| Japanese hostage threatened with execution within 24 hours The battles between coalition forces and Iraqi rebels have been going on all last week, and there is no end in sight, despite significant losses on both sides. Yesterday in the Sunni city of Fallujah, besieged by the Americans, a truce that was negotiated with the United States by the city's elders with the help of a delegation sent by the Interim Governing Council of Iraq (IGC) broke down. The ceasefire was supposed to last 12 hours, but the firefights did not stop. Negotiations are also ongoing.
The peak of the confrontation came on Friday, the anniversary of the capture of Baghdad by US troops and their allies. US Secretary of State Colin Powell admitted that such a surge in military activity in Iraq "came as a surprise" to the White House. But the Americans are belligerent, although the VUSI could not conduct peace negotiations without their knowledge. The US should also be given confidence by the fact that yesterday the alleged grave of two soldiers of the German elite unit GHA-9 was discovered. They died on Wednesday near Fallujah during a militant attack on a convoy of the German Embassy.
The anti-war part of the world community, the same Berlin, Paris and Moscow, is putting pressure on President Bush. On Friday, the Russian Foreign Ministry called for a cessation of hostilities in Iraq and stressed that the “occupying powers” must strictly adhere to UN resolutions on Iraq, preventing the use of “indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force.” However, at the same time, Interfax quoted an unnamed representative of the ministry, who made it clear that Moscow now does not want the withdrawal of coalition forces from Iraq, since “this will inevitably lead to civil war.” Moscow continues to advocate holding an international conference on the problem of Iraq.
On Saturday, Bush called the rebels "a small cabal of Saddam Hussein supporters, terrorists and thugs" who are trying to usurp power in the country. He said that recent events do not cancel the coalition's plans to return sovereignty to Iraq by July 1. The president noted that coalition forces will remain in the country “as long as necessary.”
Bush was strongly supported by the prime ministers of Great Britain and Italy. Tony Blair said yesterday that London would not flinch in the face of a "historic fight" against the rebels. And Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Saturday made an unexpected visit to Shiite Nasiriyah, where the Italian contingent is stationed, and also promised to fulfill his obligations to the coalition.
This will be quite difficult to do. The "Al-Mahdi Army" of the radical Shiite imam Muqtada al-Sadr, who calls for an uprising, controls the holy Shiite Najaf, as well as Al-Kut and Karbala. Yesterday in Baghdad, the Mahdists fired mortars at the US civil administration building and shot down an Apache combat helicopter, killing three crew members.
The problem with foreigners taken hostage by Iraqi militants at the end of last week remains unresolved. All of them are civilian specialists. Among them are three Japanese captured on Thursday by unknown persons from the Saraya al-Mujahideen (Mujahideen Companies) group. Yesterday, the chairman of the Committee for the Defense of the Rights of the Iraqi People, Muzhir al-Dleimi, said that the kidnappers were threatening to kill one of the Japanese if their demands were not met within 24 hours. According to him, Saraya al-Mujahideen demands a complete cessation of hostilities in Fallujah, the withdrawal of the Japanese contingent from Iraq and an apology from the Japanese government. Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi is in a difficult position, although he is not going to give in to the demands of Iraqi militants.
By the end of the week, the same previously unknown group with the remarkable name “Brigades of the hero-martyr Sheikh Ahmad Yassin” (the founder of the Palestinian organization Hamas, killed in March by the Israelis in Palestinian Gaza) made itself known. According to representatives of this group, it holds about 30 citizens from the USA, Bulgaria, Israel, Spain and Canada hostage. The conditions for release are the same. As confirmation, Australian television journalists invited to a special place were shown an American driver who identified himself as Thomas Hamill, after which he was taken away in a passenger car in an unknown direction.
Last week, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw compared the situation in Iraq to “a pressure cooker with the lid blown off.” True, he did not specify who sealed this “pressure cooker” tightly and prepared this boiling brew, which now burns to death. Alexander SAMOKHOTKIN |
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