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[OMEN]

Twenty people were killed in Baghdad's Shi'ite slum of Sadr City, security sources said, despite vehicle bans aimed at preventing unrest from spreading on the fifth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad.

Up to 70 people have died in Sadr City since Sunday in battles between black-masked militia loyal to cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and US and Iraqi troops.

The upsurge in fighting comes as the top US officials in Iraq testified in Washington that they opposed setting a timetable to withdraw troops from the 5-year-old war.

"The floor of the hospital is covered with the blood of children," said Dr Qasim al-Mudalla, manager of the Imam Ali hospital in Sadr City, where he said four children and two women were among 11 dead bodies brought in on Wednesday.

"What is the world doing? They have seen the blood of our children and are doing nothing."

Other parts of Baghdad were quiet, with streets clear of traffic because of a one-day vehicle ban in the capital for the anniversary of the day US troops rolled into the capital, deposing President Saddam Hussein.

Shops, government offices, schools and universities were shut and residents were allowed out only on foot.

Sadr had called a mass demonstration against the United States for the anniversary, but postponed it saying he feared for his followers' safety.

Many Iraqis spoke of the anniversary with bitterness. Retired army officer Salim Hussein said the past five years had yielded nothing but "blood, bombs, curfews and in-fighting".

"The government is totally incapable of providing security," he said, walking near the square where US forces toppled Saddam's statue on April 9, 2003.

President Jalal Talabani, however, hailed the anniversary in a televised address as a day to be celebrated.

"April 9 will enter history as the day the most arrogant dictatorship Mesopotamia has ever witnessed was deposed, the fall of a political regime that... left behind mass graves that contained hundred thousands of innocents," he said.

US President George W Bush, who is due to give a speech on Iraq on Thursday, spoke to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki by telephone. Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said Bush expressed support for Maliki's crackdown on militia.

Maliki launched operations against Sadr's militia last month in the southern city of Basra and fighting has spread to Baghdad, where the cleric's Mehdi Army has clashed fiercely with both US and Iraqi troops.

US forces announced on Wednesday that two more American soldiers had died, raising the toll to 13 since an upsurge of fighting began on Sunday. Rockets or mortars, which US forces say are mainly fired from Sadr City, hit the Green Zone compound, but caused no injuries, the US embassy said.

The Iraqi parliament's Human Rights Committee warned in a statement of a "tragic situation" in Sadr City, where food and medicine are running short after a two-week blockade.

Vehicle bans were also imposed in Samarra and Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown. In Falluja, where members of Saddam's Sunni Arab minority rose up twice against US forces in 2004, several hundred protesters marched calling for American forces to leave.

In Washington, the top two US officials in Iraq testified to members of Congress for a second day on Wednesday.

Military commander General David Petraeus and ambassador Ryan Crocker said Iraq had made progress over the past year, but the improvements were fragile and could be reversed.

Petraeus advised against committing to a timetable for new troop reductions after forces sent last year as part of the so-called surge return home in July.

Petraeus' testimony suggests more than 100,000 US troops will still be in Iraq when the next US president succeeds Bush in January. Republican candidate John McCain opposes a timetable for further troop cuts, while Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama want to set a timetable to withdraw.

Tens of thousands of Iraqis and more than 4000 US troops have died in the war. Two million Iraqis have fled the country and about as many are displaced within Iraq.

For 10-year-old Ammar Karim, taking advantage of the vehicle ban to play soccer with other boys in the middle of central Baghdad's normally traffic-clogged Karrada Street, the anniversary had a simpler meaning: a chance to play.

"I like this government because we have a lot of curfews. It is the only time we can go out and play football. I wish we could have curfews all the time, because otherwise my family keeps me locked in the house."

Reuters

[OMEN]

In a hearing plagued by translation problems, a Saudi Arabian prisoner first criticised and then boycotted the US war crimes court where he is accused of plotting with al Qaeda to blow up ships in the Middle East.

With the aid of Arabic-English translators, defendant Ahmed Mohammed Ahmed Haza al Darbi understood the proceedings well enough to tell the military judge that he believed the court at a US naval base in a remote corner of Cuba was "a scam".

"I believe there is no international court or local court in the United States that treats detainees or accused people the same way we are treated here," al Darbi said.

History, he added, would record the trials as "a scandal."

The translator quoted al Darbi several times as calling the tribunal "illegal". But the military lawyer assigned to defend him, Army Lt Colonel Bryan Broyles, later said that was a mistranslation and the transcript would be corrected to show he had actually called it "a violation of human rights".

The exchange was difficult to follow because the translators could not keep up and their voices competed with that of the judge, making it difficult to hear either.

The judge, Army Colonel James Pohl, recessed the hearing for about an hour while the problems were fixed, then resumed questioning al Darbi about whether he wanted a military or civilian lawyer.

Al Darbi answered nearly every question with a criticism of the court. After being advised that his attendance was voluntary, he asked to leave and was escorted out by guards.

Translation problems have bedeviled the hearings since 2004, when the US military first convened the special court to try foreign captives on terrorism charges at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba, rather than in the regular US civilian or military courts.

The Bush administration considers the 280 Guantanamo prisoners to be unlawful enemy combatants undeserving of the legal protections granted to soldiers and civilians under international law. Rights groups have severely criticised the detention camp and the tribunals as a travesty of justice.

Al Darbi is one of three prisoners scheduled for pretrial hearings this week at Guantanamo.

The cases have moved in fits and starts amid myriad legal challenges. The whole system had to be recreated after the US Supreme Court struck down the first version as illegal in 2006.

Charges have been brought against 15 prisoners under the revised system, including six who could be executed if convicted on charges of direct involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States in 2001 that killed nearly 3000 people.

Fourteen of the 15 cases are still pending.

The only one to be resolved was that of an English-speaking Australian who avoided trial by pleading guilty to providing material support for terrorism. That defendant, David Hicks, finished his nine-month sentence in his homeland.

Al Darbi is charged with conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism, and faces life in prison if convicted. He is accused of training and teaching at an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan in the late 1990s.

The charges also allege that in 2001 and 2002, al Darbi travelled around the Middle East shopping for boats, global positioning devices and crew members as part of a plot to use explosive-laden vessels to attack a ship off the coast of Yemen or in the Strait of Hormuz, which connects the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. The plot was never carried out.

Al Darbi is not accused in the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States but is the brother-in-law of Khalid al Mihdar, one of the hijackers who crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon on that day, killing 187 people.

Asked if al Darbi feared that relationship would affect his treatment at trial, Broyles, the defence attorney, replied: "If he doesn't think that, he'd be crazy."

Reuters

[OMEN]

ANGRY: A pro-Tibet demonstrator stands with demonstrators and supporters during the Olympic Torch relay in San Francisco, California.
The Olympic torch's only stop in North America turned into a game of hide and seek on Wednesday as San Francisco abruptly changed the route, angering both China supporters and protesters.
Thousands of people converged along the announced scenic Embarcadero waterfront route. But after the opening ceremony, the first runner was flanked by blue-clad Chinese security officials and carried the torch into a warehouse. The torch eventually turned up kilometres away.

"We were cheated, because I think the meaning of the relay was to show the whole world that our country is hosting the Olympics," said Michael Huo, 30, a Chinese engineer working at a Silicon Valley start-up company.

The torch was a magnet last week for chaotic demonstrations in London and Paris China's human rights record and its recent crackdown on Tibet. Beijing, embarrassed as it prepares to host the Olympics, has strongly condemned the protests.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom told Reuters that the route had to be radically changed at the last minute or the event cancelled to ensure public safety.

"We assessed the situation and felt that we could not secure the torch and protect the protesters and supporters to the degree that we wished," Newsom said by cell phone. "As a consequence we engaged in subsequent contingency planning that we felt would keep people safe."

The bewildering changes united supporters and protesters who had been divided by politics. Both sides were angered by the sudden changes to the only North American leg of the torch's journey to the Beijing Olympic Games in August.

"It's cowardly. If they can't run the torch through the city, it means that no one is supporting the games," said Matt Helmenstine, 30, a California high school teacher who carried a Tibetan flag.

After the torch initially disappeared from view, police boats and jet skis hinted it might be headed up the waterfront by boat. But an hour after the scheduled start, the torch appeared on a less scenic north-south street more than 3km away.

A planned closing ceremony on the waterfront was scrapped and the torch brought to San Francisco International Airport, where few saw its farewell.

In Beijing, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao told the International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogges that the Olympic torch is a "shining symbol of peace, friendship and progress," the People's Daily, the official newspaper of the ruling Communist Party reported.

A commentary in the overseas edition of the People's Daily condemned protesters disrupting the relay. "To judge from the utterly crude behaviour of a few trouble-makers, they have nurtured no respect for others or respect for the democratic majority, and lack a basic respect for the law," said the front-page commentary.

The route for the torch relay on May 2 in Hong Kong, its first stop in China, will be cut short "to avoid embarrassing scenes," Hong Kong's South China Morning Post reported, quoting an unnamed government source.

San Francisco has a large Chinese-American population and many had waited proudly to see the torch relay. In front of the city's ferry building, Christine Lias, 30, was quickly surrounded by more than 30 Chinese-Americans after she yelled: "Free Tibet now!"

"Liar, liar, shame on you!" many in the group shouted.

On a beautiful spring day, San Francisco deployed hundreds of security officers, including FBI agents backed up by police cars, harbour boats, jet skis and helicopters.

Thousands of pro-China spectators gathered along the original planned route, many flying the five-star Communist Chinese flag alongside US and Olympic flags.

"In 5000 years of Olympic history the Chinese can finally have one time hosting the Olympics. It means that China is becoming a world power," said Don Zheng, 41, a Chinese-American computer engineer who emigrated in 1988.

The torch relays have attracted many groups unhappy about a range of China-related issues, including Tibet, its human rights record and policies on Sudan's Darfur region. Critics say China should use more of its clout with Sudan to ease the bloody conflict in Darfur.

China blames Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, and his associates for orchestrating monk-led protests in Tibet last month as part of a campaign for independence. The Dalai Lama denies this.

Hours before the San Francisco relay, President George W Bush urged China to open a dialogue with the Dalai Lama. Bush and other Western leaders are facing a delicate balancing act as calls mount for them to boycott the Olympics opening ceremony.

Reuters

[OMEN]

President Robert Mugabe's government says it has no problem with Zambia's decision to hold an emergency regional summit on Zimbabwe this weekend but made clear it had not sought assistance.

In the first direct regional intervention over ZZimbabwe's election deadlock, Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa said he had called the Southern African Development Community (SADC) meeting for Saturday because of "deepening problems" in Harare.

Mwanawasa, SADC's current chairman, gave no other details.

Concern has mounted among Zimbabwe's neighbours because no final result has been announced yet from the March 29 poll, dashing hope of quick action to turn round a ruined economy that has sent millions of refugees fleeing to surrounding countries.

The main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which urged SADC to ask Mugabe to step down, says the Zimbabwean leader is prolonging the delay while he plans a violent response to his biggest defeat since taking power in 1980.

SADC has been criticised in the past for failing to pressure Mugabe despite the economic collapse in Zimbabwe, now suffering the world's highest hyper-inflation, chronic shortages of food and fuel and a near worthless currency.

"That's normal within SADC... to call for meetings. We are neighbours and that is the spirit of SADC to meet and consider anything," Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu was quoted as saying by the state-run daily Herald newspaper.

"As far as we are concerned we have not asked for assistance. We are waiting for (the electoral commission) to do its work, verifying the results because it should announce the correct results, so we don't see any problem," said Ndlovu.

He said the electoral commission was "in the final stages" of its work.

The Herald reported the government was prepared to brief SADC on developments in Zimbabwe since the presidential, parliamentary, senate and local government ballots.

On Wednesday, Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa said ruling ZANU-PF party tallies of the presidential vote showed a run-off would be necessary between Mugabe and MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

Chinamasa said the electoral commission had ordered five constituency recounts in the parliamentary ballot in which ZANU-PF lost control of the chamber for the first time.

The MDC rejected a runoff and recounts, saying it would accept only an outright Tsvangirai win as shown by its tallies.

Official results have not been released from the presidential poll.

Mwanawasa's summit call came after Jacob Zuma, leader of South Africa's ruling African National Congress, said the results must be released, signalling a new more robust reaction than President Thabo Mbeki who favours "quiet diplomacy".

"I think the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission should have announced results by now," Zuma, who rivals Mbeki as the most powerful man in South Africa and is the frontrunner to succeed him in 2009, told the Star newspaper in Johannesburg.

Mwanawasa told reporters in Lusaka on Wednesday: "Because of the deepening problems in (Zimbabwe), I felt that this matter should be dealt with at presidential level."

Mwanawasa briefly broke ranks with other African leaders last year when he called Zimbabwe a "sinking Titanic" before getting back in line under pressure.

Chinamasa told reporters ZANU-PF was gearing up for a Mugabe-Tsvangirai run-off. He rejected MDC victory claims and said there was no need for international intervention.

"Nothing has transpired during and after the election to disturb international peace and security," he said, accusing the MDC of echoing calls by its "allies" in Washington and London.

Mugabe's critics blame him for reducing the population to misery by mismanagement that has wrecked the Zimbabwean economy. He says the West is to blame.

Reuters

[OMEN]

Republican United States presidential candidate John McCain has said he will not rule out launching pre-emptive wars against future enemies.

President George W Bush, in launching his 2003 invasion of Iraq, said it was necessary to forestall possible future attacks from a country that was developing weapons of mass destruction.

None of the weapons he alleged were in Iraq were subsequently found.

McCain, who has wrapped up his party's nomination to run for the White House in the November election, has maintained support for Iraq war and has said frequently that he would rather lose an election than a war. In 2002, Bush made the case for invading Iraq, saying: "Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof - the smoking gun - that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."

McCain said the US president should consult more closely with members of Congress so that the branches of government could act together if a threat were imminent.

"In normal times as you see a looming threat... I think you need to consult more closely and more carefully not with every member of Congress but certainly the leaders of Congress.

Reuters

[OMEN]

LAY OFF: Two Israeli soldiers sit back to back near Kibbutz Nahal Oz crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip. Palestinian militants on Wednesday attacked an Israeli-controlled border crossing where fuel is piped into the Gaza Strip, killing at least two Israeli civilians, the Israeli army said.
Palestinian gunmen have attacked an Israeli-controlled border crossing where fuel is piped into the Gaza Strip, killing two Israeli civilians, the Israeli army said.

Repelling the attack on the Nahal Oz terminal, Israeli troops backed by tanks killed two Palestinian militants and two civilians just within the Gaza frontier, Palestinian medics said. Another gunman died in an air strike near Gaza City.

Hours earlier, an Israeli soldier and a Hamas militant were killed in clashes in southern Gaza. Wednesday's death toll was the highest for a single day since Israeli forces waged a Gaza offensive that killed scores of Palestinians in early March.

Hamas warned on Tuesday of an "explosion" in the territory if Israel continued its economic blockade. Israel tightened the cordon after the Islamist group, which is formally committed to the Jewish state's destruction, seized control of Gaza in June.

Fighters from three factions - not including Hamas - infiltrated the terminal, said a spokesman, describing the attack as a an attempt to abduct soldiers.

"Terrorists entered Nahal Oz and the fuel depot. They shot at civilians inside. There are two Israelis dead and two wounded," an Israeli army spokeswoman said.

Hamas said it pounded the area with mortar bombs and machine guns during the operation, which one of the groups involved, the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), dubbed "Breaking Zionist Arrogance".

In addition to the PRC, Islamic Jihad and the Mujahideen Brigades, which is affiliated with President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction, claimed responsibility for raiding Nahal Oz.

"The target was a Zionist army base and the aim was to abduct soldiers to swap them for Palestinian prisoners," said the PRC spokesman, Abu Mujahed.

An Israeli military official at Nahal Oz, Colonel Nir Press, accused Hamas of trying to worsen Palestinian privation in Gaza.

"Today they attacked the lifeline of the energy supplies -- the lifeline of the Palestinians," he told reporters.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni threatened Hamas with unspecified reprisals. "Hamas bears responsibility ... with everything that implies," she said in a statement.

All fuel pumped into Gaza passes through Nahal Oz. Western diplomats said the attack occurred after completion of the latest delivery of EU-funded fuel to Gaza's main power plant.

Blaming Palestinian cross-border rocket salvoes, Israel has cut back on some fuel supplies to Gaza as part of its sanctions against Hamas.

But Livni spokesman Arye Mekel said after Wednesday's attack that Israel would continue to provide the supplies necessary to avoid a humanitarian crisis.

A European official said the EU did not expect to be able to restart its fuel deliveries to the power plant before Sunday. The plant had enough fuel for eight to nine days.

The head of the Palestinian Fuel Suppliers' Association, Mahmoud al-Khuzundar, said reserves of benzene and diesel had been depleted, leaving only enough cooking gas for two days.

Press accused Palestinians of having failed to collect some fuel delivered at Nahal Oz so ordinary Palestinians suffered.

"They are collecting the cooking gas and diesel for the plant, but not taking the petrol and the lighter diesel for cars and trucks," he said.

Spokesmen for militant groups said attackers withdrew into the Gaza Strip, under fire from Israeli helicopters, and that two Palestinians in a car hit from the air were hurt.

The army said the vehicle was the militants' getaway car.

Two later air strikes near Gaza City killed a PRC gunman and wounded another militant and three civilians, hospital officials and Hamas security sources said.

Reuters

[OMEN]

Plan of attack ... US commander in Iraq Army General David Petraeus has prompted troop withdrawal in the war zone / AP
US President George W. Bush said that he plans to complete a limited US troop withdrawal from Iraq by July, then freeze the draw-down for a review of the war effort.

Mr Bush has told the Weekly Standard that he agreed with the top US commander in Iraq, Army General David Petraeus, that the US should cut combat troops from 20 brigades to 15 by July, then "wait and see"' before any more go home.

"David Petraeus is right, we can go down to 15'but after that Petraeus wants to wait and see.

"And I strongly support that. And therefore (I) won't commit beyond July'', Mr Bush told the magazine, which strongly supports the war.

With nearly two out of three Americans opposing the conflict, Mr Bush was to deliver a 15-20 statement at 11.30am (0130 AEST today) to lay out his strategy - which is certain to leave the vastly unpopular war to his successor.

"Are we good enough to take the 20 out to 15? The answer is yes. Will (we) ... take out any more beyond that? And my answer is no. I'm not going to say that. I'm going to say that I agree with David, that we ought to take a look,'' he said.

Mr Bush, who said he hoped to draw US force levels down further, strongly objected to the use of the word "pause" that has become popular to describe the halt in troop withdrawals.

'''Pause is the wrong word - because I'm going to explain why - you don't pause in the middle of a war; you continue to conduct war, you assess. And do I hope that we can continue 'return on success'? Yes, I do hope so. Do I guarantee it? No, I don't,'' he said.

Mr Bush also said that the limited draw-down meant that active duty US soldiers would see their tours in Iraq cut from 15 months to one year, which he said would help "handle this issue of stress'' on the US armed forces.

But "the biggest stress would be defeat,'' he said.

"Our troops want to win in Iraq, and we can see that desire in the gains in recruiting and retention since the surge began. And the surest way to depress morale and weaken the force would be to lose in Iraq,'' he said.

"And we're headed toward a day when the Iraqis are going to be able to manage their own affairs from a security perspective. But we're not there yet,'' said the US president, whose terms ends in January 2009.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino confirmed that Bush would embrace the blueprint detailed by Petraeus over two days of contentious testimony before the US Congress and confirmed that the draw-down would be frozen for 45 days.

"The president will accept General Petraeus' recommendation that we continue to bring troops home as planned, going down from 20 to 15 brigades, and then there will be a very brief period of assessment and consolidation before more recommendations on drawdowns - based on conditions on the ground - are announced,'' she said.

Agence France-Presse

[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for the news.

[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for the story.

[JohnCenaFan28]

Wow, can't believe that happened.