Iraqi Clerics call for Islamic State

[bigpoppanils]

Iraqi Clerics Call for Unity,

Creation of an Islamic State

U.N. Oil-for-Food Chief Challenges

Plan for Foreigners to Oversee Iraqi Oil

A WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE NEWS ROUNDUP

The same message resounded across Iraq on the main day of Muslim prayers, as clerics spoke about the need to come together after the ouster of Saddam Hussein: Iraqis must unite to create an Islamic state. Some urged the U.S. to leave.

The U.S., however, vowed that Iraq won't have an Islamic government like that in Iran, which denied Washington's accusations of interfering in Iraq's affairs.

Meanwhile, as oil began flowing from Iraq's northern oil fields Friday, the head of the United Nations oil-for-food program challenged U.S. plans to have foreign oil executives play a leading role in managing Iraq's state oil company.

Earlier, U.S. officials announced the capture of Farouk Hijazi, who once helped run Mr. Hussein's intelligence service and has been accused of links to al Qaeda.

And President Bush will soon declare an official end to combat in Iraq, White House officials said, previewing an address that also will outline his plans to rebuild the war-torn nation. The speech may come as early as next week. There has been little fighting in Iraq for days, but Mr. Bush hasn't declared the war over -- awaiting word from Gen. Tommy Franks, who leads U.S. forces in the region, that hostilities have ended.

'That Isn't Going to Happen'

At one Baghdad mosque Friday, worshippers listened to a white-turbaned cleric, Abdel-Hadi al-Muhammadawi, demand that foreign "occupiers" leave Iraq. Then the cleric, a Kalashnikov assault rifle before him, recounted a tale of imprisonment and torture at the hands of Mr. Hussein's henchmen. "They tortured my son in front of my cell to put pressure on me. They tore apart my turban," the sheik said, and he burst into tears. Hundreds of his followers wept along with him.

Clerics from both of Islam's main groupings -- Sunnis and Shiites -- called for unity and equality in a new Iraq. But the Shiite messages are the ones attracting the most attention these days. Long repressed under Mr. Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime, the Shiites constitute 60% of the country's population of 24 million and they are fast filling a power vacuum left by the dictator's ouster.

"We have to be ready in the long term to establish our own Islamic state," said Asaad al-Nasseri, a prominent Shiite cleric who just returned from exile in Syria, speaking to the crowd in Nasiriyah.

But in an interview Thursday, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld indicated Washington won't allow that. "If you're suggesting, how would we feel about an Iranian-type government with a few clerics running everything in the country, the answer is: That isn't going to happen," he said.

The White House has accused Shiite-led Iran of encouraging anti-American sentiment among Iraq's Shiites.

Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi denied this. "We welcome true democracy and a government run by the people in our neighbor country, but we won't support one specific party," Mr. Kharrazi told reporters.

Although Shiites and the Sunnis often disagree, the sermons in Baghdad's mosques on Friday were of a piece, calling on the faithful to pull together in restoring the disorderly and troubled country.

Said Sheik Moayed al-Aathami, who led the prayers at the Sunni Abi Hanifah mosque in the neighborhood of Azamiya, "We want brotherly people, who help each other in times of difficulties."

"We want Muslim people equal in rights and duties -- Kurds, Arabs and minorities. We want Muslim people with no sectarian sensitivities," Sheik Aathami said.

Oil Flow Starts in the North

As oil began flowing from the Jambur field near the northern city of Kirkuk, Benon Sevan, who runs the U.N. oil-for-food program, warned against foreign control of Iraq's resources.

The U.S. government plans next week to announce a new executive team and advisory board, structured much like a corporation, to run Iraq's vast oil industry. (See related article.)

But Mr. Sevan said Friday that Iraqis are perfectly capable of running their own oil industry.

"They can run their own country, and they should have control of their own natural resources," Mr. Sevan said at a U.N. briefing. "They've been able to do so even under the most restrictive sanctions regime and the most restrictive government."

"They have the experience, perhaps not up-to-date experience, but they have Iraqi expertise to run the industry," he said. "Whether it is in the Ministry of Trade or the Ministry of Petroleum, certainly they can do so, take control of their industry."

Whoever runs the Iraq's oil industry will face a huge task. An Iraqi national oil company pumping three million barrels a day -- about what was produced before the war to topple Mr. Hussein -- would rival the size of Mexico's Pemex, and exceed the production of the world's largest publicly traded corporation, Exxon Mobil Corp., which pumps about 2.5 million barrels daily. If Iraq eventually produces the six million barrels a day that experts believe is possible, it would rank second to Saudi Arabia's Saudi Aramco state oil company.

The money garnered from oil exports -- millions of dollars each day -- would initially be used to restore Iraq's oil fields and shipping ports and for the reconstruction of the country.

But few funds can be bankrolled until Iraq resumes exports, and those sales are hindered by the power vacuum in Baghdad and U.N. sanctions imposed on overseas sales after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Around 8.3 million barrels of Iraqi crude are sitting in tanks, ready for sale, at Turkey's Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, the terminus of a pipeline from northern Iraq, said Jan Stuart, an oil analyst with ABN Amro in New York. A trickle of oil continued to flow there during the war's early days before the flow was stopped.

The oil that began to flow in the northern fields Friday will supply fuel for power plants in the region, according to an oil official with the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance.

U.S. officials Thursday predicted a flow of 60,000 barrels a day in the north. The opening of taps Friday followed a similar restart of oil production in southern Iraq that brought about 175,000 barrels a day online Wednesday.

The combined flow of 235,000 barrels a day accounts for a good portion of domestic needs, ORHA official Clarke Turner said.

Links to al Qaeda Alleged

The announcement of the arrest of Mr. Hijazi came a day after the surrender of Saddam loyalist Tariq Aziz, for years the regime's most public face.

Mr. Hijazi, who most recently served as Iraq's ambassador to Tunisia, was once a senior official in the Mukhabarat, Mr. Hussein's intelligence service.

Although Mr. Hijazi wasn't on the most-wanted list, he is "the biggest catch so far I would say," former Central Intelligence Agency Director James Woolsey said on CNN. "We know this man was involved with al Qaeda."

Mr. Aziz was ranked No. 43 on the U.S. list of the 55 most-wanted members of the former government. His prominence in the regime could make him a source for the best information yet on the fate of Mr. Hussein and his two sons, as well as the location of any hidden weapons of mass destruction.

In December 1998, while ambassador to Turkey, Mr. Hijazi traveled to Afghanistan and reportedly met with Osama bin Laden, according to U.S. officials who cite the meeting as evidence of an Iraqi link to al Qaeda.

Iraqi officials denied Mr. Hijazi met with Mr. bin Laden, while the main exile group that opposed Mr. Hussein -- the Iraqi National Congress -- contended that Mr. Hijazi was the key link between the Hussein regime and Mr. bin Laden's terrorist organization.

U.S. officials are interrogating Iraqi officials who have been taken into custody and some of them are "providing information that is useful," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

He told a Pentagon briefing that between 7,000 and 7,500 Iraqis have been taken prisoner, but that lower-level ones like foot soldiers are being released. Among those held, Mr. Rumsfeld said, were "12 of the 55 most-wanted officials .. as well as a number of others who were not on that list."

He said they are being held in various locations. The Pentagon has no plans to send any of them to its prison facilities at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba , where captured Taliban and al Qaeda fighters are being held from the war in Afghanistan, he said.

Humanitarian Aid Enters by New Route

Food and basic supplies were hauled into Iraq from Syria on Friday, giving the U.N. World Food Program its fourth corridor to funnel humanitarian aid to Iraqis. Donations of flour, lentils, powdered milk, vegetable oil, sugar and other emergency supplies already have been sent to Iraq from Turkey, Iran and Jordan. A fleet of trucks carrying several hundred tons of flour crossed the border bound for the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Friday, the food program said. Thousands more tons of flour are on the way.

Meanwhile, aid workers in Turkey have received a shipment of wheat donated by the U.S. that is believed to be the largest international food donation since the war began. The 31,407 tons of wheat will be processed into flour and is expected to be shipped to Iraq within two weeks.

The U.N. refugee agency said Friday that up to half a million Iraqis could go back to their country -- many after decades in exile -- following the fall of Mr. Hussein's government.

Until now, the focus of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees was on preparing for a possible flood of up to 600,000 refugees out of Iraq during the war. However, only a handful of people fled into surrounding countries. The agency estimates that 405,000 Iraqis in Iran, Syria and other neighboring countries could eventually return home, along with about 95,000 more, including asylum seekers, from more distant nations.

Updated April 26, 2003 8:48 a.m.

[daisytcam]

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,444891,00.html

Why ISN'T the US coalition forces roaming the streets with an interpreter AT ALL TIMES? Are there not enough to go around? If soldiers (and people in general) had a better understanding of the culture they were dealing with, some problems could be avoided and in heated situations, lives saved.

preparation is everything - sometimes that means more than an armed gun at your side.

[mr mahs]

The new govt has to have representation of all diffrent ethnic groups of the country or it won't work..

Not all Shites are calling for a Islamic state in Iraq only the clerics backed by the ANTI-REFORM loons in Iran that's why the threats were coming out of the White House for Iran to back off...

[starvingartist]

Originally posted by mr mahs

The new govt has to have representation of all diffrent ethnic groups of the country or it won't work..

Not all Shites are calling for a Islamic state in Iraq only the clerics backed by the ANTI-REFORM loons in Iran that's why the threats were coming out of the White House for Iran to back off...

Do you think American government is a fair respresentation of all different ethnic groups?

[mr mahs]

Originally posted by starvingartist

Do you think American government is a fair respresentation of all different ethnic groups?

That's where individual state representation comes in, even better..

[cintron]

of course the clerics call for an islamic state.

they'd end up being the ones in power.

gotta love that nice sense of humility and modesty....

[daisytcam]

and what about the "9" that will rule while in transition?

I haven't read up on it but will their women be represented or will they continue to stay in the dark ages when it comes to their women's lives/rights?

[mr mahs]

Originally posted by daisytcam

and what about the "9" that will rule while in transition?

I haven't read up on it but will their women be represented or will they continue to stay in the dark ages when it comes to their women's lives/rights?

Who cares..

j/k

I didn't read a women was appointed but what I do know that aadditional people will be appointed if needed..