The battle between Sunni and Shia Muslims for control of Baghdad has already started, say Iraqi political leaders who predict fierce street fighting will break out as each community takes over districts in which it is strongest.

“The fighting will only stop when a new balance of power has emerged,” Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of Massoud Barzani, the Kurdish leader, said. “Sunni and Shia will each take control of their own area.” He said sectarian cleansing had already begun.

Many Iraqi leaders now believe that civil war is inevitable but it will be confined, at least at first, to the capital and surrounding provinces where the population is mixed. “The real battle will be the battle for Baghdad where the Shia have increasing control,” said one senior official who did not want his name published. “The army will disintegrate in the first moments of the war because the soldiers are loyal to the Shia, Sunni or Kurdish communities and not to the government.” He expected the Americans to stay largely on the sidelines.
independent.co.uk

More than 3,000 families fled due to sectarian conflict, government says.
BAGHDAD, 21 March (IRIN) – The Iraqi Ministry of Immigration and Displacement said on Tuesday that 3,705 families had been displaced in the country, as a result of the ongoing sectarian violence.

It erupted following the 22 February bombing of a Shi’ite shrine, Al-Askariya, in Samarra, some 120 km north of Baghdad.

The attack on the Al-Askariya shrine spawned days of reprisal attacks between the country’s two major Muslim sects, the Shi’ites and the Sunnis. At least 400 people were killed and dozens of mosques were damaged and destroyed, according to figures released last week by the Interior Ministry.

Sattar Nawroz, the spokesman for the Ministry of Immigration and Displacement, said that most of the displaced families went to the southern city of Najaf.

About 1,000 families had descended there from Baghdad’s restive western neighbourhoods, and from the northern oil-rich city of Kirkuk as well as from Diyala, north-east of Baghdad.

The second largest number of the displaced families, 615, Nawroz added, have fled to the centre of Baghdad, from the capital’s western and northern suburbs.

Aid agencies unable to enter Samarra
BAGHDAD, 22 March (IRIN) – Aid agencies say thay have been prevented from entering the city of Samarra, in central Iraq, where a major US and Iraqi military operation is underway.

“Our convoys sent on Sunday and Monday have been prevented from entering the city by US troops and our information from inside is that families are without food, power and potable water, particularly because they cannot leave their homes,” noted Abdel Hameed, a spokesperson for the Iraqi Red Crescent Society (IRCS).
This, they say, has left hundreds of families without medical assistance and food supplies.

“Innocent people and especially children are suffering from a lack of supplies in and on the outskirts of Samarra,” said Muhammad al-Daraji, Director of the Monitoring Net of Human Rights in Iraq (MHRI).

“US and Iraqi military groups have prevented the entrance of local NGOs as well as the media to show the reality of human rights violation inside it,” he added.

Pentagon plans for an Iraqi civil war
WASHINGTON – Pentagon and military officials say Iraq’s not fighting a civil war yet, but warn that Iraqi security forces and the government could still collapse, dragging the country into one. So the U.S. military is drafting a series of contingency plans to deal with that very ominous possibility.

Military officials tell NBC News the first objective, however, is to head off a civil war. The U.S. military hopes to keep Iraqi security forces from taking sides in the sectarian violence by pressuring the Iraqi government to crack down on any rogue elements within the police or military.

The second option: U.S. forces could again be sent into combat against sectarian militias, which military officials say would require an increase in the number of American soldiers and Marines in Iraq.

Expanding bases put focus on U.S. in Iraq
BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq – The concrete goes on forever, vanishing into the noonday glare, 2 million cubic feet of it, a mile-long slab that’s now the home of up to 120 U.S. helicopters, a “heli-park” as good as any back in the States. At another giant base, al-Asad in Iraq’s western desert, the 17,000 troops and workers come and go in a kind of bustling American town, with a Burger King, Pizza Hut and a car dealership, stop signs, traffic regulations and young bikers clogging the roads.

At a third hub down south, Tallil, they’re planning a new mess hall, one that will seat 6,000 hungry airmen and soldiers for chow.

Are the Americans here to stay? Air Force mechanic Josh Remy is sure of it as he looks around Balad.

“I think we’ll be here forever,” the 19-year-old airman from Wilkes-Barre, Pa., told a visitor to his base.

Iraq on its own to rebuild, U.S. says
BAGHDAD, Iraq — The head of the U.S.-led program to rebuild Iraq said Thursday that the Iraqi government can no longer count on U.S. funds and must rely on its own revenues and other foreign aid, particularly from Persian Gulf nations.

“The Iraqi government needs to build up its capability to do its own capital budget investment,” Daniel Speckhard, director of the U.S. Iraq Reconstruction Management Office, said.

The burden of paying for reconstruction poses an extraordinary challenge for a country that needs tens of billions of dollars for repairing its infrastructure at the same time it’s struggling to pay its bills.

Iraq’s deputy finance minister, Kamal Field al-Basri, said it was “reasonable” for the United States to sharply cut back its reconstruction efforts after spending about $21 billion.

“We should be very much dependent on ourselves,” al-Basri said.

…The murderous work of Dr Louay is symbolic of the ferocity of the struggle for the oil province of Kirkuk. The dispute over its fate is the most important reason why the political parties in Baghdad have failed to create a new government three months after the election on 15 December. The Kurds, expelled from Kirkuk and replaced with Arab settlers by Saddam Hussein, captured the city on 10 April 2003. They have no intention of giving it up. “We will never leave Kirkuk,” said Rizgar Ali Hamajan, the former Kurdish peshmerga (soldier) who heads the provincial He recalls that when he was 18 months old, his parents fled with him from his village north of Kirkuk moments before the Iraqi army destroyed it.

But Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Prime Minister, has frustrated Kurdish demands, enshrined in the new constitution, for Kurds to be allowed to return to Kirkuk and Arabs settlers to be removed to their original homes. The Kurds expect a referendum in Kirkuk that would lead to the province joining the highly autonomous Kurdish region ruled by the Kurdistan regional government in northern Iraq.

For the 1.9 million Kurds, Turkomens and Arabs of Kirkuk province, oil has brought few benefits. They live on top of at least 10 billion barrels of oil which was first exploited in 1927. Despite that, people wanting to buy petrol in Kirkuk wait all day in queues of battered vehicles. “It is the most devastated city in all Iraq,” said Mohammed Othman, deputy head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the most powerful Kurdish party in Kirkuk.
counterpunch.org

…Two Iraqi documents from March 2003 — on the eve of the U.S.-led invasion — and addressed to the secretary of Saddam Hussein, describe details of a U.S. plan for war. According to the documents, the plan was disclosed to the Iraqis by the Russian ambassador.
abcnews.go.com

IN ONE of the most blunt assessments of post-Taliban life in Afghanistan, a high-ranking United Nations representative has warned refugees not to return home because security is so dire.

The comments came as the fugitive Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, vowed to launch a ferocious offensive against US-led forces.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that 4.4 million refugees have returned since the Taliban were toppled in 2001. The flood of refugees created a crisis that ate up funds originally reserved for relief and reconstruction in a country still dominated by warlords, their militias and the opium trade.

Massive unemployment and widespread unrest, especially in the tribal areas of the country’s south and east, have generated long queues of visa-hungry Afghans outside the Iranian and Pakistani embassies.
smh.com.au

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The U.N. Security Council ran into new obstacles on Tuesday in trying to issue a statement on reining in Iran’s nuclear ambitions after Russia insisted on deleting key parts of the text.

A closed-door meeting among all 15 council members scheduled for Tuesday was delayed until later in the week while diplomats talk in small groups, U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said. Members last week thought a deal was close.

“The impact on the negotiations which we are trying to do here was not as positive as we would have wished,” British Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry said. “That is the basic problem.”

Council members have mulled a reaction to Iran’s nuclear program, which the West believes is a cover for bomb making, since receiving a dossier from the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna on March 8.

Russia, supported by China, has been wary of action by the Security Council, which can impose sanctions, fearing threats might escalate and prompt Iran to cut all contact with the IAEA, the U.N. nuclear watchdog. On the statement, Russia wants about half the text deleted, China said.

A statement requires agreement from all 15 Security Council members while a resolution needs nine votes in favor and no veto from any of the permanent members — the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China.
news.yahoo.com

North Korea suggested Tuesday it had the ability to launch a pre-emptive attack on the United States, according to the North’s official news agency. A Foreign Ministry spokesman said the North had built atomic weapons to counter the U.S. nuclear threat.

“As we declared, our strong revolutionary might put in place all measures to counter possible U.S. pre-emptive strike,” the spokesman said, according to the Korean Central News Agency. “Pre-emptive strike is not the monopoly of the United States.”
forbes.com

IN AGES PAST, cities in wealthy nations greeted visitors with gold-plated lions at their gates.

But today, in America, the richest country on earth, the gates of many towns welcome visitors with abandoned factories. And the communities these factories flank tell you more about what’s really destroying America than any Wall Street analyst or Washington policy wonk ever could.

Since leaving the Philadelphia area, I’ve learned firsthand that these Anytown, USAs are everywhere – not just on the East Coast. One of them can be found by driving north through the shimmering cattle pastures on Montana Route 12, right near where I now live. There, you’ll be welcomed to East Helena by two defunct gray smokestacks rising from giant black mounds of what looks like spent coffee grounds, but is in reality industrial slag.

The towers, piercing an otherwise pristine Rocky Mountain vista, tell a story being told throughout America – a story not just of abandonment but of legalized theft afflicting both urban centers, and yes, small-town outposts.
philly.com

HOUSTON — Former first lady Barbara Bush gave relief money to a hurricane relief fund on the condition that it be spent to buy educational software from her son Neil’s company.

The chief of staff of former President George H.W. Bush would not disclose the amount earmarked for purchases from Ignite Learning.

Since Barbara Bush’s gift, the Ignite Learning program has been given to eight public schools with high numbers of Hurricane Katrina evacuees, the Houston Chronicle reported.

“Mrs. Bush wanted to do something specifically for education and specifically for the thousands of students flooding into the Houston schools,” the former President Bush’s chief of staff Jean Becker said Thursday.

The money was donated to the Bush-Clinton Houston Hurricane Relief Fund, said Steve Maislin, president of the Greater Houston Community Foundation, which administers the fund. That fund has no connection to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund, he said.

Barbara Bush chose to promote Ignite because she supports her son and has genuine enthusiasm for his company’s program, Becker said.

Two years ago, the Houston school district board wrestled with conflict of interest concerns over the Ignite program. Neil Bush had helped raise $115,000 for the district’s philanthropic fund from donors who insisted the money be spent on his company’s software.

The district accepted the donations and used them to pay half the costs of new Ignite software, about $10,000 per school.

Currently, Houston public schools use 15 Ignite programs and the Houston area has 40 programs, said company president Ken Leonard.

Neil Bush founded the Austin-based company in 1999.
chron.com

Founded with funds from Bush buddies in Dubai.

Investment bank Bear Stearns has advised investors to start dumping airline and retail stocks in favour of blue-chip utilities as a hedge against bird flu, warning that a full human pandemic of the H5N1 virus could set off the worst global stock market crash since the 1930s.

In the first detailed study of its kind, the US bank suggests buying Scottish Power, biotech companies such as Amgen and Medimmune, and the US health group St Jude Medical Inc, citing them as the sort of companies that would hold up well or even rise in the first phase of a pandemic.

“We believe the imminent arrival of bird flu in the United States will bring this potentially devastating disease back into the limelight,” said the report. If bird flu turns out to be a ‘worst event in 100 years’ then extreme risk analysis suggests it could push the market down 46pc over a 12-month period. “We believe investors should consider a basket of stocks to inoculate their portfolio from this source of risk,” it said.
telegraph.co.uk

United Nations nuclear and health watchdogs have ignored evidence of deaths, cancers, mutations and other conditions after the Chernobyl accident, leading scientists and doctors have claimed in the run-up to the nuclear disaster’s 20th anniversary next month.

In a series of reports about to be published, they will suggest that at least 30,000 people are expected to die of cancers linked directly to severe radiation exposure in 1986 and up to 500,000 people may have already died as a result of the world’s worst environmental catastrophe.
guardian.co.uk