Agence France Presse: June 5
The US-led administration in Iraq moved to crack down on growing unrest as the top UN arms inspector questioned the credibility of coalition experts searching for Saddam Hussein's banned weapons.
The occupation authority warned it would enforce a ban on incitement even in mosques as a US soldier and prominent Iraqi tribal leader were killed in separate attacks.
"This applies to the territory of Iraq. We respect religious sites ... but if we hear that there are groups who are using and abusing religious establishments such as mosques to incite religious or ethnic violence we would consider taking action," a spokesman for the US-led administration said on condition of anonymity.
"Nothing in this notice will be designed to curb public debate. It is certainly not going to be illegal to criticize the coalition."
The announcement came just hours after one US soldier was killed and five wounded in the flashpoint city of Fallujah, where anti-US sentiment has been high.
It was the second deadly assault on US troops in Fallujah in nine days and came just hours after more than 1,000 soldiers poured into the area to clamp down on the spate of violence against the US occupation forces.
The spokesman said a primary concern in drawing up the new ban had been to prevent incitement against Iraq's ethnic and religious minorities in the face of the huge communal tensions stoked for decades by Saddam's Baath party regime.
In a sign of the continuing tensions, an influential tribal leader with ties to Saddam's regime was shot dead in the British-occupied southern city of Basra.
Sheikh Ali Najm al-Saadun was killed near the Basra office of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the main Iraqi Shiite movement. Members of his tribe said they suspected the group's armed wing, the Badr Brigade, of being behind the murder.
Meanwhile, at the United Nations, chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix argued for allowing his agency back into Iraq to search for Saddam's banned weapons.
"I do not want to question the integrity or the professionalism of the inspectors of the coalition, but anybody who functions under an army of occupation cannot have the same credibility as an independent inspector," Blix said after meeting with the UN Security Council.
The United States and Britain have refused to allow the UN inspectors to return and have assembled their own team of more than 1,200 experts to continue the arms search.
Blix told council members "there remain long lists of items unaccounted for" in the nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs Iraq claimed to have dismantled more than a decade ago.
"But it is not justified to jump to the conclusion that something exists just because it is unaccounted for," he said.
Washington and London cited reports of Iraq's attempts to develop nuclear, biological and chemical weapons as the principal justification for war, but little evidence has emerged to back up the claims.
The lack of evidence has put both Blair's government and the administration of US President George W. Bush on the defensive against claims they manipulated intelligence reports to bolster their case for war.
Bush flew over Baghdad late Thursday on his way home from Doha, where he repeated his vow to find Iraq's banned weapons.
"He's got a big country in which to hide them. Well, we'll look. We'll reveal the truth," he told cheering US troops.
But the man who headed South Africa's chemical and biological warfare program in apartheid days said he believes Saddam was hoodwinked by criminals who delivered containers full of sand instead of chemicals and failed to deliver purchased equipment.
"We picked up orders and requests he was sending out all over the world for raw materials, but the sanctions were so tight on him that he was really hoodwinked by a lot of criminals," Wouter Basson told the Pretoria Press Club.
"Ingredients, chemicals, constituents and electronics that he ordered and paid for never cropped up.
"There were containers full of sand offloaded, and I think ultimately they just gave up and realized under their circumstances it is not going to work for them."
Meanwhile, aboard Air Force One at 9,500 meters above the Iraqi capital, Bush pointed out the site of the US attack that began the war to unseat Saddam, spokesman Ari Fleischer said.
Fleischer said the president hoped his flight may be "a harbinger of other flights to come as the future of Iraq brightens," enabling tourists to travel to the war-torn nation.
"Perhaps one day soon can come commercial aircraft bringing visitors to Iraq, reuniting families, and also making Iraq a wonderful tourist center around the world, given its glorious history."
In London, Britain dashed the hopes of Saddam's two widowed daughters, who had sought asylum in the industrial north of England through a cousin who settled there more than two years ago.
We will not be considering a claim for asylum of Saddam's daughters or wives, or any members of his family, who may have been involved in human rights abuses," a spokesman for Prime Minister Tony Blair said.