Monday, 06 Sep 2004
Headlines:
(Al-Iraqiah Satellite Channel, Baghdad, in Arabic, , 5 Sep 04) -
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Saddam's aide captured in Tikrit - defence sources ·
Studio interview with deputy speaker of interim national conference, Hamid Musa; says Iraqis overjoyed over Al-Duri capture
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Arts exhibition held in Baghdad.
Al-Mu'tamar [Baghdad, daily newspaper published by the Iraqi National Congress, 05 Sep 04]:
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Pending conclusion of new export contracts, oil reservoirs at Turkish Chehan port brimming with Iraqi crude ·
Work on Al-Nasiriyah power station nearly over
Quotes:
There were conflicting media reports on the arrest of former Vice-President Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri on 5 September. The interior ministry, State Minister Qasim Dawud and Army Chief Babakir Zebari said Al-Duri had been captured and a spokesman for Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said DNA tests were being conducted on a man believed to be Al-Duri. The defence ministry and a National Guard commander in charge of the area Al-Duri was said to be captured in denied he had been detained. The Pentagon neither denied nor confirmed he had been arrested although the US military in Iraq said Al-Duri was not in their custody.
Radio Dijla - Iraq's first independent talk radio station, Radio Dijla (Tigris Radio), 05 Sep 04)
(As-Sabah, Baghdad, by Iraqi Media Network ,5 Sept 04) :-
(London-based Azzaman, Political and independent daily, issued by Saad al-Bazaz, 1 Sep04) - The Ministry of Education has begun offering free meals to the country's 1.7 million students.Iraq had an excellent school feeding program which helped parents afford the cost of providing extra meals to their children at school. But cancellation of the program by the former regime in mid 1970s had reportedly strained the budgets of low income parents and led to unacceptable levels of poverty particularly in the 1990s.Abudillah al-Jumeili, a senior Education Ministry official, said Iraqi parents should no longer worry about the cost of providing extra meals for their children while at school. The school meals will initially consist of milk, nutritive biscuits and additional ingredients which the education ministry officials say will be more nutritious than what most Iraqi students get at home. The ministry says the government will bear all the costs included in the new program which are estimated at several million dollars. Education is free in Iraq and the new feeding program is set to remove any financial pressure on parents with children at school. Even stationery and requirements necessary for sports and scouts classes are provided by the government free of charge, Jumeili said. UN figures released while the former leader Saddam Hussein was still in power show that more than 50% of Iraqi children lived in abject poverty with at least 30% of them were emaciated.Incomes have substantially improved since his downfall but unemployment is still high as rising violence and acts of sabotage targeting the country's infrastructure have stalled many projects.
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National conference amends internal regulations
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Six injured in car bomb blast in Baghdad; two killed and five injured in American raid on Balad
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Explosives detonated in Baghdad
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Iraq official pledges improved power services in Baghdad
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Work underway to restore power supplies to Najaf old city
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Nation-wide anti-polio inoculation campaign launched
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Deputies to National Assembly Speaker elected, sub-committee chairmen to be elected today
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Ministry of Industry and Minerals attributes brain drain to obsolete salary system
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British report warns of civil war in Iraq
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Hope turning to caution in French journalists' ordeal in Iraq
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Car-bomb blasts in Kirkuk, six Iraqis killed in US air strikes on Al-Fallujah
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Special Turkish teams formed to protect Turkish truckers in Iraq.
(Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, London-based, Baghdad edition independent daily, Saudi-owned, commentary by Dr Abd-al-Mun'im Sa'id, 05 Sep 04):- "[During the Al-Najaf standoff, Al-Sadr was not combating the bad American guys alone, but the good Al-Najaf citizens as well. Viewed on a national scale, the crisis in Al-Najaf was simply a confrontation between the fledgling Iraqi government, just delivered from the woeful womb of dictatorship, war and occupation, and numerous hostile forces bent on turning Iraq into just another copy of a very familiar Arab state of affairs whereby people are divided between militias and factions bearing noble names and touting still nobler slogans to cover up their real pursuit of subjugating the Iraqi people by force of arms."
(Al-Bayyinah political weekly of the Hezbollah movement in Iraq, [From editorial] 05 Sep 04):- "The cities of the deprived have always provided one fighting army after another and will always continue to do so. After all, the real issue is the struggle of the deprived for their rightful share of wealth and power. This is a fact the occupiers and the government had better not overlook. Furthermore, the Shi'ite Political Council and the Shi'ite House ought to recognize the Al-Sadr Trend as a patriotic political trend and that any attempt to bring about its demise would lead to the gradual dissolution of the Shi'ite House itself. It should be kept in mind that the might of the Al-Mahdi Army is a winning chip in the struggle against the real enemies of our homeland and that the mere allusion to the possibility of activating this valuable chip would be enough to hold at bay any hostile attempt by those who have benefited, and are still benefiting, from the wave of violence in our country."
(Al-Sa'ah, political biweekly,issued by Unified National Movement, led by Sunni cleric Proff .Ahmad Al-Qubaysi.)[From editorial, 05 Sep 04 ]: "In the shadow of the armed anarchy that has reigned since the beginning of the occupation, those who wield arms have come to call the shots. This sorry state of affairs has resulted in a widespread blur of vision, both politically and militarily, as local leaders have been left to decide what sort of Jihadi action to take and where and when to go about it. Lacking proper guidance and unsupported by adequate experience, such crude conduct, often miscalculated, is more likely than not to yield undesirable adverse reactions. A case in point is the phenomenon of political kidnapping, previously alien to the Iraqi political scene, which has not only slowed down the pace of life in Iraq, but has also reflected a deformed image of the legitimate resistance against the occupation. The naivete and disorientation evinced by the recent kidnapping of two French journalists will prove that such conduct is totally divorced from the approach to sociopolitical change advocated by Prophet Muhammad."
(Al-Nahdhah, Baghdad, by Independent Democrats Movement, [From commentary by Abd al-Mu'im al-A'sam, 05 Sep 04) - "If the news we have heard of the handsome ransom France has paid to one of the most fanatical extremist groups [to secure the release of the two French journalists being held hostage by the group] is genuinely true, as confirmed by impartial Iraqi sources, then democratic France has upended its secularism in the battlefield. It has moved openly from the anti-war position it so vehemently upheld prior to the war, motivated by reluctance to lose its interests in Iraq under the former regime and fearing that it would be prevented from having a share in the spoils of the then-looming war, to the opposite position of accepting the war as a fact and even investing in it, both financially and diplomatically, seeing that such a drastic change of attitude is to the best of its interest." Source: As listed
(Al-Sa'ah, political biweekly,issued by Unified National Movement, led by Sunni cleric Proff .Ahmad Al-Qubaysi, 5 Sep 04) The opportunity for the establishment of an Iraqi government "with an Islamic orientation along the lines of what would be preferred by Iran" was "closer now than at any time in the past". It said that although the Iraqi Shi'is preferred the establishment of a "democratic" regime that would give them the opportunity to come to power and have control over things, they also vacillated between the desire to establish a secular democracy and the desire to establish an Islamic system. "From a [cultural] perspective, the most important reason for this confusion is that the Shi'i clerics are being fought over by two movements. One of them is adopting a 'radical' Islamic attitude and the other is taking a more detached, Sufist position," article concluded.
(Ansar al-Mahdi,Pro-Sadr newspaper , Iraqi newspaper , 4 Sep 04) carried an article criticizing the Iranian government, particularly those it called "the so-called reformists", for wanting to "manipulate" events in Iraq for its own political benefit. The article also accused the Kurdish parties, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and the Da'wah Party of being allies of the Iranian Government and of acting against the Al-Sadr following for Iran. It said the Iranian and Iraqi government played "a vile game which is meant to bury the national and religious renaissance in Iraq and Iran" in acting against the Al-Sadr following, which it said was "the defender of Iraq and Iran" and other Muslim countries. "The conduct of the Iranian Government and the political parties formerly allied with it was an exploitative and Machiavellian one which was based on worldly interests," the article said. "This is unacceptable from a government and from parties which raised the banner of Islam and jihad in the face of the Great Satan... We find that it our duty to caution that we will not tolerate exploiters even if they are of kin, for the struggle against the great tyrant is a preface to the emergence, and we will not humour them in this regard."
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The reconstruction committee at the Shiite endowments has allocated 10 billions Iraqi dinars for the project of enlarging Imam Ali Shrine . Notably , the committee supervising Najaf project obtained $ 200 to achieve the 3rd stage of Najaf electricity generation gas station .Mr. Adnan al-Zarfi the governor of Najaf said that the plan of reconstructing the city includes enlarging the outer spaces surrounding the shrine 90 meters.He said that the reconstruction committee that established by the cabinet ministers is studying the sponsored means to remove institutes and buildings to be able in implementing and rehabilitating the project to be large and wide enough for large numbers of visitors .On his part, Mr. Majid Jibreen the chief supervising committee said that the fulfillment of the 3rd stage of Najaf electricity station will secure 90 megawatt.
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The ministry of electricity is determined to buy small diesel and gas generators 400 megawatt to be connected with the electricity distribution stations in Baghdad.An official source said that these generators are to be used to cover the peak carriages ; will be set up during three months after getting agreements for allotting the necessary sums from the cabinet ministers.The source promised to secure these generators as an important step to cover part of the shortage in the quantity of electricity energy production.On the other hand, the source announced that the ministry of electricity is going on implementation of its plans aiming to improve situation of the electricity system through maintenance and rehabilitation works besides dissolving crowd in the electricity network.
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The National Assembly has approved fixed mechanism in adopting the decisions.The members approved the necessity of adopting any decision by % 51 of the attendants in which their numbers should be equal to three folds the members.The voting process includes the decisions that adopted by the national assembly.That decision came within the provisions of the internal system of the assembly.The assembly approved the city of Baghdad as a city for holding periodical meetings in the ordinary situations that could be changed into other province if necessary.
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South Korea expressed desire to activate the Korean grant which is $2 billion and the possibility of getting benefit of in developing the construction projects .The Korean ambassador said , in a meeting with engineer Omer Al-Farooq Al-Damloji, the Minister of Construction & Housing, that the Korean companies are ready to take part in building the residential compounds. He also expressed Korean willingness to exchange expertise and training the Iraqi cadres.
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Al-Rusafa Electricity Directorate will achieve an experiment to transmit electricity starting from Sept 6th to District No. 318, al-Batween and al-Khalafa'a residential compounds for 24 hours.The Engineer Nafi' Abdul Sadaa the Director-General of al-Rusafa Electricity Directorate said that the experiment makes it necessary for the citizens to be abided by 50%. electricity rationalization. He indicated if citizens are abided by the rationalization ratio , they will be supplied with ceaseless electricity , referring that Al- Rusafa electricity directorate was carried out similar experiments in another districts but it did not announce the level of the accomplished success.On the other side, the directorate is implementing a wide campaign for rehabilitating electricity net and prevents violations.On the same level the citizens said that the directorate must mobilize its efforts in the city of al-Sadr that subjected for severe damages in addition to the numerous cuts in al-Habibia district No. 535.
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