Jordan last week said it would consider sending peacekeeping troops if asked. Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari declined the offer, saying his country would welcome troops from Arab countries that do not share its borders. Iraq's Governing Council has also rejected a proposal to accept peacekeepers from Turkey. Currently no Arab states participate in the mainly American multinational force that remains in Iraq with the approval of the interim government that formally took over sovereignty last week. However, Yemen and Bahrain have offered to send troops.
Iraq's interim government yesterday again postponed an announcement on a security law to curb guerrillas but gave no explanation for the latest delay. Allawi cancelled a scheduled news conference on this law at short notice and one of his officials said no new time for the announcement had been set. The government had earlier planned to unveil the measures at a news conference, which was also cancelled it at the last minute.
Since Allawi's government regained sovereign powers from the US-led occupation a week ago, senior officials have said it would impose tough security measures, reinstate the death penalty and offer a partial amnesty in a carrot-and-stick strategy to take the sting out of the bloody uprising.
President Ghazi al-Yawar was quoted as saying the interim government had agreed to reenact a national safety law from the 1960s, which includes provisions against terrorism and breaches of public order, but stops short of full-scale emergency law. Yawar and other officials also pledged to restore capital punishment, suspended during the 14-month US-British occupation. The penalty could apply to Saddam Hussein and 11 of his top lieutenants if they are convicted by a special tribunal. The 12 men appeared before an Iraqi judge to hear they would be charged with the invasion of Kuwait, ethnic cleansing of Kurds, suppression of Kurdish and Shiite revolts, and murders of political and religious foes over three decades.
While vowing to punish Baathists with "blood on their hands," criminals and foreign militants pursuing their own anti-American jihad in Iraq, Allawi also spoke of an amnesty for Iraqis who fought the occupation for nationalist reasons.
Violence has racked Iraq since the US-led invasion to topple Saddam last year. Guerrillas have attacked US forces, Iraqi policemen and oil industry targets across the country. In the latest attacks, a roadside bomb wounded five civilians in Mosul yesterday, police said. An Iraqi civilian was killed and four were wounded in the southern city of Basra when mortar rounds fired by guerrillas at the main government building hit nearby homes instead. Iraqi technicians are trying to repair oil pipelines damaged by weekend sabotage attacks that halved crude oil exports, the mainstay of Iraq's economy, officials said.
Allawi said his government's first week in office since the handover had been successful. "We have witnessed a drop in insurgency activities so far. We hope this trend will continue," he told ABC Television. "I am sure that we will win," said Allawi, whose government shares Washington's view that Saddam supporters and foreign Islamic militants are behind the guerrilla attacks. But he said that militias, including those loyal to firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr who led a rebellion against the US-led occupation, must lay down their weapons.
There was no word on the fate of a Lebanese-born US marine after conflicting statements from kidnap groups, which first claimed they had beheaded him and then denied it.
