- The United States asked al-Jazeera team to leave Fallujah
as one of conditions for reaching a settlement to the bloody stand-off
in the besieged western Baghdad town Friday, April 9.
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- "American forces declared al-Jazeera must leave
before any progress is made to settle the Fallujah stand-off," al-Jazeera
director general Wadah Khanfar said, citing sources close to the Iraqi
Governing Council.
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- Khanfar, the former Baghdad bureau chairman of the station,
declined to speculate on reasons for putting al-Jazeera departure as "part
of solving the crisis". He also denied receiving "any threats
or notification statements" from the U.S. occupation forces recently.
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- Khanfar also dismissed charges of bias in the coverage
of the Fallujah raids, which resulted in more than 400 people killed including
women and children.
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- "We are just carrying out our work as professionally
as possible. We describe the situation on the ground as is," Khanfar
said.
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- "We try to be objective. The situation there bear
a sign of humanitarian crisis. We just shed light on this," he stressed.
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- A correspondent - speaking live from Fallujah - had warned
Friday against a "humanitarian crisis" in the town if the U.S.
soldiers did not end their attack on the densely-populated areas.
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- He said that local inhabitants are furious over the inaction
of Arab and Muslim countries as well as the international community.
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- The correspondent in Fallujah said that even besieged
local inhabitants of the town follow the latest developments in their bastion
of resistance through al-Jazeera.
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- Corpses are littered in the streets as U.S. warplanes
hit the only hospital and other makeshift medical centers, he added.
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- As Brig Gen Mark Kimmitt, the deputy director of U.S.
military operations in Iraq, was speaking by phone on al-Jazeera and insisting
that American forces declared a unilateral ceasefire in Fallujah, the channel
was airing live images of continued air raids by F16 fighter jets on residential
neighborhoods of the town.
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- Kimmitt later dismissed the coverage of the channel for
the crisis as a "series of lies". However, asked by al-Jazeera
anchor about the live images, the U.S. commander said he was not accusing
al-Jazeera of faking the images, but rather ?looked at things differently?.
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- He said the attacks by F16 fighter jets and helicopters
were meant to take out ?armed insurgents firing at our troops?. The anchor
reminded Kimmitt, however, that ?live coverage showed children and women
killed by the missiles, not armed insurgents?.
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- Observers see the U.S. highly unusual demand for al-Jazeera
to leave Fallujah as a sign of crisis of credibility the U.S. forces face
in the eyes of the Iraqis as well as people all over the Arab and Islamic
world.
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- http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/news_service/middle_east_full_story.asp?service_id=1430
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