- BAGHDAD (Reuters) -- Saboteurs
have struck a new blow to Iraq's vital oil industry, cutting exports to
a third of their previous level, shippers said on Tuesday.
-
- Oil Minister Thamir Ghadhban confirmed blasts at a pipeline
feeding storage tanks at Basra oil terminal in the Gulf.
-
- "There were two sabotage cases. We are assessing
the situation now," he told Reuters.
-
- Shippers in the region said export rates had fallen below
500,000 barrels per day (bpd) from about 1.7 million. Some later said exports
from Basra were at a complete halt. An Iraqi industry official said repairs
could take seven to 10 days.
-
- Iraqi leaders are desperate to calm a wave of bombings,
assassinations and sabotage by guerrillas trying to prove the new interim
government cannot rule effectively after the U.S.-led occupation formally
ends on June 30.
-
- Gunmen fired on a three-vehicle convoy carrying contractors
working for the U.S.-led administration in Iraq on Tuesday, hitting at
least one car, a U.S. military spokesman said.
-
- Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said the attackers fired
from a road bridge near Baghdad airport, but added he could not yet confirm
reports from some of the contractors targeted in the attack that others
in the convoy had been killed.
-
- Vehicles carrying foreign contractors have repeatedly
come under attack in Iraq, often on the road to Baghdad's airport.
-
- A suicide car bomber killed 13 people, including five
foreign contractors, in Baghdad on Monday, a day after 12 Iraqis died in
another suicide attack near a U.S.-Iraqi base.
-
- As the handover nears, U.S. and Iraqi officials are trying
to resolve the problem of how to deal with Saddam Hussein and thousands
of other detainees held by U.S.-led forces in Iraq.
-
- "The United States is very keen to hand over the
ex-president to the Iraqi authorities," President Ghazi al-Yawar told
a news conference.
-
- But he said the new government must ensure it can protect
Saddam's life until he goes on trial in a fair legal process.
-
- Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said on Monday all detainees
would be handed over to Iraqi control in the next two weeks.
-
- U.S. troops captured Saddam in December. The Americans
have held him as a prisoner of war at an unknown location in Iraq.
-
- FUDGED SOLUTION?
-
- In London, a British Foreign Office source said "furious
negotiations" were under way to thrash out a solution.
-
- "The ultimate goal is that he should be tried by
the Iraqis and the question is how we can make that work," the source
said. "We may see a fudged agreement under which he would come under
semi-U.S control."
-
- Under international law, prisoners of war must be released
once the occupation ends.
-
- The International Committee of the Red Cross said prisoners
of war and all other detainees in Iraq should be entitled to due legal
process after the June 30 handover.
-
- "What's important for the ICRC is that each will
know his legal status and the charges against him. If tried, he should
have judicial guarantees," said spokeswoman Nada Doumani.
-
- The Basra pipeline sabotage will resurrect concerns about
supplies from Iraq's Gulf ports, which until May had operated largely undisturbed
since postwar exports resumed last summer.
-
- Basra and a much smaller terminal at nearby Khor al-Amaya
are Iraq's only regularly operating outlets. Its 800,000 bpd northern pipeline
to Turkey has pumped only sporadically this year due to sabotage. It has
been idle for the past two weeks.
-
- Allawi said this month foreign militants were involved
in the repeated attacks on Iraq's oil infrastructure.
-
- POLITICAL ROLE FOR SADR
-
- Basra, in the mainly Shi'ite south, has stayed relatively
calm since radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr launched a revolt against
occupation troops in early April.
-
- Most fighting was in the holy cities of Najaf and Kerbala
further north, where Sadr's Mehdi Army militia agreed a truce this month
under pressure from Shi'ite religious leaders.
-
- Yawar said Sadr could take part in Iraqi politics after
June 30, in the clearest sign yet that Iraq's new leaders have no faith
in the confrontational U.S. approach to a man the military had once vowed
to "kill or capture."
-
- Sadr last week gave the interim government conditional
approval and said he planned to set up a political party that could contest
national elections due to be held by January.
-
- Yawar said this was a "smart move" on Sadr's
part: "He has supporters, he has constituents, he should go through
the political process," the president added.
-
- He was speaking only hours after U.S. troops arrested
a senior aide to Sadr in Kerbala.
-
- U.S. officials still say Sadr must face Iraqi justice
over the murder of a rival Shi'ite cleric in Najaf last year.
-
- Yawar said it was in Sadr's interest to clear his name,
but made clear he could join the political process, provided he dissolved
his militia as other parties are supposed to.
-
- - Additional reporting by Lin Noueihed in Baghdad, Peg
Mackey in Dubai and Madeline Chambers and Sujata Rao in London
-
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