At least 30 dead after suicide bomber detonates explosives on Iraqi bus

BAGHDAD, Iraq-A suicide bomber detonated an explosive belt in a bus as it was about to depart Thursday for a Shiite city in the south, killing up to 30 people and wounding nearly 40, police and hospital officials said. Most of the dead were in the bus, which was gutted by flames, and the rest were gathered around a food stall nearby, police said at the scene. Kindi hospital said at least 37 were injured. Police said the attacker waited until the bus was pulling away slowly from the station, then jumped on board to avoid security checks. The blast occurred a week before national elections, and officials had warned of a surge in violence ahead of the balloting. Several other explosions rumbled through the heart of the capital Thursday morning. Witnesses told police that the attacker left a car and climbed onto the bus and blew himself up as the bus was about to leave for Nasiriyah, 320 kilometres southeast of Baghdad, police Lt. Ali Mitaab said. Fire swept through the bus following the blast, trapping passengers. Their charred corpses remained in their seats, their faces starring out through the shattered windows. Police climbed over the top of the vehicle inspecting what remained of luggage. ''As the bus was going outside the station, a man carrying a bag tried to got into the bus, but the conductor was suspicious about him,'' police Lt. Wisam Hakim said. ''He tried to stop him but the man insisted. He sat in the middle of the bus and then the explosion took place.'' The attack occurred at the major bus station for vehicles headed to the mostly Shiite areas of the south. Last August the station was the scene of a horrific triple car bombing which killed at least 43 people and wounded 89. The latest attack occurred two days after two suicide bombers struck at the city's police academy, killing 43 police and cadets.

Saddam refuses to attend trial

Defense, judges meet over procedural matters

Photo: Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein gestures as he addresses Presiding Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin during his trial held Tuesday.

BAGHDAD, Iraq- Saddam Hussein's trial was delayed Wednesday after the ousted president refused to attend the session, court officials said. Defense lawyers huddled with the judges in hopes of resolving the latest test of wills in the often-unruly trial. An angry Saddam threatened at the end of Tuesday's session to boycott the next day's proceedings after complaining he and the seven other co-defendants had been mistreated by the "unjust court." Court officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said Saddam stuck by his refusal Wednesday and the judges were trying to decide whether to proceed without him. If the differences cannot be resolved, the court might hold a closed session to try to resolve them, another official said, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to talk with the media. Saddam's threat to not attend Wednesday's session came at the end of a daylong session in which five witnesses - two women and three men - related the events of a 1982 crackdown on Shiite Muslims. The most dramatic testimony came from a woman who spoke behind a beige curtain and with her voice disguised. She told of beatings, torture and sexual humiliation at the hands of security agents when she was a teenager. At the end of Tuesday's session, the judges agreed over defence objections to meet again the following day. Saddam shouted that "I will not come to an unjust court! Go to hell!" Saddam, dressed again in a dark suit and white shirt and clutching a Qur'an, complained that he and the seven other defendants were tired and had been deprived of opportunities to shower, have a change of clothes, exercise or go for a smoke. "This is terrorism," he declared. Throughout the trial, which began Oct. 19, Saddam has repeatedly staged confrontations with the court and attempted to take control of the proceedings with dramatic rhetorical flourishes. Saddam and the others are charged in the deaths of more than 140 Shiite Muslims in retaliation for an assassination attempt against him in the town of Dujail in 1982. Saddam accused Iran of ordering the attempt on his life.

Al-Zarqawi threatens Jordan's king, says bombers did not target Amman wedding

AMMAN, Jordan- An audiotape in the name of "al-Qaida in Iraq" threatened on Friday to chop off King Abdullah's head and bomb more hotels and tourist sites. The speaker on the tape, identified as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, also said the group's suicide bombers did not intend to bomb a Jordanian wedding party at an Amman hotel last week, killing about 30 people. "Your star is fading. You will not escape your fate, you descendant of traitors. We will be able to reach your head and chop it off," al-Zarqawi said, referring to the king. Al-Zarqawi told Jordanians to stay away from bases used by U.S. forces in Jordan, hotels and tourist sites in Amman, the Dead Sea and the southern resort of Aqaba and embassies of governments participating in the war in Iraq, saying they would be targeted. He underlined that ...Full story

Ariel Sharon  favors general elections in February

JERUSALEM- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon agreed Thursday to hold early elections, possibly as soon as February, kicking off a political campaign certain to freeze all moves to restart Mideast peace talks. After meeting Thursday morning with Sharon, newly elected Labor party leader Amir Peretz said they had discussed holding the ballot between late February and the end of March, instead of next November as scheduled. Sharon's government is in danger of collapsing because Peretz wants to pull Labor out of the ruling coalition. Yosef Lapid, head of the opposition Shinui party, said he and Sharon agreed on a March ballot. "On the one hand, we want to shorten the process, but on the other, we have to give time to prepare for elections, and so we agreed they would be in March," Lapid told The Associated Press. Sharon told the Yediot Ahronot newspaper that he had reached the conclusion that it was best to have elections "as quickly as possible." Israel's parliament is scheduled to hold a preliminary vote Monday on whether to dissolve the government, Sharon spokesman Asaf Shariv said. The Israeli election campaign, combined with Palestinian parliamentary elections scheduled for January, will stall efforts to build on the momentum for peace following Israel's pullout from the Gaza Strip in September. Soon after the agreement to hold early elections was reached, Israeli forces killed two Palestinian militants outside the West Bank town of Jenin. Palestinian officials condemned the attack and said they feared the violence would intensify in the run-up to the vote. "I hope that the Israeli election campaign will not be marked by more Palestinian blood," Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said. Peretz, head of the second-largest party in Sharon's coalition, said at a news conference that Sharon had agreed to choose an election date by Monday. "I'm letting him choose a date in that period between the end of February and the end of March and whatever date he chooses is acceptable to me. The earlier the better," Peretz said. Peretz was elected Labor leader last week on a platform that included pulling out of the government and forcing an early poll. He defeated veteran Labor head Shimon Peres, who led the party into the coalition to support the Gaza pullout. The withdrawal plan had sparked a rebellion within Sharon's hardline Likud faction that threatened to bring down the government before the pullout. Peretz's victory left Sharon with little choice. "In the complex and complicated reality in which the country finds itself, I have no intention of standing at the head of a minority government for months on end," Sharon was quoted as saying in Yediot on Thursday. Peretz is a union leader who opposes the Sharon government's staunchly free-market policies. He wants early elections as part of his plan to return Labor to its socialist roots and reach out to downtrodden voters as an alternative to Likud.

Last minute efforts to win Sunni support of constitution face deep divisions

Photo: An Iraqi food distribution agent counts copies of the new constitution in Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday.

BAGHDAD, Iraq- With U.S. mediation, Shiite and Kurdish officials negotiated Sunday with Sunni Arab leaders over last minute additions to the constitution, trying to win Sunni support ahead of next weekend's crucial referendum. But the sides remained far apart over basic issues - including the federalism that Shiites and Kurds insist on - and copies of the constitution are already being passed out to the public. Though major attacks have waned in recent days, violence continued with insurgent violence killing 13 Iraqis. In one attack, masked gunmen in police commando uniforms burst into a school in the town of Samarra, north of Baghdad, pulled a Shiite teacher out of his classroom and shot him to death in the hallway in front of his students, still sitting behind their desks, police said. A suicide car bomb killed a woman and a child in the southern city of Basra. A U.S. marine was killed by a roadside bomb in the town of Ramadi, west of Baghdad, on Saturday, the military announced. It was the ninth American to be killed in a series of offensives the military has been waging the past week in western Iraq in an attempt to knock al-Qaida militants and other insurgents off balance and prevent attacks during Saturday's national vote on the constitution. The death brought to 1,953 the number of U.S. service members who have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. Sunni-led insurgents are trying to prevent Iraqis from voting with a wave of attacks over the past two weeks. The government has launched campaign to convince Iraqis to go to the polls despite the threats - and despite calls by some Sunni Arabs for a boycott. "We think (a boycott) would weaken Iraq because the only way that Iraq can recover is done by concentrating on the political process, writing the constitution and participating in it," government spokesman Laith Kubba said. "Any act that calls for violence or boycotting would deviate the country from its course." Kubba fiercely denounced the insurgents, calling them "rats spreading plague among the people." Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr said the number of foreign militants involved in Iraq's insurgency has fallen to around 900, from up to 3,000 three months ago. Their ranks have fallen because of deaths in U.S. and Iraqi military offensives - but also because al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has started sending fighters to other Arab countries to build terror networks there, Jabr said in an interview with the Arab daily Sharq al-Awsat. Iraq's Sunni Arab leaders are calling on their followers to turn out in force to vote in the referendum - but to vote "no" to defeat a draft constitution they say will break Iraqi into pieces, with Shiite and Kurdish mini-states in the north and south, with the Sunni minority left poor and weak in a central zone.

Though a minority, Sunnis can defeat the charter if they garner a two-thirds "no" vote in any three of Iraq's 18 provinces - and they have the potential to make that threshold in four provinces. But turnout is key, since they must outweigh Shiite and Kurdish populations in some of those areas. Even with copies of the official text of the constitution being distributed to voters to consider before the polls, all sides were debating last-minute changes in a bid to swing some Sunnis to a "yes" vote. Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani met with Sunni Arab leaders Saturday and Sunday trying to convince them on the changes, officials from all sides said. The United States is eager to see the passage of the constitution, since its rejection would prolong Iraq's political instability for months - and could hamper the U.S. military's plans to start pulling out some troops next year. But there appeared to be too wide a gulf to convince Sunni leaders to drop their opposition. While Shiite and Kurdish parties were willing to make some cosmetic additions to the draft, they rejected what they called central changes sought by Sunnis, particularly ones aimed at reducing the strong powers the charter gives to regional administrations over the central government. The Sunnis seek in particular changes to the constitution's articles outlining the purging of members of Saddam Hussein's former Baath party - most of whose major figures were Sunnis - and others allowing provinces to join together into "regions" under a single administration that would have considerable powers. "We don't want a federal system. It shouldn't be a system of regions, it's a system of provinces," Saleh al-Mutlaq, a prominent Sunni politician, said. He said the Sunnis want the articles on de-Baathification rewritten to "not single out the Baath party." The federalism terms are central to the constitution as it stands and the Shiite and Kurdish parties staunchly oppose them. Many of the same issues Sunnis are trying to change in the last minute talks were the subject of rancorous debate during the drafting of the constitution, which ended with the Shiites and Kurds approving the draft to be put to a referendum over Sunni opposition. In other violence Sunday, gunmen killed the bodyguard of a legislator in the northern city of Mosul and shot to death three Iraqi contractors in two attacks, in Baghdad and the town of Beiji to the north. Four policemen were slain in two separate Baghdad shootings, and an Iraqi was killed by gunmen in front of his shop selling construction materials in the capital. In Samarra, insurgents also killed the owner of a refrigerator repair shop. The bullet-riddled body of a woman in her 20s was found by the side of the road in the southern Baghdad suburb of Dora, an area of frequent insurgent slayings. By Kasem Zahra