NAIROBI, Kenya, May 12 A new front in the fight against terrorism has broken out on the streets of Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, as a group of Islamists battle Somali warlords allied with Washington’s aim of rooting out Muslim extremism from the region.
nytimes.com

‘allied with Washington’s aims’…that’s putting it mildly. The Times so elegant and so intelligent.

Warring Somali ministers warned
Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf has warned his ministers that they cannot continue to serve in his government while leading militias into battle.
His comments follow a week of fighting between an alliance of warlords – some of whom have seats in the transitional government – and an Islamist militia.

About 150 people, mainly civilians, have died in the capital Mogadishu.

One warlord, the Security Minister Mohamed Qanyare, says his militia is fighting “al-Qaeda in Somalia”.

Mr Abdullahi called on both sides to end the fighting, and told the BBC the alliance of warlords “are not fighting on behalf of the government”.

Map of the Somali capital, Mogadishu
He said it was up to parliament “to take an appropriate action against those members who are waging the war”.

And he called on the US to work with the government not “individuals in the capital” to fight terrorism.

There are strong suspicions the US has been secretly funding the warlords, although Washington insists it has not violated the arms embargo in Somalia, the BBC’s Africa Editor David Bamford says.

But a top US diplomat in Africa, Jendayi Frazer, acknowledged on Friday that the White House would work with those who can help “prevent Somalia becoming a safe haven for terrorists”.

THE HAGUE (Reuters) – Iran has legitimate security concerns that the United States must address if the crisis over Tehran’s nuclear programme is to be resolved, the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Friday.

“This is primarily a regional security issue,” Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) he told a debate in The Hague.

“Iran is surrounded by countries that have nuclear weapons, Russia has nuclear weapons, Pakistan has nuclear weapons, Israel has nuclear weapons, Iraq has used chemical weapons against them. There is a sense of insecurity,” he said.

“When you talk about the Iranian issue, the only solution is a package that should inter alia include security issues.”
news.yahoo.com

Poor guy is sounding like Dorothy in Oz these days…

Numerous reports for many months have stated that with collaboration from American occupation forces, Israel’s espionage apparatus, Mossad, slaughtered at least 530 Iraqi scientists and academic professors.

Assassinations of Iraq academics in Iraq never existed prior to April 2003. Persistent Israeli hit squads against Iraqi scientists had been active in Iraq since April 2003, but the latest chapter was uncovered on Tuesday, 14 June 2005 by the Palestine Information Center which, citing a report compiled by the United States Department of State and intended for the American President, stated that Israeli and foreign agents sent by Mossad, in cooperation with United States, to Iraq, killed at least 350 Iraqi scientists and more than 200 university professors and academic personalities .

According to the report, which was referred to the U.S. president George W. Bush, Mossad agents had been operating in Iraq with the aim of liquidating Iraqi nuclear and biology scientists, among other scientists, and prominent university professors.

That was after the U.S. failed to persuade those scientists to cooperate with or work for it.
axisoflogic.com

Only about one in five Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans who screen positive for combat-related stress disorders are referred by the Pentagon for mental health treatment, according to a draft of a report to be released today by the Government Accountability Office.

Good to know SOMEBODY’S accountable…

BAGHDAD — Attacks on civilians in Baghdad have increased 80 percent in the past 2 1/2 months and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is to blame, a U.S. military spokesman says.
wpherald.com

Well duh.

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Clashes erupted Friday between two Iraqi army units following a roadside bombing north of the capital, and Iraqi police said a Shiite solder was killed in an exchange of fire with a Kurdish unit.

The Americans said one soldier from the Iraqi army’s 1st Battalion, 3rd Brigade, 4th Division was killed and 12 were wounded in the attack.

According to both accounts, the wounded were rushed to the U.S. military hospital in Balad. Police said that when the Kurdish soldiers drove up to the hospital, they began firing weapons to clear the way, and one Iraqi Shiite civilian was killed.

The U.S. account said that an Iraqi soldier from the 3rd Battalion, 1st Brigade was killed in a “confrontation” as the other Iraqi troops were trying to remove their wounded. Iraqi police identified the dead soldier as a Shiite. But the U.S. statement did not say what prompted the soldiers to try to take wounded comrades away from a hospital,the best equipped American medical facility in the country.
newsone.ca

DAMASCUS – Both Turkey and Iran have been launching military raids into northern Iraq against a Kurdish paramilitary group that is based there, posing a dangerous new threat to stability both within Iraq and to the region.

The Iraq-based Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), labeled a terrorist group by the United States, Britain and the European Union, is a paramilitary party that preaches Kurdish nationalism, especially in Turkey, where it is demanding political rights and better living standards for the country’s 12 million Kurds.

Turkey recently launched a massive military operation involving more than 250,000 troops against the PKK (nearly double the number of US troops in Iraq), concentrated in the mountains along Turkey’s borders with Iran and Iraq. Extensive incursions into
northern Iraq have been reported, aimed at cutting off the PKK’s supply lines to Turkey from its camps in northern Iraq. Turkey also claims that “the PKK has recently increased its activities and obtained weapons from Iraq”.
atimes.com

…The former Iraqi president forced about 250,000 Kurdish residents to give up their homes to Arabs in the 1970s, to “Arabize” the city and the region’s oil industry. U.S. and Iraqi officials estimate that nearly all those Kurds have returned to Kirkuk, capital of Al Tamim province, along with as many as 100,000 newcomers.

Kirkuk, with a population of about 1 million, has long been home to a mix of Kurds, Turkmens and Arabs, both Shiite and Sunni Muslims, and a smattering of Christians.

Last week, Turkmen leaders held discussions with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq’s most influential Shiite leader, to push for greater representation in Kirkuk’s government. But it is the majority Kurds who have taken the strongest action to claim the city as their own.
latimes.com

Algiers (AHN) – Algerian rebels have threatened to strike U.S. military bases in north Africa and the Sub-Sahara region.

A note posted on the Internet says, “There are U.S. military bases in Mali, Niger and two others are to be constructed respectively in Mauritania and Algeria … They should know (Americans and local governments) that we won’t keep our arms crossed.”
allheadlinenews.com

GENEVA (Reuters) – The United States has again refused the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) access to terrorism suspects held in secret detention centers, the humanitarian agency said on Friday.

The overnight statement was issued after talks in Washington between ICRC President Jakob Kellenberger and senior officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.
reuters.com