he said, the Sunni Arab coalition would offer either Mahmoud al-Mashhadani or Adnan al-Dulaimi, both prominent Sunni leaders, for the speaker post, which has long been assumed will go to a Sunni Arab.

Al-Jaafari’s Move Could Be Breakthrough (QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press)

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, under intense pressure to give up plans for a second term, agreed Thursday to let Shiite leaders reconsider his nomination, a step that could mark a breakthrough in the months-long effort to form a new government. Shiite lawmakers planned to meet Saturday to decide whether to replace al-Jaafari, who faced fierce opposition from Iraq’s Kurdish and Sunni Arab parties.

A planned session of the Iraqi parliament aimed at trying to jump-start the formation of a new government also was delayed until Saturday. “The alliance is leaning toward changing (the nomination). The majority opinion is in favor of this,” said Bassem Sharif, a lawmaker in the seven-party Shiite coalition. Acting speaker Adnan Pachachi later said the Iraqi parliament session scheduled for Thursday would be delayed for two days to allow time “to intensify our efforts to overcome the obstacles,” created after Sunnis and Kurds rejected al-Jaafari’s nomination. “I am confident we will succeed in forming the national unity government that all Iraqis are hoping for,” Pachachi said.

[...]

Jawad al-Maliki, spokesman for the prime minister’s Dawa party, told reporters that “circumstances and updates had occurred” prompting al-Jaafari to refer the nomination back to the alliance “so that it take the appropriate decision.” Al-Maliki said the prime minister was not stepping down, but “he is not sticking to this post.” Al-Maliki and another leading Dawa politician, Ali al-Adeeb, have been touted as possible replacements for al-Jaafari.

The move represents the first sign that al-Jaafari has abandoned his quest to keep the prime minister’s post, only a day after he had repeated his steadfast refusal to step down. Iraqi leaders are under enormous pressure from the United States and Britain to form a new national unity government to stem the country’s slide toward chaos and enable Washington and London to show political progress to electorates becoming ever more skeptical of Iraq policy.

[...]

The largest bloc in parliament, with 130 lawmakers, the Shiite alliance gets to name the prime minister subject to parliament approval. But the Shiites lack the votes in the 275-member parliament to guarantee their candidate’s approval unless they have the backing of the Sunnis and Kurds, whom they need as partners to govern.

[...]

Resolution of the prime minister issue could smooth the way for filling other posts, including the president, two vice presidents, parliament speaker and the two deputy speakers. The Shiites could block Sunni and Kurdish candidates for those positions in retaliation for the standoff over al-Jaafari.

Huge Explosion Rocks Afghan Capital

Huge Explosion Rocks Afghan Capital (PAUL GARWOOD, Associated Press)

A massive explosion believed to have been caused by a rocket shook the Afghan capital late Wednesday near the U.S. Embassy compound, wounding an Afghan security contractor, officials said. U.S. Embassy spokesman Lou Fintor said the blast did not occur on embassy property, and no Americans were injured. Staff rushed to a bunker in the compound after the 11 p.m. blast. “All embassy personnel are safe and accounted for,” Fintor told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

A U.S. counterterrorism official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because it is still early in the investigation, said the southwest side of the U.S. Embassy’s compound was among the buildings struck in the rocket attack. The official was not immediately aware of casualties or the magnitude of the attack. It also was too early to say who was responsible.

Lt. Col. Todd Vician, a Pentagon spokesman, said one rocket struck near, but not inside, the U.S. Embassy compound, and no U.S. personnel were injured. The blast occurred inside the grounds housing the state-run television offices, a police official at the scene said. The building is next to the heavily fortified embassy and the base for NATO-led forces in the capital.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said the explosion apparently was caused by a rocket fired from southeast Kabul targeting the U.S. Embassy.

U.S. military spokesman Lt. Mike Cody said one Afghan security contractor was wounded, but he was unsure what caused the blast.

NATO-led troops in armored vehicles patrolled the area after the explosion. “It was a very strong explosion near the ISAF (NATO’s International Security Assistance Force) compound and we are trying to confirm its cause,” spokesman Lt. Col. Riccardo Cristoni said. The NATO force controls security in Kabul.

The explosion comes amid a spike in increasingly brazen attacks targeting U.S.-led coalition military forces in Afghanistan, particularly across the country’s south, where remnants of the toppled Taliban government have carried out increasing numbers of bombings and attacks. Militants occasionally fire rockets into downtown areas, and the threat of being kidnapped forces many foreigners to live in tightly guarded compounds surrounded by concrete bomb barriers and to travel in armored convoys.

Rocket hits TV station compound in Afghan capital, one injured (AFP)

A powerful rocket exploded in a television station compound near the US embassy and NATO headquarters in the Afghan capital, injuring a Nepalese security guard, police said. The massive blast from the “very strong” rocket sent shrapnel flying hundreds of meters (yards) from the state-run Kabul TV and radio building, an official at Kabul police command told AFP.

One foreign security guard, believed to be a Nepalese working for the US-based security firm Dyncorp, was injured by the flying debris, the official said on condition of anonymity.

In Washington, a US State Department official said a single 107mm rocket hit the Afghan ministry of communications about 150-200 feet (45 to 60 meters) from the back gate of the US embassy. The official, who asked not to be named, said “all American employees were accounted for” and there was no report of any casualties among them. He was unable to say whether there were any casualties outside the embassy.

[...]

Kabul suffers regular rocket strikes, most of them blamed on militants loyal to the fundamentalist Taliban regime that was ousted by US-led forces in late 2001, but they seldom cause much damage. Tight security also spares the capital much of the violence caused by an ongoing insurgency blamed on Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants, which is centred on south and east Afghanistan, along the Pakistani border.

Afghan TV compound hit by rocket (BBC) 19:55 GMT 20:55 UK

A rocket has exploded in the Afghan capital Kabul, in the grounds of the state-run television station. It landed at about 2300 local time (1830 GMT) in an area near the UN special representative’s compound, sending up a plume of smoke. Intelligence sources reported one Afghan soldier had been injured.

The last rocket explosion in the city centre happened a week ago. It landed in an area were there were no buildings, and no damage was caused.

Palestinians Threaten Jews Overseas

Palestinian militants threaten to attack Jews abroad (Nidal al-Mughrabi, Reuters) 17 Apr 2006 12:48:56 GMT

Palestinian militants linked to President Mahmoud Abbas’s increasingly fractured Fatah movement threatened on Monday to attack Jews overseas to force Israel to release Palestinian prisoners from its jails. Two other main Palestinian militant groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, also said they supported violence to free more than 8,000 prisoners held by the Jewish state, but neither explicitly backed attacks on Jews outside Israel.

The call by militants of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades could heighten tension between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, which has been crippled financially by the loss of Western aid, and of tax and customs revenues frozen by Israel, after Hamas’s crushing electoral win over Fatah in January. “This is an open call to all our fighters in the homeland to focus on kidnapping Israeli soldiers and civilians inside our occupied land. And if the enemy does not release our prisoners, then Zionists outside Palestine will be an easy target for our fighters,” the group said in a statement.

Hillary Clinton Raises $20 Million for Reelection, Possible Presidential Bid

Clinton Sets Bar for ‘08 Funds - Senator Has $20 Million for Reelection, Possible Presidential Bid (Chris Cillizza, Washington Post, Page A03)

Candidates eyeing 2008 presidential bids collected millions for a variety of campaign committees over the first three months of the year, with New York Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton far ahead of the pack. Clinton, who faces two little-known Republican opponents in her bid for a second term in November, raised $6 million from Jan. 1 to March 31 — outdistancing the 32 other senators seeking reelection this fall as well as her prospective rivals for the presidential nomination. Clinton has now raised better than $39 million for her reelection effort since coming to the Senate in 2001 and ended last month with nearly $20 million in the bank. Election law allows anything left over from her Senate campaign to be transferred to a presidential campaign. “This is a tribute to her hard work and the depth of support she’s built,” said Ann Lewis, communications director for Clinton’s campaign. Lewis added that 95 percent of Clinton’s contributions were for $100 or less.

Among Republicans, Sen. George Allen (Va.) is showing the most fundraising muscle, collecting $1.75 million for his reelection fight and closing the quarter with $7.2 million on hand. Unlike Clinton, however, Allen faces a potentially serious challenge this fall from either former technology lobbyist Harris Miller (D) or Reagan administration Navy secretary James Webb (D), and he is likely to spend much of his war chest to defend his seat.

[...]

With the cost of winning a party’s nomination for president in 2008 estimated by political analysts and operatives to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, such a heavy focus on fundraising so early in the campaign is seen as a necessity for those candidates hoping to seriously compete. The expectation among many strategists in both parties is that none of the top-tier candidates will accept public financing, and the spending caps that go with it, during the primary season.

As a result, all previous measures to judge fundraising success will be obsolete come 2008, said David Plouffe, a Democratic consultant not affiliated with any potential candidate. Plouffe said former Vermont governor Howard Dean’s $13 million cash-on-hand total in September 2003 “sent shock waves through the Democratic establishment” but predicted