A national conference in Iraq was postponed for two weeks, an organizer said Thursday, a day after a massive car bombing that killed 70 people. The conference had been due to commence Saturday. But it has been plagued by difficulties before it even started.
Key political groups have been promising to boycott, leaders in ethnically diverse areas have been unable to agree on delegates to send and officials have expressed worries the gathering will be a target for an attacks.
Abdul Halim al-Ruhaimi, one of the organizers, said that after U.N. requests, the Iraqis agreed to a delay until mid-August to give officials time to speak with groups that had been reluctant to attend.
U.N. officials told The Associated Press they had repeatedly called on organizers to delay the conference for as long as a month to encourage wider participation and ensure it was properly prepared.
The conference is to select a national assembly that will have some semi-parliamentary powers.
Meanwhile, an American soldier was killed Thursday in clashes between U.S. forces and Iraqi fighters in Hawija, a town about 230 kilometers north of Baghdad, the US military said. Two U.S. Marines were killed in clashes a day earlier in Iraq's western Anbar province. The deaths brought to at least 909 the number of U.S. personnel killed in Iraq since the war began.
Elsewhere, Iraqi police have arrested 270 fighters, mostly from neighboring countries, in recent raids, the interim interior minister said in remarks published Thursday.
Some of them were Syrian and Iranian, Falah Hassan al-Naqib told the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat daily.
"I can confirm that 90 percent of those who carried out suicide operations are not Iraqis," al-Naqib said. "I believe that Iraqis' noncompliance with terrorists has made them a target."
Also Thursday, an Iraqi official told Al-Jazeera television that Saddam Hussein suffers from a chronic prostate infection and has refused to have a biopsy to prove he does not have cancer. X-rays and blood tests did not show anything more serious than the prostate infection and the 67-year-old Saddam seemed to be in good health otherwise, despite rumors to the contrary, Iraqi Human Rights Minister Bakhtiar Amin said. (albawaba.com)
© 2004 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
