November 22, 2004

Iraqi Christians seek U.S. support

By Emmanuel Evita-UPI Correspondent
Published November 22, 2004

WASHINGTON -- Representatives of Iraq's largest Christian minority, the Chaldo-Assyrians, as well as leaders from Iraq's smaller ethnic minorities and human rights groups met on Capitol Hill Friday afternoon to request special recognition and protection from militant jihadist groups. "The most strategic, imminent danger of the jihadist movement is to eliminate the kufr (unbelievers) from Iraq," Walid Phares, Middle East analyst with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy told the assembled audience. Citing a long history of persecution in the region, particularly under the secularizing Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein, ethnic leaders linked current attacks to an organized reaction against all non-believers in the Muslim world, including the United States.

James Rayis, Vice-Chairman of the American Bar Association's International Law Section on the Middle East agreed. "Since very early times after the fall of the Ottoman empire there were waves of persecutions." "(However) the (current) attacks are because of issues of perceived ties to the West -- because of issues that make us an identifiable symbol of the non-Islamic Arab world." Iraq's non-Islamic minorities, which number over one million and include Chaldo-Assyrians, Mandaeans, Roma, and Yazidi have existed in the region several thousand years before the spread of Islam in 600 A.D.

According to Biblical records, the Hebrew prophet Jonah preached repentance to the inhabitants of the Assyrian city of Nineveh, near the modern city of Mosul, 700 years before Christ. The occupation of Iraq by U.S. forces and the birth of the Iraqi insurgency have led to a particularly brutal rise in attacks, murders, kidnapping and the destruction of property directed against indigenous Christian minorities. Nearly 40,000 Chaldo-Assyrians have fled Iraq in the last few months, according to figures released by the Coalition for Human Rights.

Church bombings in Assyrian neighborhoods of Baghdad and Mosul in August and October, mortar attacks and raids against Christian homes, and forced conversions to Islam have also contributed to the unease of a community that has increasingly felt itself under siege by Islamic militants. At least one militant group, The Islamic Mujahideen, has demanded that all Mandaeans convert to Islam, leave the country, or be killed.

"The bottom line is that there are some very vulnerable religious minorities today in Iraq who are leaving in droves under human rights pressure they are feeling," said Nina Shea, director of the Center for Religious Freedom. Among their primary demands, the leaders want the U.S. to tie reconstruction funds specifically to Christian areas affected by militant attacks. "(Reconstruction) funds should be evenly applied to all the people," said Suhaib Nasi, of the Mandaean Society of America. "When it is in the hands of the (Iraqi) government or the Kurdish Democratic Party it is not being invested and funneled into the various (Christian) regions."

Samer Shehata of Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies traces the current persecution of ethnic Christians to the rise over the last two decades of "militant sectarianism" and "Islamist politics" as vehicles for criticizing Saddam Hussein's secular regime, and now the West. It is under this unfortunate combination of circumstances that "the Christian minority becomes a target," he told United Press International. However, Shehata also assigns some of the blame to the Bush administration, for tying development aid and political structures so closely to religious and ethnic identities. "The glasses through which the U.S. has been looking at Iraq have been sectarian; this just reproduces a situation in which people think of themselves according to these identities."

More problematic is the Iraqi Christian leaders' desire for a self-administered territory, or "safe haven" for ethnic Christian minorities.

According to the Assyrian International News Agency, this territory would integrate areas currently under Kurdish control, containing significant Assyrian populations such as Dohuk, Arbil, Sulaimaniya, Kirkuk, Diyala and the plains of Nineveh in northern Iraq.

The idea of a "safe-haven" is nothing new for the Assyrian community in Iraq, nor are land disputes and questions of security between the Assyrian and Kurdish minorities. The term originally referred to the Autonomous Kurdish Region of Iraq, created in 1992 by the United Nations to protect insurgent Kurds, fleeing Saddam Hussein after the first Gulf War.

Ironically, Assyrian leaders accuse Kurdish "squatters" and paramilitary groups of having taken advantage of the U.N. action to expropriate Assyrian land, commit human rights abuses and destroy Assyrian cultural artifacts, thousands of years old.

The Bush administration however, has been consistently wary of claims to territorial autonomy, even in the case of the more populace Kurds. For their part, Christian leaders say they only want security and international recognition as a minority.

"We are Iraqis, we are part of Iraq," Ashur Yoseph, vice-president of the Assyrian Aid Society of America told United Press International. "We want to build a business infrastructure in the plains of Nineveh. We want funds for reconstruction and for developing a region for the majority of Chaldo-Assyrians."

Shea believes that it is in the interest of the United States to more actively defend the Christian minorities. "Without a sizeable non-Muslim minority, moderate Muslims who want to keep religion out of government...will encounter far greater intimidation in raising their voices against the imposition of medieval Islamic law," she wrote in an article for National Review Online.

Irrespective of how the United States responds to their pleas, Shehata is skeptical both about how well the ex-patriot spokespersons represent the wishes of ethnic minorities in Iraq, and how helpful the United States can be to their cause.

"The U.S. is the kiss of death anywhere in the Middle East -- obtaining help from the United States, even if your claim is legitimate, is the quickest way to discredit it."

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November 5, 2004

Subject: Barnabus Fund Issues Urgent Appeal on Behalf of Iraq's Assyrians

The Christian community in northern Iraq is facing ever mounting intimidation and violence. Since the beginning of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan (15th October) the situation has escalated, with the apparent aim of forcing the Christians out of their homeland. Tens of thousands are fleeing. International media reported the first incident, when explosions occurred at five churches in Baghdad just after 4.00 a.m. on Saturday 16th October (2nd Ramadan). But the other threats and attacks on Christians go largely unreported. Photographs of three senior bishops in Mosul are being circulated around, with the message that they are agents of the USA, infidels, and action must be taken against them. The church leaders serving the Christian community of Karakush, Mosul, have received two letters from the Islamic militants. The first ordered them to allow Christian women to marry Muslim men (which in Muslim eyes means the women effectively convert to Islam). This, said the letter, would enable the women to be "blessed" and "purified" by their marriages.

The second letter to church leaders, received yesterday 2nd November, announced the militants' intention of killing one person in every Christian family, as a punishment for the women not covering their heads and not going to university. This follows up pressure and threats from Islamic extremists against all women in Mosul, requiring them to cover their head with the hijab (Islamic headscarf). A Christian woman was killed around 26th October for having her head uncovered.
Two other Christian women who were seen bareheaded in a market had nitric acid squirted in their faces. Specific threats about the clothing of female students at Mosul University have so frightened the Christians that an estimated 1,500 Christian women have stopped attending their classes.

Islamic militants are knocking on the doors of Christian homes in Mosul, demanding money. They argue that since the Christians do not contribute weapons and do not fight, they must make a financial donation instead. This follows exactly the model of classical Islam, whereby Christians and Jews were excluded from fighting for the Islamic state but instead required to pay a special tax ?jizya ? to cover the costs of their protection.

Leaflets are being distributed with the message: "Christians go; leave Iraq." Word is being passed around in the mosques, telling Muslims not to buy anything from the Christians. Not only are they infide ls, it is said, but also they will soon be leaving, so the Muslims will be able to take their homes and property for free. PRAY

* In this grave situation, the Christians in Iraq beg for the prayers of their Christian brothers and sisters elsewhere. Ask the Lord to protect them from those who would harm them, and to fill their hearts with faith and hope.

* Please also write to your MP (or other local political representative) asking them to raise the suffering of Christians in Iraq as a matter of utmost urgency with the Foreign Secretary (or equivalent in your country) and call for their immediate intervention to protect Iraqi Christians. Please also write to the US embassy in your country urging a similar course of action.

* Barnabas Fund will shortly be sending out a lobbying request through its Rapid Lobbying Network with further information about writing to MPs and others. Please
contact Barnabas Fund if you would like to receive this.

The Barnabas Fund

The Old Rectory
River Street, PEWSEY
Wiltshire, SN9 5DB
UK
Tel 01672 564938, Fax 01672 565030
E-mail: info@barnabasfund.orginfo@barnabasfund.org
www.barnabasfund.org

http://www.aina.org/news/20041104150200.htm

Copyright (C) 2004, Assyrian International News Agency. All Rights Reserved.

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October 27, 2004

A Coalition of Middle Eastern Americans endorsed President Bush

Washington, DC. Press release received.

THE AMERICAN MIDDLE EASTERN NATIONAL CONFERENCE (AMENC)
ENDORSES PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
OCTOBER 27, 2004

Media Contact: Mechricus@aol.com

The American Middle Eastern National Conference (AMENC), based in Washington, D.C., is pleased to announce that they have endorsed George W. Bush to be re-elected as President of the United States.

The AMENC is a coalition of Americans of Middle East descent who express the aspirations of various religious and ethnic backgrounds including: Arab, Maronites, Assyrian, Chaldean, Syriac, Persian, African, Copt, Berber, Sunni, Shiite, Orthodox, Melkite, Jews, Druze, Lebanese, Iraqi, Syrian, Egyptian, Libyan, Sudanese, Palestinian, Jordanian, Algerian, Yemeni, Arabian, Kuwaiti, Afghani, Iranian, Turk, Moroccan, Mauritanian, Ethiopian, and others.

“We the undersigned, declare our endorsement of President George W Bush for a second term as a President of the United States. We base our endorsement on the President's support of policies we deem in line with the aspirations and agendas of the majority of Americans from Middle Eastern descent. We especially support the principles which the President has articulated in the areas of U.S. national and homeland security, the international campaign against terrorism and the promotion of human rights, democracy and self determination in the Middle East.”

This endorsement is based on the following:

1. The War on Terrorism: We support the Campaign against al Qaida and the other Jihadist Terrorist groups, including Hizbollah, and consider this war as a historic confrontation with an ideology which must be uprooted and denounced worldwide. The War on Terrorism is not only about arresting and eliminating Terrorists, but is also about creating changes in the region producing this ideology of mass death. We support the doctrine which considers any regime which protects the Terrorists and support them as a Terror regime which should be removed.

2. The War in Iraq: We thank the US Congress for authorizing this campaign, and we thank President Bush for taking the risk of conflict so that more than 24 million Iraqis are now freed from one of the most genocidal dictators in modern History. The removal of Saddam Hussein is a central part of the War against Terrorism. We denounce those who opposed the liberation of Iraq as indirect associates of Saddam's mass murderer. We support the democratic process in Iraq and feel that the re-election of President Bush would bring hope to the Iraqi democratic forces and ensure international support to the emergence of Iraqi democracy

3. Democracy and Human Rights: We thank President Bush for declaring a campaign to spread Democracy and freedom in the Broader Middle East. We as Americans from Middle Eastern and North African descent reject the notion that our mother societies do not deserve democracy. We praise the President's agenda of supporting Human Rights, especially the rights of Women, youth and minorities in the Middle East. We feel that with President Bush's policies and principles we will be able to assist our mother civil societies in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Algeria and elsewhere to move towards Democracy.

4. Syria's occupation of Lebanon: We thank the President for signing the Syria Accountability and Lebanon Sovereignty Act of 2003 and for instructing our US delegation for introducing, and passing the UNSCR 1559 calling for the end of Syrian occupation of Lebanon. Lebanese-Americans are particularly appreciative of these initiatives and resent the previous policies of allowing Syria to crush the Lebanese people.

5. Syria's reforms: We thank the President for pressing Syria to end its alliance with Terrorism, including with Hezbollah, the foreign Fighters in Iraq and Hamas and Islamic Jihad. And also for pressuring the Baathist regime in Syria to conduct democratic reforms.

6. Sudan and Mauritania: Sudan and Mauritania: We thank the President and his Secretary of State Colin Powell for declaring the crisis in Darfur as Genocide and for extending help to end the 21 year civil war which has claimed over 2.5 million lives in southern Sudan. We thank the President who repetitively called for an end to Slavery in Sudan and Mauritania. We encourage the President to bring more pressure to bear on the radical Islamist regime in Khartoum, to finalize North-South Naivasha agreement, and use this agreement as a blueprint to end the violence in Darfur. The North African Americans, urge their brothers and sisters of the African American community to vote for President Bush as a way to free more slaves in Africa and defend our common African heritage from oppression.

7. Minorities: We thank the President for insisting on the rights of minorities, particularly the endangered ones such as the ChaldoAssyrians in Iraq and Syria and the Copts in Egypt. We believe that under a Bush second term, more autonomy should be extended to the ChaldoAssyrians in Iraq, more human rights recognized to the Copts of Egypt and recognition of all other minorities in the region so that they would survive the threat of Terror and discrimination.

8. Libya: We thank and congratulate the President for succeeding in the process of disarming the Libyan regime of Muaamar Qadhafi and feel that a second term of the Bush Presidency will press the Libyan regime to reform, and release the political prisoners.

9. Afghanistan: We praise the President for his leadership in removing the Taliban and helping in establishing a democratic Government in Afghanistan

10. Israel-Palestine Conflict: We value President's Bush call for a two states solution with a secure Israel and a Democratic Palestinian state living side by side.

11. Homeland Security: We thank the President for introducing and Congress for passing the Patriot Act. We stand by the President in his policies of developing counter Terrorism and furthering diversity, and tolerance. We praise President Bush for his stand during and since the barbaric attacks of September 11. We feel he expressed not only the sentiments of the majority of Americans but also the majority of Middle East Americans.

****

Based on these 11 principles of policy, we hereby call on more than 5 million Americans from Middle East and North African descent to vote for George W Bush as President of the United States for four more years

John Hajjar, Esq., MA
Lebanese American

Dr Joseph Gebeily, MD
Lebanese American

Engineer Tom Harb, FL
Maronite-American

Linguist Jacob Keryakes, NJ
Coptic - American

State Senator, John J.Nimrod, IL
Assyrian-American

Sheba Mando, IL
Assyrian-American

Jamal Kalabat, MI
Chaldean-American

Dr Zuhdi Jasser, AZ
Muslim-American

Farid Ghadry, MD
Arab Syrian American

Mohamed Eljahmi, MA
Arab Libyan American

Mohamed Mansour Kane, NY
African-Mauritanian-American

Jimmy Mullah, Washington DC
African-South Sudanese American

Abderhaman Tajeldin, NC
African-Darfur-American

Jamal Hassan
South Asian American, MD

Academic Advisor Professor Walid Phares

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October 16, 2004

Insurgents hit churches, U.S. troops in Iraq; Fallujah leaders offer to resume talks

By TINI TRAN
.c The Associated Press

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Two Army helicopters crashed late Saturday in Baghdad, killing two American soldiers and wounding two others, the U.S. command said. Explosions hit five churches in the capital as violence flared while Iraqi Muslims began marking the holy month of Ramadan.

Also Saturday, the U.S. command said four more American troops and an Iraqi interpreter were killed the day before by car bombs in the west and north of the country.

Mortar shells exploded Saturday near Ibn al-Betar hospital, killing one employee and wounding three others, and in the parking lot of the Mansour Hotel, which houses the Chinese embassy and is home to foreign diplomats and journalists. No one was killed in the hotel attack.

In a sign of hope, community leaders in the rebel stronghold of Fallujah offered to resume peace talks with the government if U.S. forces stop their attacks on the city and free their chief negotiator. However, residents reported explosions late Saturday on the northern edge of the city. The U.S. command had no comment.

The Army helicopters went down about 8:30 p.m. in southwestern Baghdad, the 1st Cavalry Division said. The division said the cause of the crashes had not been determined.

The U.S. military has lost at least 27 helicopters in Iraq since May 2003, many of them to hostile fire, according to figures compiled by the Brookings Institution.

Homemade bombs exploded in quick succession before dawn at the five churches in four separate Baghdad neighborhoods, causing no casualties but further alarming the Christian minority community already on edge over the perceived rise of Islamic militancy following last year's ouster of Saddam Hussein.

In August, coordinated attacks hit four churches in Baghdad and one in Mosul, killing at least 12 people and wounding dozens more in the first significant strike against Iraq's estimated 800,000 Christians since the U.S. invasion began last year.

``It is a criminal act to make Iraq unstable and to create religious difficulties,'' the Rev. Zaya Yousef of St. George's Church said of the latest attacks. ``But this will not happen because we all live together like brothers in this country through sadness and happiness.''

No group claimed responsibility for the attacks, which were condemned by the Association of Muslim Scholars, a Sunni clerical group believed to have ties to some insurgents.

``Islam doesn't support the ongoing terrorism,'' Sheik Abdul Sattar Abdul-Jabbar of the association said.

Three U.S. troops - two soldiers and one Marine - were killed Friday when a car bomb exploded near Qaim, an insurgent hotspot along the Syrian border, the U.S. command said. An Iraqi interpreter was also killed.

A fourth soldier, assigned to Task Force Olympia, died of injuries suffered Friday during a car bombing in the northern city of Mosul, 225 miles north of Baghdad, the U.S. command said Saturday.

U.S. commanders have warned of a possible increase in rebel attacks during Ramadan, when insurgent activity surged last year. Ramadan, the month of fasting and prayer, is marked by greater religious fervor, and some extremists believe they win a special place in paradise if they die fighting non-Muslims during the holy month.

In hopes of preventing rebel attacks, U.S. troops have stepped up military operations in Sunni areas north and west of the capital. The operations included two days of air and ground attacks Thursday and Friday against the main rebel bastion Fallujah.

On Saturday, Fallujah clerics said they were ready to resume peace talks with the government if the Americans suspended attacks and released the city's chief negotiator, Sheik Khaled al-Jumeili, who was arrested Friday.

Talks broke down Thursday because of what the clerics said was the government's ``impossible condition'' - handing over Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other ``terrorists.'' The clerics said al-Zarqawi was not in the city, a claim that U.S. and Iraqi authorities dispute.

The government had no response to the clerics' offer, and late night explosions suggested military operations had resumed after a daylong lull. Fallujah Hospital officials said U.S. artillery shells fell on a house in Halabsa village, 10 miles southwest of the city, killing a 3-year-old girl and injuring four family members.

Still, the U.S. military said Marines tightened their security cordon around Fallujah, establishing checkpoints to keep suspected terrorists from fleeing the area, about 40 miles west of Baghdad.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military extended the deadline for Shiite militiamen to turn in their weapons in the Baghdad district of Sadr City. Friday had been the deadline for militiamen loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to exchange guns for cash under a deal to end weeks of fighting with U.S. troops there. The new deadline was Sunday, the military said.

Once the handover is complete, the U.S. military will verify that no major weapons caches remain and Iraqi forces will assume responsibility for security in Sadr City. The Americans hope the deal will enable them to focus on the more dangerous Sunni Muslim insurgency.

In other developments Saturday:

Rocket-propelled grenades struck a joint US-Iraqi military coordination center and a nearby hospital in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, causing no casualties.

A member of an ethnic Turkish political group was assassinated in the ethnically tense city of Kirkuk while driving his children to school, police said.

A video surfaced by a group calling itself the Islamic Brigade that threatened to kill two Turkish drivers unless their company withdrew from Iraq. Insurgents in Iraq have kidnapped more than 150 foreigners in their campaign to drive out coalition forces and hamper reconstruction.

More than 20 armed men raided a police station in Rawah, some 200 miles west of Baghdad, taking six officers hostage, said witness Fakhry Mohammed Ali, 35. The gunmen released the policemen but blew up the station, he said.

Also in Rawah, three Iraqi drivers transporting oil to an American base were kidnapped and their tankers set ablaze, Ali said.

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October 14, 2004

Exodus of Iraqi Christians in full flood as targeted killings grow

We have covered the persecution of Iraqi Christians for many months, as jihadists continue to exert their influence and reassert the depredations of dhimmitude. From The Independent, with thanks to Kemaste:

It was midnight in Baghdad, not a time to be out in this place of violence. But the workers from the Baghdad Hunting Club had almost made it back home through the deserted streets when the tyres of their Kia minibus were shredded by a burst of gunfire.

The shots had come from a black Opel saloon which had tracked them from the club - a prestigious haunt of Iraq's new rich - after finishing the late shift. Four men, their faces covered by keffiyehs, slid open the door of the minibus and sprayed the occupants with Kalashnikov fire.

Their targets, seven Christians, were killed almost instantly. Two others were injured but survived. The dead were all breadwinners for their families in the close-knit Christian community in the suburb of al-Doura. These families now want to leave Iraq, joining the exodus of thousands of their co-religionists since the war.

The murders were the latest deadly attack against Iraq's Christians, a systematic and brutal campaign by Islamic extremists which began soon after the "liberation" by the United States and Britain. So far, 110 have been killed. In August, four churches in Baghdad and one in Mosul were blown up in a co-ordinated series of car bombings, killing 12 people and injuring 61 others.

In September, another Baghdad church was bombed. There have also been mortar attacks on community centres, shootings of Christian shopkeepers and kidnappings of businessmen for extortion.

The result had been a flow of Christians - mostly middle-class and members of the intelligentsia and entrepreneurs - out of the country, with a marked acceleration in the past few months. About 45,000 have gone so far out of a community estimated to be between 600,000 and 700,000.

Pascale Warda, the Iraqi interim government's minister for displacement and migration, who is herself a Christian, says there is no chance of halting the exodus while the attacks continue.

Christians in Iraq faced little religious persecution under the secular regime of Saddam Hussein. Senior members of the Baath party, including Tariq Aziz, the deputy prime minister, were Christians. Now, they say, they receive scant protection from the US and British military in the face of the onslaught. Some of the early killings, mainly of shopkeepers, happened in the supposedly safer, British-run south of the country.

The interim government's national security adviser, Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, blames the church bombings on followers of the Jordanian-born Sunni militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Iraqi police say fighters from Muqtada Sadr's Mehdi Army could be responsible for those and other sectarian attacks. But whatever the truth, hardly anyone has been arrested....

Christians are often targeted in Iraq's thriving abduction industry because they are perceived as being well off. Samir Sajouri, 33, was kidnapped from his furniture shop and held for a week until his family paid a ransom of $35,000. Now he is taking his wife and three children to Jordan.

"We did not have the money," he said. "My wife had to sell stock and borrow to pay this. I was treated very badly by the men who had kidnapped me. They beat me and kicked me. There were always insults because I am a Christian. It is strange - 90 per cent of those I employed were Muslims," said Mr Sajouri.

At the Church of the Holy Rosary in Karada, Father Butros Haddad was seeing a parishioner seeking her son's baptism certificate. "It means they are leaving Iraq," he said. "Every day I hear about one or two families leaving from this parish and others. I have been a priest for 35 years and I have never seen the community face such a time of lawlessness.

"It is not bad just for the Christians: our fellow Iraqis - Muslims - are also suffering. But on top of all other troubles, the Christians feel they are being especially targeted. The problem is that the Americans don't seem to be able to do anything about security. There is a sense of terrible fear."

They can't, or they won't. The last thing the State Department wants to be seen doing is protecting Christians in Iraq.

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October 10, 2004

Saudi Charity Remains Open Despite Order

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) - A charity that Washington accuses of helping finance terrorist activities was still open Thursday - the deadline that the government ordered for its operations to be dissolved - and an official said employees do not know when their last day of work will be.

The official, who would not give his name, said the Riyadh-based al-Haramain Foundation has been notified of the government decision to close it, but a committee entrusted with setting a time for the closure had not decided when that day will come.

``Come here Saturday, come here Sunday and you will see employees reporting to work,'' the official said. ``The closure cannot happen with the push of a button.''

A Saudi official speaking late Wednesday said the foundation was as good as closed and any employees still be reporting to work are merely dealing with paperwork to end contracts of the staff and dissolve the foundation.

Earlier this month, a Saudi official said the government had ordered the charity's closure and dissolution of operations by Oct. 15.

The U.S. government, as part of its anti-terrorism strategy after the Sept. 11 attacks, has sought to cut off the sources of terrorists' financing. Al-Haramain came under scrutiny on suspicion of funding al-Qaida terror activities.

Last month, the Bush administration designated al-Haramain as a group suspected of supporting terrorism through its Springfield, Mo., mosque and its main location in Ashland, Ore., saying the charity ``shows direct links between the U.S. branch and Osama bin Laden.'' Assets of the two properties have been frozen since February.

The charity's branches in 10 countries, mostly in Africa and Asia, have been shut down for suspected ties to al-Qaida and other terror groups.

Al-Haramain repeatedly has denied it funds terrorist activities.

Interior Minister Prince Nayef said the decision was taken against al-Haramain as a ``correctional'' measure, and there was no evidence it was financing terrorism.

``Actually, this organization's administration and work is not well-organized,'' Nayef told reporters in Kuwait during a weekend visit. ``And that is why it was decided it could allow leaks ... that could harm the country.''

Asked if there was any evidence that money from the charity ended up in terrorists' hands, Nayef said: ``There might have been something against some individuals, but as far as material evidence, there was none.''

On Thursday, more than a dozen employees emerged from the cream-colored, glass-fronted building for prayers at a next-door mosque. Employees who have answered the telephone at the foundation in the last few days say staffers are being laid off. Notices on boards at the entrance of the building say: ``We're sorry we cannot accept donations.''

The action against al-Haramain is part of a clampdown the government began after the Sept. 11 attacks. The campaign gained momentum after the May 2003 attacks on residential compounds in Riyadh that killed 35 people.

Last year, Saudi Arabia banned all private relief and charitable groups from sending money overseas until regulations were in place to ensure funds do not go to terrorist groups.

Al-Haramain's previous activities included sending relief to Muslims in war-torn countries, including to Palestinians, Afghans and Bosnians. Zakat, or the giving of alms, is one of Islam's main tenets, and Muslims are encouraged to donate to the needy.

10/14/04 11:20 EDT

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September 18, 2004

Note: UN Security Council Resolution on Darfur
Immediate reactions: Algeria, Russia, Jihad webs and Darfurians

From: Walid Phares

The UNSC in New York just passed a resolution (No1564) on Sudan, adopting the US draft. This resolution got 11 votes and 4 abstentions. Here are few important notes:

1. The ambassador of Algeria, representing the Arab League, Abdallah Baali, rejected the resolution. It is to note that M Baali has also rejected the previous UN resolution 1556 on Sudan. This shows that the Arab League bloc, represented by Baali is attempting to block all UN resolutions that could end up in interventions. Diplomatic sources explained the reasons why. The Algerian representative also rejected UNSCR no 1559, voted two weeks ago, calling on Syria to withdraw from Lebanon.

2. The Russian ambassador called for the disarming of the Janjawid. An interesting position showing the new Russian position regarding the Jihadist groups around the world

3. More importantly, in the pro- al Qaida chat rooms, the vote and the discussions were followed closely. After the vote took place, a Jihadi room leader said "this is an attack against Islam. We must respond!" Which raises the Terror factor in Sudan. The Jihadis will try to use religion, but the African factor is stronger

4. Today of the people of Darfur and Sudan has just won a battle

Dr Walid Phares
Professor, Middle East Studies
Senior Fellow, FDD

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September 15, 2004

Saudi Arabia Accused of Violating Freedom

By GEORGE GEDDA
.c The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - The State Department said Wednesday that Saudi Arabia has engaged in ``particularly severe violations'' of religious freedom and for the first time included the kingdom on a list of countries that could be subject to sanctions.

A department report assessing the state of religious freedom worldwide said that in Saudi Arabia, freedom of religion does not exist and is not recognized or protected under the country's laws.

The report also said that those who do not adhere to the officially sanctioned strain of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia can face ``severe repercussions'' at the hands of the religious police.

Under U.S. law, nations that engage in violations of religious freedom deemed ``particularly severe'' are designated by the State Department as ``countries of particular concern.''

Joining Saudi Arabia for the first time on the so-called ``CPC list'' were Eritrea and Vietnam. Countries redesignated as CPC countries were Burma, China, Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Sudan.

Since the State Department first began making evaluations on religious freedom, sanctions have not been applied against any country on the CPC list.

The U.S. Commission on International Freedom, an independent group that receives government funding and offers advice to the State Department, recommended last February that Saudi Arabia be declared a CPC country.

Such a designation does not necessarily require punitive measures but does mandate that the secretary of state engage the offending country on what steps it may take to increase religious tolerance.

Preeta D. Bansal, the commission chair, said in an interview that she welcomed the addition of Saudi Arabia to the U.S. government's ``list of the world most egregious violators of religious freedom.''

She said the commission has been advocating the inclusion of Saudi Arabia on the CPC list since legislation was approved in 1999 to evaluate the state of religious freedom around the world.

Bansal said the commission's stand was based not only on violations of religious freedom within Saudi Arabia's own borders ``but also its propagation and export of an ideology of religious hate and intolerance throughout the world.''

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August 24, 2004

The Future of Iraq’s Christians Will Be Decided at the Tomb of Alì

by Sandro Magister

The Vatican has offered to be a mediator for the battle of Najaf, the holy city of the Shiite Muslims. It is a demonstrative gesture, but one with a real objective: protecting the Christians

ROMA – In an August 22 interview with RAI, Italy’s state-owned radio, cardinal secretary of state Angelo Sodano renewed the Holy See’s offer to mediate a ceasefire in Najaf, the holy city of the Shiite Muslims in Iraq.

This offer had already been confirmed on August 17, in an official communication from the Vatican’s press office, but “on the condition that there really exists the willingness to accept peaceful means for the solution of the conflicts.”

In effect, public requests for Vatican mediation had been made until now only by Moqtada al Sadr, the radical leader who in August ensconced himself with a thousand of his guerillas in the mausoleum of Alì ibn Abi Talib, son-in-law of the prophet Mohammed and the first imam of the Shiite Muslims: not by the legitimate government of Baghdad, nor by the military commanders of the United States.
But the Vatican mistrusts al Sadr, and the constituents of the marjia, the assembly of the most authoritative Shiite religious leaders of Najaf, mistrust him even more.

On the other hand, the Vatican strives to present an image of itself as being super partes. And so there is also some interest in extending a hand to the armed factions rebelling against the legitimate government.

The principal motivation driving the Vatican to occupy this middle position is the protection of the Christian community in Iraq.

The terrorist attacks that struck five churches and communities in Baghdad and Mosul on August 1 produced great concern among Church leaders.

And this concern grew after the Iraqi minister for emigration, Pascale Icho Warda, herself a Christian, declared to the Arab newspaper “Asharq al-Awsat” on August 18 that about forty thousand Christians abandoned Iraq during the weeks following the attacks.

In Iraq, there are now 700,000 to 800,000 Christians. They belong to two different ethnic groups: the Assyrians, who make up the overwhelming majority, and the Armenians.

About 600,000 of them are Catholics. Of these, 8,000 are Armenian by ethnicity and by rite. All the others are Assyrians: 550,000 are of the Chaldean rite, 40,000 of the Syriac rite, and 4,000 of the Latin rite.

The Orthodox number about 150,000. Those of Assyrian ethnicity are either Nestorians of the ancient Church of Persia (100,000) or Syriac (40,000). The Armenians number about 10,000.

The historical territory of the Assyrian Christians of Iraq is in the north, around Mosul, the ancient capital of Assyria once called Nineveh.

In 1933 the Christians, who had fought on the side of the English before their withdrawal just two years earlier, fell victim to a massacre perpetrated by the Arab Sunni Muslims from the center of the country, with the support of the Kurds.

Under Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime the Christians enjoyed comparatively better treatment. But Saddam refused to recognize Assyrian ethnic identity, and forcibly assimilated them with the Arabs.

Today, with the new government, the Assyrians have regained their citizenship. In the census planned for October 12, 2004, the Iraqis will be able to attribute themselves to one of these five ethnicities: Arab, Kurd, Assyrian, Armenian, or Turkmen.

But he future of the Christian community in Iraq depends above all on the democratic stabilization of the country. Without this, they will continue to emigrate. For example, 80 percent of the Iraqis now living in the United States are Assyrian Christians.

And the outcome of the battle of Najaf will be decisive in determining the ordering of the new Iraq.

It is a battle, that of Najaf, that will decide the balance of power among the Shiite Muslims, the majority of the Iraqi population.

But there’s more. If al Sadr were defeated, if instead of the theocratic approach the “quietist” approach were to prevail, the approach of the grand ayatollah Sayyid Ali Husaini Sistani, if Sistani were recognized as the highest religious authority of the Shiite world, not only in Iraq but internationally, and if in neighboring Iran were to prevail the pragmatists who support the legitimate government and the SCIRI, the major Shiite Iraq political party, then prospects would be more encouraging for the Christians of Iraq as well.

And this would mean a victory for the political approach within the Vatican that aims at defeating Islamist terrorism through the development of democracy in Iraq and the Middle East. Even, when necessary, with the use of armed forces in “missions of peace.”

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August 24, 2004

Iraq's disappearing Christians

By Daniel Pipes

The Middle East is undergoing ethnic cleansing — again. Does anybody care?

"What are the Muslims doing?" asked Brother Louis, a deacon at the Our Lady of Salvation, an Assyrian Catholic church in Baghdad minutes after it had been bombed. "Does this mean that they want us [Christians] out?"

Well, yes, it does. Our Lady of Salvation was just one of five churches attacked in a series of coordinated explosions in Baghdad and Mosul on Aug. 1, a Sunday, between 6 and 7 o'clock in the evening. In total, these car bombings killed 11 persons and injured 55. In addition, the police defused another two bombs.

The timing of the assault guaranteed a maximum number of casualties. August 1 is a holy day for some Iraqi Christian denominations and because Sunday is an ordinary workday in mostly Muslim Iraq, Sunday services take place in the evening.

The five bombings were by no means the first attacks targeting Iraq's Christian minority since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Others, according to the Barnabas Fund (an organization assisting persecuted Christian minorities), were bunched together at the end of 2003 and included a missile attack on a convent in Mosul; bombs placed (but defused) in two Christian schools in Baghdad and Mosul; a bomb explosion at a Baghdad church on Christmas Eve; and a bomb placed (but defused) at a monastery in Mosul.

In addition, Islamists have attacked the predominantly Christian owners of liquor, music, and fashion stores, as well as beauty salons, wanting them to close down their businesses. Christian women are threatened unless they cover their heads in the Islamic fashion. Random Christians have been assassinated.

These assaults have prompted Iraqi Christians, one of the oldest Christian bodies in the world, to leave their country in record numbers. An Iraqi deacon observed some months ago that "On a recent night the church had to spend more time on filling out baptismal forms needed for leaving the country than they did on the [worship] service. ... Our community is being decimated." Iraq's minister for displacement and migration, Pascale Icho Warda, estimates that 40,000 Christians left Iraq in the two weeks following the Aug. 1 bombings.

Whereas Christians make up just 3 percent of the country's population, their proportion of the refugee flow into Syria is estimated anywhere between 20 and 95 percent. Looking at the larger picture, one estimate finds that about 40 percent of the community has left since 1987, when the census found 1.4 million Iraqi Christians.

Although Muslim leaders uniformly condemned the attacks (Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani termed them "criminal actions," while the interim Iraqi government bravely declared that "This blow is going to unite Iraqis"), they almost certainly mark a milestone in the decline and possible disappearance of Iraqi Christianity.

This seems all the more likely because Christians, due mainly to Islamist persecution and lower birth rates, are disappearing from the Middle East as a whole.

• Bethlehem and Nazareth, the most identifiably Christian towns on earth, enjoyed a Christian majority for nearly two millennia, but no more. In Jerusalem, the decline has been particularly steep: in 1922, Christians slightly outnumbered Muslims and today they make up less than 2 percent of the city's population.
• In Turkey, Christians numbered 2 million in 1920 but now only a few thousand remain.
• In Syria, they represented about one-third of the population early last century; now they account for less than 10 percent.
• In Lebanon, they made up 55 percent of the population in 1932 and now under 30 percent.
• In Egypt, for the first time ever Copts have been emigrating in significant numbers since the 1950s.

At present rates, the Middle East's 11 million Christians will in a decade or two have lost their cultural vitality and political significance.

It bears noting that Christians are recapitulating the Jewish exodus of a few decades earlier. Jews in the Middle East numbered about a million in 1948 and today total (outside Israel) a mere 60,000.

In combination, these ethnic cleansings of two ancient religious minorities mark the end of an era. The multiplicity of Middle Eastern life, most memorably celebrated in Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet (1957-60), is being reduced to the flat monotony of a single religion and a handful of approved languages. The entire region, not just the affected minorities, is impoverished by this narrowing.

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August 14, 2004

Armenians lead charge against Sudanese Genocide

Bishop Vicken Aykazian, diocesan legate and ecumenical officer, leads a protest outside the Sudanese Embassy in Washington, D.C., on Friday, July 23, 2004.

CHURCH LEADERS PUSH FOR ACTION ON CATASTROPHE IN SUDAN
By Jake Goshert

The Armenian Church is taking a leading role in pushing for action to end the genocide which is beginning in the Sudan.

Bishop Vicken Aykazian, legate and ecumenical officer of the Diocese of the Armenian Church of America (Eastern), led a protest outside the Sudanese Embassy in Washington D.C. on Friday, July 23, 2004. He was joined by religious leaders and supporters from the Armenian Assembly of America.

"My message was that genocide is not acceptable, especially in the beginning of the 21st century," said Bishop Aykazian, who led a prayer during the protest and also spoke for the group to various media outlets. "I told them I know what genocide means, because my people have suffered through genocide. So we ask the authorities and the people to come together to fight against the genocide."

Bishop Aykazian, who serves as secretary to the executive committee of the National Council of Churches (NCC), has talked about the issue with leaders of that ecumenical body and is one of the organization's leaders calling for international action to end the violence in the Sudan, where the Janjaweed -- a government-backed nomadic Arab tribe -- has raped, killed, and burnt the homes of black, non-Arab residents in the nation's Darfur region in attempt to get them to leave their lands, which the Arab government has promised to the mercenaries.

Those able to flee the Sudan have been pouring into neighboring Chad, where food, water, and shelter are growing scarce. American officials have unsuccessfully called on Sudan to allow humanitarian aid to flow into the Darfur area. The Bush administration has already pledged $300 million in aid.

With American pressure, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution at the end of July calling for sanctions against Sudan unless the violence ends. (Sudan was recently elected to a three-year term on the U.N. Human Rights Commission.)

The violence has already claimed an estimated 50,000 lives and displaced a million people. During the protest at the Sudanese Embassy, the group called not only for an end to the violence, but also for humanitarian aid and financial support for the displaced non-Arab victims.

USING THE RIGHT WORDS

Right now the activists are struggling on two fronts: to gather humanitarian assistance and to get the violence to be called genocide.

"According to the experts, it is genocide. It really bothers me when the authorities and the government do not use the word genocide, because it is genocide. We have to use the word genocide," Bishop Aykazian said. "We have no right to use the word 'massacres', because other nations used that word when talking about the Armenian Genocide, and that bothers us. So we have to use the word 'genocide'."

"Genocide goes beyond violence," Bishop Aykazian added. "It is not only killing human beings; it is killing the culture of a nation, of a minority, of a race. Genocide is the destruction of a group of people and the destruction of their history."

CONTINUED CALLS FOR ACTION

The NCC's executive board passed a resolution on Tuesday, May 18, 2004, urging member churches to push for cessation of the apparent attempt at ethnic cleansing in the Darfur region of western Sudan.

The first NCC resolution dealing with the Sudan was approved in 2002. This recent resolution "affirms and extends" the calls to action made in the earlier statement of the NCC Executive Board -- an 80-member body representing leaders from the NCC's 36 Protestant, Orthodox, and Anglican member churches.

The organization is also raising funds to send supplies of food and clothing to the refugees streaming out of Sudan and into neighboring Chad.

The Eastern Diocese will be raising funds through its local parishes to provide aid to the victims in the Sudan through the National Council of Churches.

"Today it is happening in the Sudan, and tomorrow it can happen in any part of the world. When you need help, you ask other people to help you. So make sure when others ask for help you don't just keep quiet because you don't want to put your hands into your pockets," he said. "As Armenians especially, we have no right to just keep quiet."

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August 12, 2004

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August 11, 2004

Syria Becoming Haven for Iraqi Christians

By BASSEM MROUE
.c The Associated Press

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) - A banner draped across a wall of a Damascus church commemorated a long-ago massacre in neighboring Iraq, but hundreds of worshippers praying below worried about more recent violence that is driving Iraqi Christians from their homeland.

``We offer these prayers for the souls of those who were killed in our brotherly Iraq,'' said a Syrian priest before reading the names of seven people killed Aug. 1 when suspected Islamic militants set off explosions at five churches in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul.

In addition to the seven dead, dozens were wounded in the first major assault on Iraq's Christian minority since Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled by a U.S.-led invasion in April 2003.

Even before the church bombings, Christians reporting harassment by Islamic fundamentalists had begun streaming out of Iraq, many to neighboring Syria. Syria's relaxed visa rules for Arabs and its geographical and cultural proximity to Iraq have attracted thousands of Iraqis, Muslim as well as Christian, seeking to escape chaos at home. A disproportionate number of the refugees, though, have been Christian.

The Iraqi Embassy in Damascus and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimate the number of Iraqis of all faiths in Syria at about 250,000. Some 12,000 of these have registered with the UNHCR - of which 20 percent are Christians. Yet Christians make up just 3 percent of Iraq's population of about 25 million. The major Christian groups include Chaldean-Assyrians and Armenians.

Benjamin Chamoun showed a reporter a handwritten death threat signed the ``Islamic Resistance Group'' he said he had received for working as a driver at a U.S. military base. He quit three months ago, but at first didn't consider leaving his homeland. Then came the church bombings.

``There is nothing worse than attacking churches,'' added Chamoun, who is a member of the Chaldean-Assyrian church, the major Christian sect in Iraq.

``We, as Christians, are not persecuted by Muslims. Our problem is with Muslim extremists,'' said the 35-year-old Chamoun as he sat in an apartment in the Jaramana area on the outskirts of Damascus. Jaramana has become an Iraqi Christian neighborhood.

Chamoun, who fled with his wife, two daughters and son, hopes to emigrate to Australia. If he doesn't get a visa, he said he will try to find a job in Syria and wait for the situation to improve back home.

Under Saddam, even in the later years when the Iraqi leader attempted to rally support by waving the Islamic banner, Christians were free to practice their religion and lived relatively peacefully among the Muslim majority. Some, like former Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, even rose to prominence.

History has seen other periods of sectarian tension and violence in Iraq. The Sunday Iraqis in Syria were praying for those killed in the church bombings fell a day after Martyrs Day, one of the most important days on the Chaldean-Assyrian calendar. It marks the 1933 massacre by the Iraqi government of Christians demanding more rights. Chaldean-Assyrians say some 3,000 people, including women and children, were killed in Simele, a town in northern Iraq.

``Aug. 7 will remain a symbol of honor for our people and their national identity,'' read a banner still hanging Aug. 8 during Sunday services at the Chaldean-Assyrian Abraham Church in Damascus.

Islamic extremism has been on the rise in Iraq in the chaos since Saddam's fall. Some trace this to the arrival of foreign Muslim militants drawn to Iraq by the chance to attack Americans.

Iraqi Christians in Syria speak of Muslim extremists back home forcing even Christian women to wear Islamic veils or having their liquor shops burned - Islam frowns on alcohol.

``Iraqis from all sections of the Iraqi society have been approaching our office,'' said Ajmal Khybari, senior officer at UNHCR office in Damascus. ``But in the past two or three months we have seen an increase of Iraqi Christians.''

In one sign of how many Iraqi Christians are in Syria, an Iraqi church leader traveled to Damascus to mark Martyrs Day.

``We are against the immigration of Christians,'' Archbishop Touma Iramia Gewargis, head of the Archbishopric of Ninewa and Duhuk in Iraq, said during his visit. ``We were against it in the past and are in the present and ``future. We want to protect our nation because we are first-class citizens in Iraq.''

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August 9, 2004

U.S. to Consider Sanctions Against Sudan

By BARRY SCHWEID
.c The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration endorsed an agreement between the United Nations and Sudan that requires the African government to create safe areas in its embattled Darfur region within 30 days so civilians can search for food and water.

``It's a good start,'' State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said Monday about the accord reached last week.

If Sudan and negotiators for rebels in the region convene for talks on Aug. 23, as proposed by President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, that ``will be something important to be factored'' into a U.N. decision on whether to punish Sudan, Ereli said.

The Security Council still intends to consider at the end of the month whether to impose sanctions on Sudan for attacks by Arab-led militia on black Sudanese in the country's sprawling, arid Darfur region, the spokesman said.

In an apparent easing of U.S. pressure on Sudan, Ereli said, ``Let's all work toward a resolution of this problem that does not require sanctions.''

Foreign ministers of the 22-member Arab League, meeting Sunday in Cairo, Egypt, at the request of Sudan, a member, rejected ``any threats of coercive military intervention in the region (to end the crisis) or imposing any sanctions on Sudan.''

The State Department, meanwhile, continued to hold off making a judgment on whether the deaths and displacements of tens of thousands of black Africans in Darfur amounted to ethnic cleansing or genocide. Congress and some humanitarian groups have accused Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir's government of genocide.

At the behest of Secretary of State Colin Powell, the U.N. Security Council on July 30 gave Sudan 30 days to control the militia and facilitate relief efforts or face sanctions.

Yielding to critics, the Bush administration removed the word ``sanctions'' from the resolution to make it say ``measures'' against Sudan would be considered in 30 days. Powell said the meaning was the same.

Asked about the Arab League's stand against sanctions, Ereli said Monday, ``We would all prefer that the government of Sudan voluntarily take the actions'' demanded by the United Nations.

``So let's work toward the goal of implementing what the resolution calls for so that the question of whether to pose sanctions doesn't need to present itself,'' the spokesman said.

On the Net:

Arab League: http://www.arableagueonline.org/arableague/index-en.jsp

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August 8, 2004

Iraq shuts Al-Jazeera bureau in Baghdad

Arab TV network's coverage of kidnappings promotes more violence, prime minister says.

http://www.indystar.com/articles/3/168668-9723-P.html
By Sabrina Tavernise
The New York Times
August 8, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Prime Minister Ayad Allawi on Saturday ordered the temporary closure of the television network Al-Jazeera's Baghdad bureau, the Arab world's primary source of news from Iraq, saying its extensive coverage of kidnappings has encouraged militants.

He said at a news conference that the network's office here would be shut for a month and that it would be allowed to reopen if the network addressed the government's concerns.

Al-Jazeera broadcasts to millions of Arab viewers from headquarters in Doha, Qatar. The Bush administration has long criticized its coverage as biased against the United States. The network has a large bureau here and is frequently cited by Western news organizations because it provides coverage from areas deemed too dangerous for Western reporters. It has broadcast videotapes provided by militant groups of hostages like Nicholas Berg, the American who was beheaded in Iraq in May, a practice the Iraqi government opposes.

Allawi has tried to bring order to the chaos of kidnappings, vigilantism and rebel militias that has befallen Iraq. "We will not allow Al-Jazeera or anyone else to disturb the security in the country," Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib said.

Allawi cited a videotape broadcast Saturday by the network that appeared to show an American being beheaded as an example of the coverage he opposed. But the tape turned out to be a hoax.

"I am worried about these people," he said. "I am not worried about whether Al-Jazeera will like it or not."

Allawi also announced Saturday that he had signed an amnesty intended to persuade militants to put down their weapons and join efforts to rebuild the country.

But the law pardons only minor criminals, not killers or terrorists, and appeared unlikely to dampen the violence, as some insurgent leaders called it "insignificant."

The Al-Jazeera network, on its Web site, called the closing unjustified and said the decision "is contrary to pledges made by the Iraqi government to start a new era of free speech and openness."

Allawi brushed off criticism that the closing boded badly for freedom of the news media in Iraq, saying that immediate concerns of security for Iraqis were much more important. He also said that he had asked an independent panel to evaluate the network's coverage of Iraq and that it had concluded the coverage advocated violence.

Some Iraqi journalists agreed with him. The network, "doesn't always give the truth," said Kareem al-Yousif, one of the owners of Radio Dijla, a new radio station in Baghdad. "It doesn't give the Iraqi people their right. It's not on their side."

It was not the first time the Baghdad bureau was closed. Saddam Hussein shut it in 2002 and in January, Iraq's Governing Council, now dissolved, closed it for what the council called inflammatory coverage.

The long-delayed amnesty, coupled with a tough emergency law passed last month, was supposed to help end the violence by coaxing nationalist guerrillas to the government's side.

The amnesty applies to minor crimes -- such as weapons possession, hiding intelligence about terror attacks or harboring terrorists -- and appears intended to persuade people with information to share it with police.

The amnesty forgives those who committed minor crimes between May 1, 2003, just after Saddam Hussein's regime fell, and Saturday, Allawi said.

"This amnesty is not for people . . . who have killed. Those people will be brought to justice, starting from Zarqawi down to the person in the street," Allawi said, referring to Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose followers have claimed responsibility for deadly suicide bombings.

Rape, kidnapping, looting and terror attacks also are excluded.

Iraqi officials earlier said the amnesty might extend to those who killed U.S. and other coalition troops. Later drafts ruled it out.

The amnesty was rejected immediately by militant Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose militia has been fighting coalition forces in the Shiite holy city of Najaf and elsewhere since Thursday.

"This is a trivial and insignificant statement," said al-Sadr aide Ahmed al-Shaibany. "Amnesties are for criminals, but resistance is legitimate and does not need an amnesty."

Saturday night, the network ran live scenes of Iraqi police in the Baghdad bureau with Al-Jazeera lawyers, explaining that they were trying to carry out orders.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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2004 News Continued