BAGHDAD, 19 October 2004 — Buoyed by the apparent success of a Baghdad arms-for-cash program, Iraq’s interim government yesterday announced plans to extend it to all of the country ahead of scheduled January elections. It also released a prominent Fallujah negotiator in the hope of bringing the rebel-controlled city to government control. But violence continued elsewhere.
A week-long weapons amnesty in Baghdad’s Sadr City slum to disarm the militia of Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr was deemed a success and has been extended until Thursday, Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said in a speech to the interim Iraqi Parliament.
“We will open this disarmament initiative to all the cities in the country, we will start with Basra,” Iraq’s second largest city in the south, he said without specifying from when this would start.
The prime minister called on people in Sadr City to come forward with their remaining arms or face the consequences when the amnesty period expires. “This is the last extension (of the deadline). The authorities will start a massive search (of Sadr City) and they will confiscate any weapons they find and punish their owners in accordance with the law,” he warned.
The authorities have already collected a hefty stockpile of weapons, explosives and mines from the teeming slum of 2.5 million people and beyond as others traveled to Sadr City to exchange their arms for money. “These steps are part of efforts to prepare for the elections. The government is determined to get rid of weapons in the cities,” Allawi told the National Council.
Despite his release, the chief negotiator for Fallujah dashed hopes for a quick resumption of peace talks. Sheikh Khaled Al-Jumaili said peace talks to end the standoff in Iraq’s major insurgent bastion will remain suspended as a protest against his detention by US troops, who had accused him of representing the militants.
“The fact is that I’m negotiating on behalf of Fallujah people — civilians, kids, women — who have no power but through being represented by somebody. Since the situation has got up to this, each can go wherever they want and we don’t need to talk about negotiations,” he said in an interview on Al-Arabiya TV.
Jumaili was released yesterday after being detained Friday after talks broke down over the city’s rejection of a demand by Allawi to turn over terrorist leader Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi.
On Monday morning, a car bomb exploded in the northern city of Mosul, killing five Iraqis and wounding 15. The US military said the blast occurred when the driver of the car bomb collided with another car on a bridge. Several other cars were destroyed in the explosion.
There was no word on what the bomber’s target may have been. Insurgents have frequently attacked US forces and Iraqi security forces in Mosul, 390 km north of Baghdad.
Also on Sunday, a car bomb exploded near a police patrol in the Jadiriyah district of Baghdad, killing six people, including three police officers, and wounding 26 others. The blast hit a cafe near the Australian Embassy, though no Australian casualties occurred. The vehicle was loaded with 1,100 to 1,300 pounds of explosives, said Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman.
Separately, Al-Jazeera television quoted a militant group as saying it had killed two Macedonian hostages it accused of spying for the United States. The channel said it had received a videotape showing the killing of the two men accompanied by a statement from the Islamic Army in Iraq stating it had seized the men a few days ago as they were leaving a US base. But Macedonian television, which aired footage of the men’s passports also broadcast by Al-Jazeera, said the hostages were among a group of three men kidnapped in August. The passports identified the men as Dalibor Lazarevski and Zoran Naskovski from the impoverished northern city of Kumanovo, who had signed up for jobs as construction workers in Iraq.
Al-Jazeera did not show the killing nor did it name the men. The fate of the third hostage, Dragan Markovic, was not clear.
Meanwhile, Britain said it would respond soon to a US request to send troops to more dangerous areas of Iraq, a politically charged issue that has revived anger over Prime Minister Tony Blair’s support for the war.
“The US request is for a limited number of UK ground forces to be made available to relieve US forces, to allow them in turn to participate in further operations elsewhere in Iraq to maintain the continuing pressure on terrorists,” Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon told Parliament. Hoon said British troops would not be required in the flashpoint areas of Baghdad or Fallujah.
Asked by a parliamentarian about the consequences of turning Washington down, Hoon said: “There will be no penalty but we will have failed in our duty as an ally.”
The prospect of British troops becoming more embroiled in what many in Britain see as an increasingly chaotic situation in Iraq has sparked a political row and fears of a sharp rise in British military casualties.
— Additional input from agencies
