BAGHDAD - A top adviser to Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said Wednesday that the visit this week by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw of Britain had backfired, prolonging a deadlock over a new government and strengthening Mr. Jaafari's resolve to keep his post.
'BACKFIRED'
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice speaks during a joint press conference with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw (R), in the Baghdad's heavily fortified green zone. Rice headed home to Washington April 4, 2006 after her surprise trip to Iraq after getting the cold shoulder in Britain. (AFP/David Furst) |
"Pressure from outside is not helping to speed up any solution," said the adviser, Haider al-Abadi. "All it's doing is hardening the position of people who are supporting Jaafari."
He added, "They shouldn't have come to Baghdad."
His comments were echoed by several political leaders on Wednesday, including Kurds and Sunni Arabs.
Mr. Jaafari was nominated by the main Shiite political bloc in February to be prime minister in a new government. But the selection has faced fierce public resistance by a coalition of Sunni Arabs, Kurds, independents and some Shiite leaders.
The visit by Ms. Rice and Mr. Straw appeared to grate even on politicians who oppose Mr. Jaafari. "They complicated the thing, and now it's more difficult to solve," said Mahmoud Osman, an independent member of the Kurdistan Alliance, speaking Wednesday about Ms. Rice and Mr. Straw. "They shouldn't have come, and they shouldn't have interfered."
Also on Wednesday, an Iraqi cameraman employed by CBS and detained by American forces a year ago on suspicions of abetting the insurgency was acquitted by a three-judge panel at the Central Criminal Court of Iraq in Baghdad.
On April 5, 2005, the cameraman, Abdul Ameer Younis Hussein, was shot in the hip by an American sniper while he was filming the wreckage of a car bomb that had wounded several American soldiers in Mosul.
He was taken to a hospital where he was detained by the Americans. They said that he had tested positive for explosive residue and that images in his camera linked him to the insurgents.
After a year in detention, his ordeal ended Wednesday just as suddenly as it had begun when a prosecutor requested that the case be dismissed for lack of evidence.
He awaits final approval of his release by the American military, his lawyers said.
"The mystery is why this case got referred to the court in the first place," Scott Horton, a lawyer from New York who flew to Baghdad to help defend Mr. Hussein, said after the ruling. "It's intimidation and the potential use of lethal force against journalists."
Lt. Col. Keir-Kevin Curry, a spokesman for the military's detainee operations, said in an e-mail message that the Central Criminal Court was "still an evolving process."
"At times cases may take longer than a year," he said. "Our goal is to have everyone appear before an investigative judge within six months of detention."
In Baghdad, two car bombs detonated Wednesday afternoon within 20 minutes, killing 3 people and wounding at least 16, an Interior Ministry official said.
Gunmen wearing the uniforms of Interior Ministry commandos and driving ministry vehicles opened fire on guards outside the Baghdad headquarters of the Iraqna cellular phone company, wounding a guard and then abducting him.
An insurgent group posted a video on the Internet, claiming that it showed people dragging the burned body of an American pilot from an Apache helicopter that crashed southwest of Baghdad on Saturday.
The military said Wednesday that it could not confirm the authenticity of the video.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
###
