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/ 24 October 2007
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice singled out Iran on Wednesday as ”perhaps the single greatest challenge” to US security, but stressed that diplomacy was the preferred way to end its nuclear drive. President George Bush last week warned that a nuclear-armed Iran evoked the threat of ”World War III”.
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/ 21 October 2007
Kurdish rebels killed at least 12 Turkish soldiers and wounded 16 others in an ambush on Sunday, prompting Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to call crisis talks to consider a military strike against rebel bases in Iraq. The attack came four days after Turkey’s Parliament approved a motion to allow troops to enter northern Iraq.
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/ 12 October 2007
A bomb hidden in a cart of toys killed two children and wounded 17 others in a playground in northern Iraq on Friday, the first day of a national holiday to celebrate the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The attack came the day after United States forces killed nine children and six women in an air strike north-west of Baghdad.
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/ 10 October 2007
Shoddy construction work, safety lapses, kickbacks, internal disputes and ballooning costs — the new United States embassy complex in Baghdad is mired in a deluge of problems, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on the frontline of fire from lawmakers.
Two suicide car bombs killed at least 22 people in northern Iraq on Tuesday in attacks targeting a police chief and a Sunni Arab tribal leader working with United States forces to fight al-Qaeda, police said. ”Look at this. Is this acceptable? Does God accept this?” said a youth hold ing torn, blood-splattered pages of the Qu’ran.
A United States air strike killed about 25 suspected Iraqi militants linked to Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias on Friday and another 12 al-Qaeda fighters were killed in separate raids, the US military said. US troops said they were engaged in a heavy firefight west of Baquba, capital of volatile Diyala province north of Baghdad, during a dawn raid.
Poland’s ambassador to Iraq was wounded in an explosion targeting a Polish embassy convoy in Baghdad on Wednesday, a diplomatic source in the Iraqi capital said. Poland backed the United States-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 which toppled Saddam Hussein and currently has around 1 000 troops in the country.
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/ 29 September 2007
Rwanda joined other countries on Friday in appealing for a global moratorium on executions, saying that if its government could abolish the death penalty while perpetrators of the 1994 genocide still await sentences, no country should use it. About 500 000 people, mostly ethnic Tutsis, were massacred in 100 days of frenzied killing led by radical Hutus.
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/ 25 September 2007
An Iraqi man stands with his hands up in surrender, surrounded by an American soldier, Iraqi security forces, a militiaman, an al-Qaeda fighter and a faceless thug. ”Hands up! Legs up! Head down!” they all bark at him as the cartoon takes a satirical swipe at how poorly ordinary Iraqis are treated.
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/ 24 September 2007
Saddam Hussein’s notorious hatchet man ”Chemical Ali” was accused on Monday of ordering villagers executed in batches of 25 at a time as he brutally crushed a Shi’ite rebellion in Iraq in 1991. Ali Hassan al-Majid and 14 others returned to the dock for their trial on charges of crimes against humanity after a month-long break.
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/ 21 September 2007
Former South African president Nelson Mandela is alive and well after comments on Iraq by United States President George Bush appear to have been misunderstood, the Nelson Mandela Foundation said on Friday. On Thursday Bush was quoted as saying: ”I heard somebody say, ‘Now where’s Mandela?’ Well, Mandela is dead. Because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas.”
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/ 17 September 2007
Alan Greenspan, the Washington insider and long-time head of the United States central bank, has said the invasion of Iraq was motivated by oil. His claim comes in his newly published autobiography, The Age of Turbulence, in which he also castigates George Bush’s administration for making ”grave mistakes” in economic policy.
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/ 17 September 2007
Israel has enforced a news blackout on what may be its air force’s most audacious raid since its jets destroyed Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor in 1981. The Israeli government has made no comment about the raid on what is believed to be a nuclear installation in Syria.
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/ 14 September 2007
United States President George Bush on Thursday ordered gradual troop reductions in Iraq but defied calls for a dramatic change of course, telling war-weary Americans the US military role there will stretch beyond his presidency. Bush acknowledged Americans’ frustration with the war but insisted progress was being made.
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/ 10 September 2007
The top United States commander in Iraq on Monday said the number of US troops in Iraq could be cut by next summer to roughly 130 000, its level before this year’s ”surge” of 30 000 forces. General David Petraeus also strongly endorsed US President George Bush’s decision to add forces this year.
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/ 4 September 2007
An Iraqi appeals court on Tuesday upheld the death sentence against Saddam Hussein’s cousin, widely known as Chemical Ali, for masterminding a genocide campaign against Iraq’s Kurds in the 1980s. ”The nine appeal judges have upheld the death sentence against Ali Hassan al-Majeed,” the chief prosecutor in the trial, Munkith al-Fatlawi, said.
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/ 3 September 2007
United States President George Bush made a surprise visit to Iraq on Monday, just a week before his top officials in Baghdad present pivotal testimony to Congress that could influence future policy on the war. The White House said Bush had arrived at the al-Asad Air Force base, west of Baghdad in Anbar province.
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/ 3 September 2007
British troops were quitting the southern Iraqi city of Basra overnight in a move that will end the British presence in the oil hub for the first time since the United States-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003. The pull-out is another step towards handing over Basra province to Iraqi control and paving the way for an eventual withdrawal of British forces from Iraq.
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/ 3 September 2007
Jimmy Carter has dedicated his life after the White House to conflict resolution around the world. Presidents George Bush the elder and Bill Clinton have campaigned together on behalf of communities devastated by Hurricane Katrina. So how does President George Bush junior imagine spending his retirement years?
The Iraqi government has called on armed groups to follow the lead of the biggest Shi’ite militia and freeze their operations, even as the United States military on Friday reported the deaths of two more American service members in fighting against Sunni insurgents.
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/ 28 December 2006
Predictably, half of our most popular stories in the past week were about the hanging of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.