17 May 2004
Coalition Provisional Authority Report, May 17: Iraq Update
Bremer laments assassination of Governing Council president
The assassination of Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) President Izzedine Salim "is a shocking and tragic loss," says Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) Administrator Paul Bremer.
The CPA issued a statement by Bremer May 17, describing Salim's death as "a cruel blow" and "a vile act," while stating he did not die "in vain."
"The Iraqi people will ensure that his vision of a democratic, free and prosperous Iraq will become a reality," Bremer's statement concluded.
Army Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy director for coalition operations of the newly-named Multinational Force Iraq, said at a May 17 CPA briefing that Salim was killed, along with six other Iraqis, in central Baghdad that morning as a result of an apparent suicide car bomb explosion near a coalition checkpoint. Five civilians and two soldiers were wounded in the explosion, he said.
CPA spokesman Dan Senor, briefing along with Kimmitt, responded to a question about the adequacy of security for IGC members: "The security considerations that we ... give to the Iraqi Governing Council members are second to none. Their security is highly important to us. ... We are constantly evaluating their security, looking at ways to improve it, as we are with our own force protection. ... So this is something we ... consider a high priority. We've dedicated the resources to treat it as such, and we continue to look at ways to improve upon it."
On another topic, Kimmitt said the Iraqi Survey Group confirmed that it found a 155-millimeter artillery round containing sarin nerve gas.
"The round had been rigged as an IED [improvised explosive device]," when discovered by a U.S. convoy, he said. "A detonation occurred before the IED could be rendered inoperable. This produced a very small dispersal of agent. The round was an old binary type, requiring the mixing of two chemical components in separate sections of the cell before the deadly agent is produced. The cell is designed to work after being fired from an artillery piece. Mixing and dispersal of the agent from such a projectile as an IED is very limited."
The former regime claimed it destroyed all its rounds before the 1991 Gulf War, he said. Two explosive ordnance team members were treated and released, he said, for minor "exposure to nerve agent as a result of the partial detonation of the round."
Kimmitt also said that in Karbala during the night of May 16-17, the Polish multinational division reported, "sounds of fighting in the downtown area could be heard for much of the night." Polish forces estimated 17 Muqtada militia were killed in the vicinity of the shrine of al-Imam al-Hussein, with an additional 13 killed in other areas, Kimmitt said.
The Muqtada militia, Kimmitt said in response to a question, "are pretty much street thugs with weapons. They don't present much of a military threat. They're a nuisance. They're a harassment. And sadly, as you can imagine with street thugs with weapons, sometimes they kill and wound our soldiers. But in engagement after engagement, they have not been able to stand and fight."
On May 15, the Combined Joint Task Force 7, which included U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq, was split into two commands, Multinational Force Iraq and Multinational Corps Iraq. As Kimmitt explained in the May 14 CPA briefing, the split responded to concerns that the combined headquarters was insufficient to handle the Iraq workload in the most efficient manner. The Multinational Corps will be focused on tactical, day-to-day activities, while the Multinational Force will emphasize strategic aspects of the military presence in Iraq, Kimmitt said.
(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
This page printed from: http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2004&m=May&x=20040517170647adynned0.5042536&t=livefeeds/wf-latest.html
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
