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Generals meet in Baghdad palace
17/04/2003 08:30 - (SA)
Baghdad - The commander of US-led forces in Iraq, General Tommy Franks, entered Baghdad for the first time on Wednesday after four weeks of war, as US President George W Bush called for the lifting of UN sanctions on Iraq now that president Saddam Hussein had been ousted.
The war was all but officially over a week after Baghdad fell to coalition troops, but the situation remained tense in northern cities where bloody incidents have marred US efforts to put a lid on post-Saddam chaos and rebuild the ravaged country.
Franks visited the Iraqi capital to meet his commanders one week after it fell into US hands and Saddam's regime crumbled following three weeks of heavy bombing and ground assault.
He rode in a dozen-vehicle motorcade, including Humvees and Bradley fighting vehicles, to Saddam's Abu Ghurayb North Palace, which had been converted into a US military command centre.
The general toured the ornate rooms of the palace, including a bathroom where the sink fixtures, toilet-paper dispenser and toilet-bowl brush were all made of gold.
"It's the oil-for-palace programme," said Franks, referring sarcastically to the "oil-for-food" program under which Iraq was able to sell oil under UN supervision for food, medicine and other necessities.
Smoking a cigar in the palace, Franks spoke by telephone with US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld before he and other commanders held a closed-door teleconference with Bush.
The United States has refused to rule the war over, but Bush said the United Nations should now lift the punishing sanctions imposed on Saddam's regime so Iraq could trade its oil on world markets without UN control.
"Now that Iraq has been liberated, the United Nations should lift economic sanctions on that country," Bush said in a speech in Missouri.
The Pentagon said the war had cost the United States more than 20 billion dollars so far and was expected to cost about two billion dollars a month for the rest of the year.
Lifted ban on satphones
In another sign that Washington considered the military phase of US action in Iraq to be over, US Central Command lifted a ban it had imposed two weeks ago on satphones which could allegedly reveal the positions of coalition units to Iraqi forces.
However in Mosul, the oil-rich northern city populated by a fractious mix of Kurds and Muslims, demonstrated again the difficulties the US forces are experiencing in keeping the peace.
US forces conceded their soldiers had shot and killed up to seven people in Mosul on Tuesday, when they returned fire on demonstrators who were shooting guns and hurling rocks.
But US forces hailed the capture in Baghdad of alleged Palestinian hijacker Mohammad Abbas as proof that Saddam's regime had "harboured terrorists."
Abbas, leader of the Palestine Liberation Front, is accused of having masterminded the 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise liner Achille Lauro in which a wheelchair-bound American was shot dead and thrown into the Mediterranean.
Abbas was sentenced in absentia in Italy to five life terms for his role in the hijacking. Rome said it would seek his extradition.
Washington meanwhile said Faruq Hijazi, a suspected high-ranking Iraqi intelligence officer suspected of plotting to kill former president George Bush in 1993, had been spotted in Damascus.
A US official said he had fled to Syria from Tunisia, apparently to seek refuge after Saddam's regime was toppled, and was among "at least a handful" of former members of the Iraqi elite currently in Syria.
Damascus denied the allegations as "absolutely groundless."
"Snatch-and-shoot" raid
US commanders have said they will launch a "snatch-and-shoot" raid for Saddam Hussein if they track him to a hiding place in neighbouring Syria, The Times newspaper reported on Thursday.
French President Jacques Chirac said the European Union planned to organise an airlift to allow Iraqi civilians wounded in the war to receive medical treatment in Europe.
He said the European Commission - the EU's executive arm - would arrange the airlift "as quickly as possible" in co-operation with "the occupying powers", the United States and Britain.
Meeting on the margins of an EU enlargement ceremony in Athens, heads of state and government including Washington's key war ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, agreed that the United Nations should be central to Iraq's reconstruction.
But the extent to which the United Nations, or the EU itself, will be involved in Iraq's reconstruction depended on a deeply sceptical United States.
An increasing number of Baghdad's five million inhabitants returned to work on Wednesday after a week of frenzied looting after US forces entered the city.
US Marines officially established a civil-military centre in Baghdad to direct operations for restoring the essential services and providing health care.
The main emphasis was on restoring water, power and other utilities knocked out in the final days of the US air campaign.
Two days after Iraqi opposition and religious leaders took a first step in creating a post-Saddam administration, two close associates of former banker Ahmad Chalabi, who enjoys the backing of the Pentagon in his quest to lead Iraq, proclaimed themselves leaders of the interim local government of Baghdad.
- AFX
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