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Iraq

Iraq's leader seeks aid in Iran

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published September 13, 2006

TEHRAN, Iran - Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki made his first official visit to Iran, asking the Islamic regime on Tuesday to crack down on al-Qaida militants infiltrating his country and seeking new deals to help Iraq's troubled oil industry.

The visit reflected the complex relationship between Iran, a mostly Shiite Muslim country, and Iraq's government, now dominated in the post-Saddam Hussein era by Shiite allies of Tehran. Since Hussein's fall in 2003, Iraq has sought better relations with Iran and to heal scars left by the 1980-88 war that killed more than 1-million people on both sides.

The two countries enjoy increasingly strong ties that include new oil cooperation. Iraq has already turned to Iran for help with a chronic shortage of petroleum goods, reaching a deal last month to import Iranian gasoline, kerosene and cooking fuel. Iraqi officials said Maliki's visit and other recent exchanges could improve the cooperation.

But at the same time, the United States - the Iraqi government's other top ally and a bitter enemy of Iran - has repeatedly accused Tehran of interfering in Iraqi politics and allowing insurgents to cross the porous 1,000-mile border. Iran denies the accusations.

State Department spokesman Tom Casey said Tuesday that the United States favors good relations between Iraq and Iran. But he noted that Washington remains concerned about "Iranian interference in Iraq's internal affairs."

Moreover, Iraq is struggling to control months of brutal Shiite-Sunni sectarian violence, some of which is blamed on Shiite militias that are linked to parties in the government but also believed to have ties with Iran.

"All our assistance to the Iraqi people will be to establish complete security" in Iraq, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a joint news conference with Maliki, according to the state-run news agency.

Asked about allegations that Iran was interfering in Iraq, Maliki said: "There is no obstacle in the way of implementing agreements between Iran and Iraq."

Neither mentioned the issue of al-Qaida militants. But Haidar al-Obadi, a Parliament member from Maliki's Dawa Party, said the Iraqi leader was asking Iran "for cooperation in controlling the border to prevent any al-Qaida exploitation of the border."

Also in Iraq ...

Violence: At least two dozen people across Iraq were killed on Tuesday, including six who died when a car bomb blew up in the upscale Baghdad neighborhood of Mansour.

Marine trial: Marine Corps prosecutors Tuesday dropped a request for the death penalty in the case of Lance Cpl. Jerry Shumate Jr., who is accused of the kidnapping and murder of an Iraqi in April. The decision came at the preliminary hearing for Shumate, one of eight troops accused in the April 26 death. A similar decision was made at a hearing two weeks ago for Pfc. John Jodka.

Anbar province: The U.S. commander in western Iraq said he agrees with the findings of a pessimistic classified report recently filed by his top intelligence officer, but also insisted that "tremendous progress" is being made in that part of the country. Marine Maj. Gen. Richard Zilmer said on Tuesday that he found "frank and candid" the analysis by Col. Pete Devlin, the Marine intelligence chief in Iraq, who concluded that prospects for securing Anbar province are dim. Zilmer says he has enough troops to accomplish his main mission, training Iraqi security forces, but not enough to fight the insurgency. But ultimately, he said, progress is needed on the economic and political fronts that will undercut support for the insurgency.

Hussein trial: The prosecution in the genocide case against Saddam Hussein and six other defendants asked that a statement Hussein made in court Tuesday be considered a confession. The prosecution blames the defendants in the deaths of about 180,000 Kurds during Operation Anfal, the 1987-88 campaign to suppress a Kurdish revolt in northern Iraq. When Hussein heard a lawyer describe Kurdish guerrillas as freedom fighters on Tuesday, he said the guerrillas were rebels and "in any country in the world where there is rebellion, the authorities ask the army to defeat it." Chief Judge Abdullah al-Amiri rejected the motion, but took note of it when the prosecution threatened to walk out.

- Compiled from Times wires

[Last modified September 13, 2006, 06:41:24]