- BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Amid
fears of anarchy and violence in the post-Saddam Hussein power vacuum,
Washington scrambled to make good on a promise to host a broad-based conference
of Iraqi opposition leaders early next week that will lay the foundation
for a transitional government.
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- "We expect this to be the first in a series of regional
meetings that will provide a forum for Iraqis to discuss their vision of
the future and their ideas regarding the Iraqi interim authority,"
said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher of the gathering in Nassiriya
in southern Iraq.
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- "We hope these meetings will culminate in a nationwide
conference that can be held in Baghdad in order to form the Iraqi interim
authority," Boucher said in Washington.
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- The United States is seeking to bring together a wide
variety of Iraqis to decide who will initially govern a country splintered
among the majority Shi'ite Muslims, the minority Sunni Muslims who have
long ruled and the separatist Kurds in the north.
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- Asked if it was not a huge challenge to win consensus,
a U.S. official replied: "It is, and we recognize that, and that is
why we see this as the first of what are expected to be several meetings."
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- Asked when an interim authority might emerge, he said:
"We are hopeful that it will be a matter of weeks."
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- As Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President
Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder met in St. Petersburg
to reiterate their call for the United Nations to take the lead in post-war
Iraq, the State Department on Friday invited the U.N. special envoy on
Iraq to Washington.
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- U.N. special envoy Rafeeuddin Ahmed was invited to meet
on Monday with officials from the State Department, White House National
Security Council and Defense Department for talks on the post-conflict
period, said U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard.
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- No U.N. officials were invited to the Nassiriya meeting.
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- The fall on Friday of Mosul, Iraq's third largest city,
left Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, 110 miles north of Baghdad, as the last
major U.S. military target.
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- 'CHATTER' HINTS SADDAM MAY BE DEAD
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- U.S. bombers continued to pound positions around the
town but Saddam's whereabouts were not known. U.S. officials, who said
they were now "leaning slightly" to the view that Saddam is dead,
said they had picked communications "chatter" from Iraqis on
the periphery of Saddam's government suggesting he had died. But they cautioned
they had no conclusive proof.
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- In Baghdad, Mosul and the southern city of Basra, law
and order crumbled as pent-up passions and naked greed spilled onto the
streets after 24 years of iron rule by Saddam.
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- In Washington on Friday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
denied Iraq was falling into chaos, saying television images of isolated
acts of looting and violence were being played "over and over again"
for sensational effect.
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- In Baghdad, gunmen apparently from the Shi'ite community
in the east-side slums battled paramilitaries loyal to Saddam overnight,
U.S. military sources said.
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- Throughout the day, armed men and youths roamed the streets,
robbing buildings and hijacking cars.
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- "Is this your liberation?" screamed one shopkeeper
at the crew of a U.S. Abrams tank as youths helped themselves to everything
in his small hardware store.
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- Reuters journalists in Mosul saw no military clashes
after an entire Iraqi army corps surrendered and its forces abandoned the
city. There were just crowds in a frenzy of arson and plunder, stripping
buildings and torching a market.
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- Looting also raged in Basra, where British troops on
Friday killed five men trying to rob a bank. Humanitarian agencies said
it was not even safe to visit during daylight hours.
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- The anarchy in Iraq's main cities underscored the immense
task U.S. troops face in restoring order after their crushing military
victory over Saddam's Baath Party government.
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- "The United States have neither the will nor the
capacity to rein in the disorder in Iraq," said Bruno Tertrais, senior
fellow at the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research.
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- Analysts have also said U.S. forces are reluctant to
perform policing missions, but a U.S. officer disagreed.
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- "Now we are a little bit out of our comfort zone,
but we're not unprepared or untrained," Lt. Col. Jim Chartier, commanding
officer of the U.S. Marines' 1st Tank Battalion, told Reuters.
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- KIRKUK UNDER U.S. CONTROL
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- "If I need to provide security for a grocery store
... I'll do it. On the other hand, there's still people out there who want
to kill us, so we can't let our guard down," he said.
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- U.S. commander Gen. Tommy Franks said Saddam and his
inner circle were "either dead or running like hell."
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- Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said at a briefing in Qatar
U.S. troops had been issued a list of 55 people to be captured or killed
amid signs Iraqi leaders may be trying to flee abroad.
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- Troops of the U.S. 173rd Airborne Brigade moved to take
control of the strategic northern prize of Kirkuk one day after it was
captured by Kurdish guerrillas and U.S. special forces.
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- U.S. soldiers also began spreading through the nearby
oil fields, which provide 40 percent of Iraq's oil revenue.
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- The Kurds' withdrawal from their traditional capital
was designed to calm fears in Ankara that they could use the city's wealth
to finance an independent state and stimulate separatist demands by Turkey's
large Kurdish minority.
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- The International Committee of the Red Cross said Baghdad's
medical system had all but collapsed due to combat damage, looting and
fear of anarchy. Few medical or hospital support staff were reporting for
work and many patients had fled.
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- Rumsfeld said U.S. forces were moving medicine and medical
personal in to meet civilian needs and were acting to stop looting wherever
possible. "They're already going to hospitals that are being looted
and stopping it," he said.
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- Putin, speaking in St. Petersburg, welcomed Saddam's
demise but condemned the means by which he was removed from power:
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- "If we weigh up what is good and what is bad in
the results of this war -- it is positive that we have got rid of a tyrannical
regime. But by what means? -- Losses, destruction and the deaths of people.
This is a negative consequence."
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