ASADABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Four U.S. soldiers were killed on Sunday after a blast ripped through their armoured vehicle in Afghanistan, the U.S. military said.

The soldiers were killed during a patrol in the eastern province of Kunar, which lies close to the border with Pakistan, in an attack claimed by Taliban insurgents.

“The extremists that initiated this senseless attack create a significant danger and threat to the Afghan people,” said Major General Benjamin C. Freakely for the U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.

The attack marked the U.S. military’s single biggest loss in a day in the country for several months and brought to 10 the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Afghanistan this year.
reuters.com

Afghan president survives suicide attack
A FORMER Afghan president who heads a government commission seeking to encourage Taliban defections has survived a suicide car bomb attack today that killed two bombers and two civilians, officials said.

Sibghatullah Mojadidi, who also chairs the upper house of parliament, or senate, was in a car being driven on a busy main road when attackers detonated a car laden with explosives near his vehicle.

“The aim of the attack was Mr Mojadidi,” Zalmai Oryakhel, the senior police officer for the area, said.

Witnesses said two vehicles in Mojadidi’s convoy were damaged but an official of President Hamid Karzai’s office said Mojadidi was not injured.

Pakistan accused of Afghan terror attack
The head of the upper-house of the Afghan parliament has accused the Pakistani secret service of being behind a suicide bombing which injured him and killed four other people in Kabul. The attack came during a weekend of violence in which four US servicemen died in the deadliest roadside bomb attack on Americans in a month and six Afghan policemen were killed, two of them beheaded, after being abducted from their homes. Elsewhere an armed gang abducted four Albanians working for a German company and their four Afghan bodyguards.

The charge against Pakistan by Sibghatullah Mujaddedi, a former president of the country, who is now leading a reconciliation programme with the Taliban, is the latest round in bitter feud between the two countries over insurgent attacks in Afghanistan.

President Hamid Karzai has claimed that senior Taliban figures, including the former head Mullah Mohammed Omar, are living in Pakistan and using the country as a base to infiltrate fighters across the border. His officials accuse the Pakistani intelligence serevice, ISI, of recruiting and training suicide bombers.

Pakistan Army Kills 30 Militants on Border
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Pakistani soldiers backed by helicopter gunships attacked a suspected militant hideout in Pakistan’s volatile tribal region near the Afghan border and killed about 30 fighters, an army spokesman said Saturday.

But residents and hardline clerics disputed the military’s claim, saying most of the dead were local villagers, including women and children.

* BAGHDAD – At least 40 people were killed and 95 wounded in three car bombs that exploded almost simultaneously in two markets in the Shi’ite Sadr district of Baghdad on Sunday. Police dismantled a fourth bomb in the same area, they said.
* LATIFIYA – Gunmen ambushed and killed a local football player (Mohammad Najah) in Latifiya 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, local police said.
* BAGHDAD – Two civilians were killed and four wounded when a mortar round landed on a paint shop in central Baghdad, police said.
BAGHDAD – Eight bodies were found with their hands tied and gun shot wounds to the head in Rustamiya, a suburb in eastern Baghdad, police said.
BAGHDAD – Six people were killed and 14 wounded, including policemen, when a roadside bomb exploded as a U.S convoy passed by in southern Baghdad, police said.
BAGHDAD – Gunmen killed two police officers in separate incidents in Baghdad, police said.
BAGHDAD – Two soldiers were killed and four wounded when a roadside bomb went off near their patrol in central Baghdad, police said.
BAGHDAD – Five soldiers were wounded when a roadside bomb went off near an Iraqi army patrol in eastern Baghdad, police said.
BAGHDAD – Yarmouk hospital in Baghdad received at least twenty bodies overnight, some with gun shot wounds, a source in the hospital said.
DHULUIYA – Gunmen killed two army officers who work in the Joint Coordination Centre in Dhuluiya, 40 km (25 miles) north of Baghdad, the Joint Coordination Centre of Dhuluiya said.
alertnet.org

Explosion rocks market in Shiite slum, killing at least 39 in Baghdad; parliament to convene Thursday
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) – A suicide bomber and a car bomb ripped apart a market Sunday in a Shiite slum in Baghdad, killing at least 39 people and wounding more than 100. The carnage came shortly after Iraqi politicians decided to convene parliament three days earlier than planned, suggesting some progress in efforts to form a unity government.

The death toll in Sadr City was sure to rise as residents, many firing Kalashnikov rifles into the air, raced to and fro to collect charred corpses from among burning vehicles and shops.

Angry residents kicked the head of the suicide bomber, apparently an African, as it lay in the street of the al-Hay market in the east Baghdad neighborhood.

US vows no permanent bases in Iraq
BAGHDAD (AFP) – US ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad said that his country did not want permanent military bases in Iraq and that he was willing to talk to Iran about the war-torn country’s future.

“We want Iraq to stand on its own feet, we have no goal of establishing permanent bases here,” he said in an interview with Iraq’s Ash-Sharqiya television, according to a transcript obtained by AFP.

“Our goal is a working, a workable government, so that we can leave Iraq and let Iraqis handle all their circumstance themselves. That’s our goal, and were very serious about this, we mean it,” he said.

Liars

U.S. Has No Immediate Plans to Close Abu Ghraib Prison
WASHINGTON, March 9, 2006 – The United States always has planned to transfer authority for all detention facilities in Iraq to the Iraqis, but announcements regarding the imminent closure at the Abu Ghraib prison are premature, defense officials said today.
News reports that the U.S. military intends to close Abu Ghraib within the next few months and to transfer its prisoners to other jails are inaccurate, officials said.

There’s no specific timetable for that transfer or for closure of the Baghdad prison, they said. Decisions regarding Abu Ghraib and other detention facilities in Iraq will be based largely on two factors: the readiness of Iraq’s security forces to assume control of them and infrastructure improvements at the facilities.

The War Dividend: The British companies making a fortune out of conflict-riven Iraq
British businesses have profited by at least £1.1bn since coalition forces toppled Saddam Hussein three years ago, the first comprehensive investigation into UK corporate investment in Iraq has found.

The company roll-call of post-war profiteers includes some of the best known names in Britain’s boardrooms as well many who would prefer to remain anonymous. They come from private security services, banks, PR consultancies, urban planning consortiums, oil companies, architects offices and energy advisory bodies.

Among the top earners is the construction firm Amec, which has made an estimated £500m from a series of contracts restoring electrical systems and maintaining power generation facilities during the past two years. Aegis, which provides private security has earned more than £246m from a three-year contract with the Pentagon to co-ordinate military and security companies in Iraq. Erinys, which specialises in the same area, has made more than £86m, a substantial portion from the protection of oilfields.

The findings show how much is stake if Britain were to withdraw military protection from Iraq. British company involvement at the top of Iraq’s new political and economic structures means Iraq will be forced to rely on British business for many years to come.

Would Bob Marley have made it without his distinctive bouncy basslines? The question will be put to a judge this week as a protracted legal wrangle between the Marley family and the bassist in his backing band, the Wailers, finally comes to the High Court.

Aston ‘Family Man’ Barrett is suing the Marleys and the Universal Island record label, claiming that neither he nor his deceased brother Carlton, the band’s drummer, have received any royalties since Marley’s death in 1981. If he is successful, Barrett, now in his sixties and father to 52 children, could receive a payout of up to £60 million.

Barrett claims that he and his brother signed a contract, alongside Marley, with Island in 1974, which entitled them to royalties as ‘partners’ in the group. Barrett also co-wrote several songs with Marley, for which he claims he was never paid publishing fees.

Lawyers for Universal Island and the Marley family, headed by the singer’s widow Rita, are expected to argue that Barrett gave up his right to royalties when he signed a legal settlement for several hundred thousand dollars in 1994.
observor.guardian.co.uk

SANTIAGO, Chile — The mansion was used as a domestic spying center by the feared secret police of former dictator Augusto Pinochet. Now it will house artwork and be dedicated to the Marxist foe overthrown by the general’s bloody 1973 coup.

The Salvador Allende Solidarity Museum, due to open next month, will exhibit work by the likes of Pablo Picasso, Roberto Matta and Joan Miro.

“This is Salvador Allende’s revenge,” said Jose Balmes, the Spanish-born director of the museum.

The remodeling of the mansion was a journey through the inner workings of the shadowy agency responsible for many of the dictatorship’s worst abuses. Workers found passports, papers with instructions to agents, and diagrams of places under surveillance or targeted for operations.

“In the basement, we found a communications center used to tap telephones around the country,” Balmes said. “There was evidence many phones were tapped.”

Some of the rooms in the big, two-story house in a middle-class neighborhood near downtown Santiago were used for interrogating detainees, although the place was not a jail, Balmes said.

The mansion served as the Spanish Embassy in the 1950s but then stood empty until the secret police took it over in 1973.

Another large house, Villa Grimaldi, served as a detention and torture center. That site, in a southern suburb of the capital, has been turned into a memorial to victims. Among those held there were Chile’s incoming president, Michelle Bachelet, and her mother, Angela Jeria.

The mansion converted into the Allende museum was purchased and remodeled with financial support from the Chilean government and European countries including Spain, France, Germany, Italy and Sweden.

Spy equipment found there is being left untouched, as a reminder of what the house was before, said Balmes, 79, who came to Chile in 1939 to get away from Francisco Franco’s dictatorship in Spain. “The place is a memorial,” he said.

Documents that the workers found were turned over to Hugo Dolmetsch, one of several judges investigating human rights abuses under Pinochet.

Many of the artworks to be exhibited come from a museum established by Allende in 1972. Artists and intellectuals from around the world, such as Ecuadoran painter Oswaldo Guayasamin and Argentine author Julio Cortazar, contributed.

After the coup, the art disappeared. It was not until civilian rule was restored in 1990 that the collection was traced to a basement at another Santiago museum.
washingtonpost.com

O’Higgins the Liberator Is Reclaimed From the Military
SANTIAGO, Chile, March 9 — Not long after seizing power in 1973, Gen. Augusto Pinochet built an Altar of the Fatherland and had the remains of Bernardo O’Higgins, the hero of Chilean independence, moved there. Chilean democrats have been struggling ever since to wrest O’Higgins from the military and restore his legacy to the entire nation, and on Thursday they finally succeeded.

In an emotional one-hour ceremony at a downtown square just off a boulevard named for O’Higgins and barely a stone’s throw from the presidential palace, President Ricardo Lagos symbolically reclaimed “the Father of the Nation” for Chile’s 15 million people.

He did so, he said, in the name of “Chile re-encountering its democratic values and traditions” and establishing “a new relationship between civilians and the military.”

After delivering speeches beneath a statue of O’Higgins on horseback, Mr. Lagos and Gen. Emilio Cheyre, the armed forces commander, visited the new mausoleum, still smelling faintly of fresh paint and damp granite before it opens to public visits. It was as if the tomb of George Washington were returned to Mount Vernon after being sequestered at the Pentagon for 30-odd years.

The restoration of O’Higgins’s tomb to civilian control is the culmination of a series of symbolic gestures that Mr. Lagos, a Socialist who leaves office on Saturday, has made during his six years in office. He began by reopening a side entrance to the palace that had often been used by Salvador Allende, the only other Socialist to govern Chile, and allowed the public to move through the main entrance and courtyard.

Then, just before the 30th anniversary of the Pinochet coup, a statue of Mr. Allende was unveiled on the main square that is just behind the palace, known as La Moneda, where he committed suicide on Sept. 11, 1973, after air force planes bombed it. As a parting gesture, Mr. Lagos plans this week to dedicate a small plaque inside the palace to officials killed with Mr. Allende in the coup.

“A lot of my friends died, either there or a few days later,” Mr. Lagos said during an interview last weekend, asked about his fondness for such symbolic acts. The common thread, he said, is “to be able to recover a piece of the nation’s history” but in a way that “does not divide Chileans again, but unites them.”

March 10 (Bloomberg) — Haitian President-elect Rene Preval called on Brazil-led peacekeeping forces to remain in the country to help provide security as it restores democracy and order.

Preval, speaking at a news conference in Brasilia, said Brazilian troops have also helped provide education and health to Haiti’s poor population. He said the Caribbean country will need time to reinforce its own police and justice system.

“Our justice system and police are extremely frail,” Preval, a former ally of ousted leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide, said. “The presence of the forces should continue and be renewed.”

Haiti, the Western Hemisphere’s poorest county, is trying to reorganize a government two years after a rebellion drove Aristide from power and the country into chaos, calling for the United Nations to send forces to help restore security.

Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim on Feb. 16 said Brazil will maintain support for Haiti, though he declined to say how long Brazil plans to keep its 1,222 soldiers there, where the UN has about 9,000 troops.

Haiti’s daily average income is about $1.
bloomberg.com

Peru’s president has warned against damaging the country’s stability, ahead of presidential elections in April.

“If you are not interested in building economic, political, legal stability then we will not have investment,” Alejandro Toledo told the BBC.

His warning came amid polls showing rising support for nationalist former army officer Ollanta Humala.

In January Peru withdrew its ambassador to Venezuela after “interference” by President Hugo Chavez in its election.

Peruvian authorities were outraged when Mr Chavez praised Mr Humala and hit out at the conservative front-runner in the poll, Lourdes Flores, who he said was the candidate of the Peruvian oligarchy.

The diplomatic row erupted when Mr Humala attended a news conference in Caracas with the Venezuelan leader and Bolivia’s President-elect Evo Morales.

Mr Chavez praised Mr Humala for “joining the battle” against the Free Trade Area of the Americas backed by Washington and a number of countries in the region.
bbc.co.uk

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is stepping up efforts to counter leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez as he builds opposition to U.S. influence in Latin America.

U.S. diplomats have sought in recent years to mute their conflicts with Chavez, fearing that a war of words with the flamboyant populist could raise his stature at home and abroad. But in recent months, as Chavez has sharpened his attacks — and touched American nerves by increasing ties with Iran — American officials have become more outspoken about their intention to isolate him.

Signaling the shift, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Congress last month that the United States was actively organizing other countries to carry out an “inoculation strategy” against what it sees as meddling by Chavez.

U.S. officials believe Chavez uses his oil wealth to reward governments that share his anti-American views and to foment change in those that don’t.

“We are working with other countries to make certain that there is a united front against some of the things that Venezuela gets involved in,” said Rice, who called Venezuela a “sidekick” of Iran.

Rice leaves today on an eight-day trip to Latin America, Indonesia and Australia, including a stop in Chile for the inauguration of President-elect Michelle Bachelet. Rice said pointedly Thursday that she did not plan to see Chavez, who is expected to attend the inauguration Saturday.

As part of the administration’s new view of Venezuela, U.S. defense and intelligence officials have revised their assessment of the security threat Venezuela poses to the region. They say they believe Venezuela will have growing military and diplomatic relationships with North Korea and Iran, and point with concern to its arms buildup. Of equal worry to them is Venezuela’s overhaul of its military doctrine, which now emphasizes “asymmetric warfare” — a strategy of sabotage and hit-and-run attacks against a greater military power, much like that used by Iraqi insurgents.
latimes.com

The Nigerian Armed forces yesterday recorded heavy casualties in two separate battles with Ijaw militias along the waterway of Warri, Delta State with 13 soldiers feared dead.

This comes as the Chief of Naval Staff (CNS), Vice Admiral Ganiyu Adekeye, yesterday advised the Federal Government to adopt a proactical political measure to the current crisis threatening to tear down the Niger Delta region.

Defence Headquarters, however, confirmed the death of four of its personnel in yesterday’s renewed hostilities with militants in the region.

Speaking with THISDAY in Abuja, Acting Director of Defence Information, Group Captain Eniola. O. Akinduro, said, “Four soldiers were killed and an unspecified number of militants were equally killed in the exchange of firearms in the Niger Delta yesterday.”

Akinduro, who could not disclose the actual cause of yesterday’s shoot out, however, assured Nigerians that, “investigations is currently being carried out to determine the possible cause of the shooting.”

He denied claims that the military was re-enforcing troops in the region, stating that, “Movement of military troops from one end of the area to the other are often construed to mean military re-enforcement. But I can tell you that there is no military re-enforcement in the area now.”
allafrica.com

Join The ExxonMobil War Boycott – Buy Citgo –
ExxonMobil has been selected for boycott because of its apparent active involvement in U.S. policy in the Middle East in general and Iraq in particular, and its power to help change these policies.

Campbell Soup, Carlson Companies (Radisson Hotels, TGI Friday’s), Corning Inc., Metlife, Novartis, Pfizer, Verizon, Wells Fargo and Wyeth are also selected for boycott because these firms can influence ExxonMobil through board members they share in common with ExxonMobil.

When governments and/or corporations perpetrate gross injustice and war – or do nothing to stop it – we, the people, must take action to end the violence and exploitation.

Through the power of information and boycott, Consumers For Peace offers you a non-violent way, every day, to act on behalf of justice and peace. Our focus is the Iraq War.

We propose a boycott of ExxonMobil Corporation products and the products and services of nine firms that are in a position to influence ExxonMobil through its board of directors to achieve these goals:

Immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops and mercenaries from Iraq; and reparations for the loss of Iraqi lives and property.
Impeachment of George W. Bush; and criminal prosecution of executive branch officials who have lied to congress about the war and/or have commited war crimes and crimes against humanity.

What about Angola and Nigeria?

Richard Rogers, the noted British architect, was recently summoned to the offices of the Empire State Development Corp. to explain his connection to a group called Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine. Empire State is overseeing the redesign of New York’s $1.7-billion Javits Convention Center, and Rogers is the architect on the job.

According to media reports, Rogers has sparked the anger of various New York politicians and Jewish organizations for what he now claims was only a fleeting association with Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine. The group has taken the “outrageous” position that Israel’s West Bank barrier (sometimes referred to euphemistically as a “security fence”) is, well, problematic–because most of it is built not on Israel’s 1967 border but within the West Bank; because it violates international law; because it separates farmers from their land, one town from another, people from their doctors, children from their schools; and because it generally wreaks havoc on Palestinian life.

Members of the group have proposed a boycott of Israeli architects and construction companies working on the barrier, saying their involvement in such a project makes them “complicit in social, political and economic oppression” and is “in violation of their professional code of ethics.”

Apparently anyone associated with such a position–in other words, anyone taking a principled stand in favor of human rights and international law–may have to count himself out of a contract for the Javits Center.

This is only the most recent example of Israel’s American defenders–who will not tolerate any criticism of Israel–using their political clout to punish or silence dissident voices. Last month, the New York premiere of a play based on the words of Rachel Corrie, a young American who was crushed by an Israeli Army bulldozer while protesting the demolition of a Palestinian home, was indefinitely postponed for fear that some might find her words “offensive.”

Naturally, Rogers has been desperately trying to distance himself from anything that might stand in the way of his retaining the Javits project, including severing his ties with the group and stating that he does not back a boycott.

Israel’s barrier is fine, Rogers now says. In fact, he’s now in favor of it. Further, “Hamas must renounce terrorism,” he told the New York Post. “Hamas must recognize Israel’s right to exist. Just making a statement is not enough. They have to back it up.”
counterpunch.org

On the top floor of a commandeered Palestinian home in the West Bank city of Hebron, Yehuda Shaul, a former Israeli soldier, stood at the centre of a group of rapt German tourists and told them about the time he unleashed his grenade launcher on local gunmen.

“I was trained with the grenade gun. That was my mission,” he said. “But we were shooting at houses 800 metres away, so of course you hit innocent targets too.”

When Mr Shaul talks about innocent targets, he means Palestinian civilians. Yet he is not afraid to tell stories from his 14 months service in the Israeli army in Hebron.

“Could we fire grenades at areas where Palestinians lived? Sure. Why not?” he asked, describing many Israeli army actions breaking the army’s own rules of engagement. “It was fun. It was cool. Could we shut 2,000 Palestinian shops with a curfew on a whim? Why not?”

In the past nine months, Mr Shaul and the Breaking the Silence group he founded has led more than 40 groups totalling 1,200 people around the divided city of Hebron, where 500 Jewish settlers live at the heart of a Palestinian population of more than 100,000.

The tourists pay nothing bar transport costs, but they are given a no-holds-barred insider view of the effect that Israel’s Hebron settlements – and the hundreds of combat troops which protect them – have on the city’s Palestinian population.
telegraph.co.uk