MONDAY,APRIL14,2003
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN = 9A
Prime minister names new Palestinian cabinet
The Associated Press
JERUSALEM—The incoming Palestinian prime minister completed a new Cabinet yesterday in line with a leadership overhaul the United States sought, keeping the key post of security czar for himself and appointing several professionals and reformers.
Once the Cabinet of Mahmoud Abbas is approved by the Palestinian parliament, possibly later this week, President Bush is expected to unveil a "road map" to Palestinian statehood, starting the clock ticking on the three-year plan.
Israel's willingness to go along with the plan remains unclear.
although Prime Minister Ariel Sharon did stake out a relatively moderate position in an interview published yesterday.
Sharon's top aide, Dov Weisglass, is presenting Israel's concerns about the three-stage "road map" to U.S. officials in Washington this week. The main issue appears to be Israel's demand that the obligations of each stage should be fulfilled before the sides move on to the next one.
Abbas was to have presented his Cabinet list later yesterday to the ruling party, Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, whose backing he needs. However, the meeting was called off at short notice.
The Cabinet list was provided
to The Associated Press by three senior Palestinian officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Abbas named several top Fatah officials to his Cabinet to ensure support, but was expected to encounter some resistance because of his refusal to keep Interior Minister Hani al-Hassan, another senior Fatah member.
Abbas, who has had personal differences with al-Hassan, kept the interior ministry for himself, meaning he will oversee the security forces and an expected crackdown on Palestinian militants, a prerequisite for moving forward in peace talks with Israel.
Abbas also named Mohammed Dahlan, a former
Gaza security chief, as state minister for interior affairs, suggesting Dahlan will play a key role in security matters. Both men have criticized attacks on Israelis and enjoy the support of the international community. Dahlan, pegged as a possible Arafat successor, has said he is confident he can restore order in the Palestinian areas.
Only two ministers from the outgoing Cabinet, Finance Minister Salam Fayad and Education Minister Naim Abul Hummus, remained in the same posts, according to the list.
Fayad, a former senior International Monetary Fund official, is widely seen as having done a
credible job of putting the murky Palestinian money transactions, including some of Arafat's reputed slush funds, in order.
Abbas also created the new posts of external affairs and deputy prime minister.
Nabil Shaath, the outgoing planning minister, was given the external affairs portfolio. Shaath has extensive contacts with foreign leaders and for years acted as de facto foreign minister. Interim peace agreements had prevented the Palestinians from formally creating a foreign ministry. Shaath and Nasser Yousef, a former senior security official, will also serve as deputy prime ministers.
Iraqi prison once place of torture, now vacant
The Associated Press
ABU GHRAIB, Iraq — Falah Hassan spent five years behind the walls of Abu Ghraib prison before he was freed in a mass pardon last fall. Yesterday, he strolled around what was once one of the world's most feared prisons, playing guide to a visitor while looking for a power generator to loot.
"They tortured me every day in my first six months here. After that, it was a beating here, a beating there," recalled Hassan, who said he got a 15-year jail term in 1998 for stealing a pair of trousers and a shirt off a laundry line.
Abu Ghraib, a sprawling compound 12 miles west of Baghdad was considered one of the most potent symbols of Saddam Hussein's regime, a source of tales of horror and despair.
It's eerily empty now, stripped clean by footers who hauled off desks, chairs, computers, sewing machines and inmates' belongings. Many cell doors,
locked for so long,stand wide open.
Critics of Saddam's regime have long told of the disappearances, torture and executions without trial that befell those suspected of plotting against the Iraqi leader or challenging his policies. Much of that allegedly took place in Abu Ghraib.
By the standards of the fallen regime, the punishment recalled by Hassan—nails in the back of his hands, beatings with wooden clubs and iron bars—was moderate.
Former inmates have told of chemical and biological weapons experiments on prisoners, and the execution of hundreds in the 1990s as part of a campaign by Saddam's son, Qusai, to ease crowding.
Qassem As-Samawi, an Iraqi journalist who spent time at Abu Ghraib on espionage charges, told of tiny isolation cells where political detainees were kept for up to a year without seeing a single person.
"When we hear prisoners shout Allah Akbar (God is great), we know that someone is being executed," said As-Samawi, who was released in 1991 more than two years into a seven-year sentence and later moved to Canada.
One of Abu Ghraib's more storied inmates, physicist Hussein Shahrastani, was jailed in the 1980s when he refused to head an atomic bomb program. He escaped after the 1991 Gulf War and heads a human rights group in London.
The prison belongs to the Ministry of Social Affairs but was run by Saddam's feared intelligence department.
In 1996, Saddam fired the social affairs minister for telling a local newspaper that Abu Ghraib was overcrowded and new prisons were needed.
No one ever knew how many prisoners it held. But relatives and friends said that in the early 1990s, tens of thousands of people would gather outside each week to visit inmates.
It's not clear when Abu Ghraib was emptied of its inmates. In October, a blanket pardon by Saddam sent home thousands, including Hassan, but it was never clear whether political detainees benefited from that amnesty.
amnesty. Four foreign journalists arrested in Baghdad late last month were held in Abu Ghraib for a week.
Yesterday, the only people in Abu Ghraib were Hassan, several of his cousins and a few of his friends. As two American helicopters hovered overhead, they searched for the elusive generator.
Newsday's Matt McAllester said he and his colleagues "were aware of the screams of other prisoners, especially at night when they were taken out of their cells." The four slept on concrete floors in 6-by-11-foot cells.
Images of Saddam and quotations from his speeches are slathered everywhere in the prison. "Let us build Iraq and
may your enemies die of jealousy." reads one. A large mural shows Saddam surrounded by soldiers, farmers, workers and women soldiers in chadors.
Only his mother's weekly delivery of food kept him from going hungry, he said.
"Look at me now. I don't know what happened to me," said the gaunt 26-year-old laborer, his voice bitter as he described himself before prison — a healthy specimen who worked out and lifted weights.
Hassan said jailers never gave him food while he was at Abu Ghraib.
just smoke Hassan wasn't having any luck finding his generator. But some things in the prison remained unlooted.
mited weights. "I have no appetite," he said." I just smoke."
In the execution ward, two hanging ropes dangled from the ceiling. The metal arms that the executioner yanked to open iron doors under the condemned stood at the ready.
CARACAS, Venezuela A pre-dawn bomb blast ripped through the building where Venezuela's government and opposition have been negotiating a peace agreement, destroying three floors but injuring no one.
The Associated Press
The attack at about 2:45 a.m. Saturday came one day after the Organization of American States brokered a deal between the government and opposition to work toward a referendum on President Hugo Chavez's rule.
Bombing threatens summit
Federal police chief Carlos Medina said the attack may have been politically motivated.
An opposition negotiator said the blast was intended to intimidate his delegation at the talks, while the government blamed "coup-plotting" sectors of the opposition.
A night watchman and a technician, the only two people inside the building when the blast hit, were unharmed, said Caracas fire chief Rodolfo Briceno.
Medina said the perpetrators may have been the same ones behind bombs that destroyed the Spanish embassy and the Colombian consulate in February.
Investigators have suspects in the embassy explosions, Medina said, though he declined to give names.
Rafael Alfonzo, an opposition negotiator, said the attack was an attempt to intimidate his delegation at the peace talks.
U.S. troops learn to speak Arabic to counter looting, arson
The Associated Press
Sporadic but tough measures by Marines, along with checkpoints and vigilante groups thrown together by Iraqis, combined yesterday to curb looters who have gutted parts of Baghdad, shut down commerce and pilfered priceless art from millenniums of human history.
BAGHDAD, Iraq — Manning roadblocks, Sgt. Steven Christopher found himself picking up Arabic phrases he'd never heard but suddenly needed: "You are a thief. Do you think I am stupid? If you steal, we can shoot you."
From Baghdad south to Basra, coalition forces are starting to work with local people to reclaim Iraqi towns from the chaos that followed a war now all but won.
Still, fighting was not over in the capital. Late yesterday. Marines outside Baghdad's Palestine Hotel — where many international journalists are staying — engaged in a heavy battle with gunmen who fired on them.
Marines were seen taking away at least one man, but firing and the hunt for the gunmen went through the night, with flares in the sky lighting up the area.
During the day, smoke from the Ministry of Trade, the Rashid Theater of Fine Arts, offices and
Yesterday, Christopher and the other Marine riflemen and tank crews with him worked a checkpoint leading to the Tamooz Bridge over the Tigris River, stopping suspicious vehicles chiefly pickups piled high with
apartment buildings was vivid testament that looting and arson continued. Robbery seemed to have eased, probably because the choiceest and easiest booty was gone.
"I don't know what I'm going to do with these toilers," Christopher mused, M-16 in hand, as he surveyed the bathroom fixtures and a loudspeaker confiscated from a pickup truck driven by suspected looters.
goods.
"I came here thinking I wouldn't need any Arabic at all — just 'Put your hands up' and 'Put your weapons down,'" Christopher said. "They've been teaching me how to talk to the thieves. ... Things like, 'You are lying, I'm not stupid,' and 'If you steal, we
Chairs, bookcases, refrigerators and toilets seized by the Marines piled high by the side of the road. Confiscated hot-wired cars and trucks sat parked on a side street awaiting owners with proper papers.
Local men, desperate to see calm and normalcy return, helped the Marines translate and finger the guilty.
In other parts of town, no such policing had kicked in.
"We have plans to stop it." Sgt. Spence Williamford said at a median outside the Information Ministry as a looter passed by pushing an office chair stacked with purloined goods.
"It's only been a day since we've been taking fire," Williamford answered. "As long as there's chaos, we've got other things to worry about. Right now our first priority is to keep U.S. soldiers alive."
In Basra, southern Iraq's largest city, efforts were under way to bring Iraqis into policing
Iraiqi police Capt. Abdul Amir
Qasim was back in his green uniform and on the streets again for the first time in weeks. Fearful of coalition retaliation, the 32-year police force veteran had stayed away as looters overran Basra.
"We wanted to protect the city from the pillaging, but I was afraid," he said. "By the grace of God, I am now ready to go back to work."
As part of British plans to restore law and order, traffic police were being recalled yesterday to work alongside British troops in conducting joint patrols. The appointment of a local sheik to head a civilian advisory group also will help matters, Qasim said.
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