BLOODIEST DAYS OF THE YEAR

Suicide bomber, gunmen kill at least 105 around Iraqi capital

Photo: An injured Iraqi is carried to the Yarmouk hospital, following an explosion in Baghdad.

BAGHDAD, Iraq- A suicide car bomber struck as day labourers gathered to find work in a Shiite neighbourhood in north Baghdad, killing at least 105 people and wounding 227 in the deadliest of a series of attacks in the Iraqi capital on Wednesday. Iraqi lawmakers, meanwhile, agreed on last-minute revisions to the contested draft constitution in a bid to appease the disgruntled Sunni minority that has formed the core support for the country's virulent insurgency. In north Baghdad, twisted hulks of vehicles were strewn throughout Oruba Square in the Kazimiyah district after a suicide attacker drove a small van into an area where day labourers had gathered in search of work. Iraq's Health Ministry said that 88 people had died and 227 were wounded, making it the deadliest attack in Iraq since Feb. 28, when a suicide car bomber targeted Shiite police and National Guard recruits in Hillah, killing 125 people. Politicians immediately denounced the bombing. Husein al-Shahristani, deputy speaker of the National Assembly called the killings "barbaric and gruesome." "These cowardly attacks reveal the deep hatred of the terrorists against the Iraqi people and the equality and justice in this country," he said. Gunmen wearing military uniforms, meanwhile, surrounded a village north of Baghdad early Wednesday and executed 17 men, police said. Police Lt. Waleed al-Hayali, in Taji, about 16 kilometres north of Baghdad, said the gunmen detained the victims after searching the village. They were handcuffed, blindfolded and shot. The dead included one policeman and others who worked as drivers and construction workers for the U.S. military, said al-Hayali. A car bomb hit an American military convoy in eastern Baghdad, and police Capt. Maher Hamad said two U.S. soldiers were wounded, though that was not confirmed by the U.S. military. A third car bomb exploded alongside an Iraqi National Guard convoy in the northern Baghdad district of Shula, killing at least two people, authorities said. Sunni militants have mounted a series of attacks on the Shiites in an apparent effort to provoke retaliation and a sectarian conflict. The Kazimiyah district that saw Wednesday's deadliest attack is the same area where about 950 people were killed on Sept. 1 during a bridge stampede as tens of thousands of Shiite pilgrims were headed to a nearby shrines. With the Oct. 15 referendum on the draft constitution looming, Iraqi lawmakers announced that the document had been finalized and would be sent to the United Nations for printing and distribution. Hussein al-Shahristani, the deputy speaker of the National Assembly and a leading Shiite lawmaker, said the latest changes included an apparent bow to demands from the Arab League that the country be described as a founding member of the 22-member pan-Arab body and that it was "committed to its charter."

But that amended clause falls short of demands by Sunnis, who wanted the country's Arab identity clearly spelled out while mentions of federalism be struck from the document. They argue such language could ultimately lead to the disintegration of the multiethnic nation. Still, the changes, which included clarifying that water resource management was the federal government's responsibility and that the prime minister would have two deputies in the cabinet, are significant after weeks of discussions on the draft. Hopes that a relative lull in the violence in the country would continue were shattered with the latest attacks around the capital. At Baghdad's al-Kazimiyah Hospital, dozens of wounded men were shown lying on stretchers and gurneys, their bandages and clothes soaked in blood. One older man in a traditional Arab gown and checkered head scarf sat in a plastic chair, his blood-soaked underwear exposed with a trail of dried blood snaking down his legs. Dr. Qays Abdel-Wahab al-Bustani told Associated Press Television News they received 75 wounded people and 47 others who were killed in the explosion. Al-Bustani said the wounded were in stable condition. The attacks came as U.S. and Iraqi forces continued their offensive on insurgents in northern Iraq, striking hard at what officials have said are militants sneaking across the border from Syria. On Tuesday, they launched an attack on the Euphrates River stronghold of Haditha. That attack came after some 200 militants were killed in Tal Afar in several days of fighting. Residents also reported American air strikes in the same region near Qaim, also near the Syrian border. The offensive is apparently part of a campaign described on Monday by Iraq's defence minister, who said that Iraqi and U.S. forces would work their way along the insurgent-plagued town along the Euphrates River valley in the north, in a bid to stamp out the militants believed to be sneaking across the nearby border with Syria. With the insurgency showing little signs of abating, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, in a news conference with his U.S. counterpart on Tuesday, said American forces would remain in the country until Iraqi troops were prepared to assume full security responsibilities. The Bush administration is under increasing pressure at home to set a date to begin pulling out the 140,000 U.S. troops. "We will set no timetable for withdrawal. A timetable will help the terrorists," Talabani said. He said he hoped Iraqi security forces could take responsibility for the country by the end of 2006. Bush pledged to stand by Iraq despite "acts of staggering brutality" aimed at destabilizing the country. A U.S. Army commander said Tuesday that extremist fighters battling for control of Tal Afar in northern Iraq had committed atrocities against civilians, including beheadings, torture and the booby-trapping of a murdered child's body. "The enemy here did just the most horrible things you can imagine - in one case murdering a child, placing a booby trap within the child's body and waiting for the parent to come recover the body of their child and exploding it to kill the parents; beheadings and so forth," Col. H.R. McMasters, commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, said in an interview from Tal Afar, which lies about 80 kilometres from the Syrian border. He said the 5,000 Iraqi government forces and 3,500 U.S. troops there had yet to take control of the city. By Slobodan Lekich.

Bush ignores thrust of new WMD report

Photo: President Bush pauses as he makes a statement to reporters .

WASHINGTON, DC- Faced with a harshly critical new report, President George W. Bush conceded Thursday that Iraq did not have the stockpiles of banned weapons he warned about before the invasion last year, but insisted that "we were right to take (military) action." "America is safer today with Saddam Hussein in prison," Bush said in a surprise statement to reporters as he prepared to fly to Wisconsin. "Much of the accumulated body of our intelligence was wrong and we must find out why," Bush said. But, he argued, the Iraqi leader retained the "means and the intent" to produce weapons of mass destruction. Bush spoke one day after Charles Duelfer, the American weapons hunter in Iraq, presented to the Senate and the public a report saying Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs had deteriorated into only hopes and dreams by the time of the U.S.-led invasion last year. The decline was wrought by the first Gulf War and years of international sanctions, the chief U.S. weapons hunter found. What ambitions Saddam harboured for such weapons were secondary to his goal of evading those sanctions, and he wanted them primarily not to attack the United States or to provide them to terrorists, but to oppose his older enemies, Iran and Israel, the report found. Bush ignored the report in a hard-hitting new campaign speech attacking Kerry on Iraq Wednesday. He made his first public comments about the final document Thursday as he prepared to board his helicopter en route to Wisconsin for more campaigning. "The Duelfer report showed that Saddam was systematically gaming the system, using the UN oil for food program to try to influence countries and companies in an effort to undermine sanctions," Bush said. "He was doing so with the intent of restarting his weapons program once the world looked away." "He could have passed that knowledge onto our terrorist enemies," Bush said. "Saddam Hussein was a unique threat, a sworn enemy of our country, a state sponsor of terror operating in the world's most volatile region. In the world after Sept. 11, he was a threat we had to confront and America and the world are safer for our actions."

Bush promised to act on the recommendations of the president's commission investigating flawed intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, chaired by former senator Chuck Robb, a Virginia Democrat, and Republican Laurence Silberman, a senior judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. A spokesman for his opponent, Democrat John Kerry, said the report "underscores the incompetence of George Bush's Iraq policy." "George Bush refuses to come clean about the ways he misled our country into war," Kerry spokesman David Wade added. "In short, we invaded a country, thousands of people have died, and Iraq never posed a grave or growing danger," said Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.). Duelfer's Iraq Survey Group drew on interviews with senior Iraqi officials, 40 million pages of documents and classified intelligence to conclude that Iraq destroyed its undeclared chemical and biological stockpiles under pressure of UN sanctions by 1992 and never resumed production. Iraq ultimately abandoned its biological weapons programs in 1995, largely out of fear they would be discovered and tougher enforcement imposed. And Iraq also abandoned its nuclear program after the first Gulf war, and there was no evidence it tried to reconstitute it. Saddam's intentions to restart his weapons programs were never formalized. "The former regime had no formal written strategy or plan for the revival of WMD after sanctions," the summary says. "Neither was there an identifiable group of WMD policymakers or planners separate from Saddam. Instead his lieutenants understood WMD revival was his goal from their long association with Saddam and his infrequent, but firm, verbal comments and directions to them." Duelfer's findings contradict most of the assertions by the Bush administration and the U.S. intelligence community about Iraq's threat in 2002 and early 2003. The White House had argued that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons stockpiles and production lines and had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program. Some 1,196 coalition personnel have been killed since the start of the war. Of those, 1,060 are American, 67 British and 69 are from other coalition countries. Unknown numbers of Iraqis have also died on both sides of the conflict. -J. Lupkin.

WMD REPORT: KEY POINTS. THE TRUTH AND THE LIES

The Iraq Survey Group has concluded that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were "essentially" destroyed in 1991, but that Saddam Hussein wanted to recreate them after sanctions were removed. Below are the key findings of the report.

SADDAM HUSSEIN'S GOALS: 1-Saddam Hussein's goal was evading and ultimately ending UN sanctions that severely restricted what he could import into Iraq. The UN oil-for-food programme gave the Iraqi economy a much-needed boost, but not enough to let him re-start a weapons of mass destruction programme. 2-Once he could restart those programmes, his intention was to focus on chemical weapons for use on the battlefield, long-range missiles, and nuclear weapons. 3-His motivation for developing these weapons was his enmity with Iran, with which Iraq fought an eight-year war in the 1980s. His secondary goals were to oppose Israel and raise his status in the Arab world. The report does not suggest he sought the weapons to oppose the US or to give weapons to terrorists. 4- Saddam Hussein's belief in the value of WMD was shaped from his experiences in the 1980s and early 1990s. He believed that during the 1991 Gulf War, WMD had deterred US-led forces from pressing their attack beyond the goal of freeing Kuwait

NUCLEAR WEAPONS: 1-Saddam Hussein ended his nuclear programme in 1991, after the Gulf War, and there was no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to restart it. Senior Iraqi officials believed Saddam would restart a nuclear programme if UN sanctions imposed after the end of the Gulf War were halted. 2-Baghdad undertook a variety of measures to conceal key elements of its nuclear programme from successive UN inspectors, including specific directions from Saddam Hussein to hide and preserve documents. 3-There were at least two instances in which scientists involved in uranium enrichment kept documents and technology. Although apparently acting alone, they did so with the belief and anticipation of resuming uranium enrichment efforts in the future. 4-The regime prevented scientists from the former nuclear programme from either leaving their jobs or Iraq. In the late 1990s key personnel were given significant pay rises in a bid to retain them. The regime also undertook new investments in university research to ensure that Iraq retained technical knowledge.

BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS: 1-Baghdad abandoned its biological weapons programme in late 1995 out of fear it would be discovered. Such a discovery would have made it harder for Iraq to free itself of UN sanctions. 2-There was no evidence of any biological weapons work after 1996, and Saddam expressed no interest in biological weapons after that time. 3-Iraq appears to have destroyed its hidden biological weapons stocks in 1991 and 1992. However, it kept a few samples that would have been useful in starting a biological weapons programme, and it had a group of scientists knowledgeable about such weapons. 4-No evidence was uncovered that Iraq had biological weapons production systems mounted on trucks or rail cars.

CHEMICAL WEAPONS: 1-Iraq unilaterally destroyed its hidden chemical weapons stockpile in 1991, and there is no credible evidence that Iraq ever resumed producing such weapons. 2-However, Saddam Hussein never abandoned his intentions to resume efforts in chemical weapons when UN sanctions were lifted and conditions were judged favourable. 3-The regime organised its chemical industry after the mid-1990s to allow it to conserve the knowledge-base needed to re-start a chemical weapons programme. 4-One of Saddam's sons, Uday, tried to obtain chemical weapons for use during the US-led invasion in 2003, but there is no evidence he came into possession of any.

THREE DIFFERENT GROUPS CLAIM EGYPT'S BLASTS
 

JERUSALEM, Israel- Three previously unknown groups, including one reportedly linked to al-Qaida, published separate claims of responsibility for the deadly car bombings at two Egyptian resorts crowded with Israeli tourists. The Palestinian militant group Hamas denied involvement. The claims by the three groups could not be confirmed. Israel's military intelligence chief, Maj. Gen. Aharon Zeevi-Farkashi, told an emergency Cabinet meeting Friday that al-Qaida was most likely behind the attacks. Deputy Defense Minister Zeev Boim cautioned that very little was known about the attackers but added that al-Qaida was the most likely suspect. Hours after the blasts at the Taba Hilton and the resort of Ras Shitan in the Sinai Peninsula, no established groups had claimed responsibility. Tawhid Islamic Brigades published a claim on a Web site that has been used frequently for such claims from Saudi Arabia and Iraq. And Jamaa Al-Islamiya Al-Alamiya, or World Islamist Group, called an international news agency in Jerusalem. A third group that called itself the "Brigades of the Martyr Abdullah Azzam, al-Qaida, in the Levant Egypt," posted a claim on an Islamic Web site known for running messages purportedly from the al-Qaida terror network. The claim described the attacks as a message to Palestinians and Muslims everywhere, and the Israeli government and people. A month ago, Israeli security officials had published an unusual warning that Israeli tourists should stay away from the Sinai because of concrete signs that terrorists were planning an attack there. However, Israeli travelers largely ignored the warning, and thousands spent the weeklong Jewish holiday of Sukkot, which ended Thursday, at Red Sea resorts, including the Taba Hilton. In the Gaza Strip, a spokesman for the Islamic militant group Hamas denied involvement. "Our firm stand, our firm position is that the battle is within the occupied lands (West Bank and Gaza Strip), and this stand remains the same and has not changed," Hamas spokesman Mushir al-Masri told The Associated Press. Since its founding in 1987, the Islamic militant group, which opposes the existence of Israel, killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings but has refrained from carrying out attacks abroad. Hamas leaders have repeatedly said their conflict is with Israel, and that they do not want to export it. Last month, after a Hamas leader based in Syria was killed by an Israeli car bomb, some Hamas officials said they would now change their policy and target Israelis abroad. However, more senior leaders quickly stepped in and emphasized there was no change in position. Palestinian militants have an interest in staying on good terms with the Egyptians, who are mediating Israel's planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005. Militant groups have been holding meetings in Cairo to work out an agreement with the Palestinian Authority on power-sharing after an Israeli withdrawal.