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Al Qaeda plans Baghdad hits, says U.S

Al Qaeda in Iraq is planning suicide attacks against Iraqis in Baghdad "in the near future," the U.S. military warned Friday. Information collected by coalition forces indicated that "numerous terrorists" had entered the Baghdad area to carry out attacks using vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices or suicide vests, according to a statement from the Multi-National Corps-Iraq. No details were provided.
One or more of the attacks were expected to target the Karkh district of Baghdad, where a car bomb exploded in March 2005 near the Sunni mosque Ibn Tamiya. The mosque is on the dangerous road leading to the Baghdad airport. There were no reports of casualties.
Iraqis were being warned to be vigilant for signs of terrorist activity and asked to report any unusual signs through tip lines or troops in their area.
Iraqi Security Forces and Coalition Forces were distributing pamphlets describing signs that may indicate terrorist activity.
Brig. Gen. Qassim Atta, the spokesman for the Baghdad security plan, warned listeners Friday during the main newscast on al-Iraqia state TV.
Reiterating what the U.S. military said about credible intelligence indicating that suicide, vehicle and IED attacks are being planned by "terrorist groups," Atta asked people to be cautious and wary.
He asked them to call the Iraqi Security Forces and the hot lines for the ministries of Defense and Interior and the Baghdad security plan hot lines to report anything suspicious.
Indications of a possible suicide-vest attack include people displaying abnormal behavior such as an agitated demeanor and wearing inappropriate clothing for the weather.
Signs of a possible vehicle-borne improvised explosive attack are unfamiliar vehicles driving repeatedly around crowded areas, people taking videos or photos of these areas, cars without license plates or multiple fuel cans in the seat or trunk of a vehicle. Attackers also might use a stolen ambulance.
The Multi-National Corps-Iraq statement said that historically, al Qaeda in Iraq attacked large gatherings of people: funerals, markets and checkpoints.
"Wall barriers emplaced by the government of Iraq and Coalition Forces have been largely successful in protecting neighborhoods, markets and roadways. However, AQI are constantly seeking opportunities to harm innocent Iraqi civilians," it said.
Recently, al Qaeda in Iraq began targeting Sons of Iraq and Awakening groups, because those organizations have taken away their support zones and havens. Awakening Councils, or Sons of Iraq, are Sunni groups that have turned against al Qaeda in Iraq.
"Make no mistake, Al Qaeda in Iraq is still present," said Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond, commanding general of Multi-National Division-Baghdad.
"We have disrupted their organization, but they still seek to subjugate and intimidate the Iraqi people," he said in the statement. "The Sons of Iraq and ISF are heroically standing against such attacks directed against them and their families."
The U.S. warning came on the same day an Interior Ministry official said at least seven people were killed in intense fighting between Iraqi Security Forces and Mehdi Army militiamen loyal to cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in the Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City.
The interior official said 62 people -- including women and children -- were wounded, while hospital officials in Sadr City put the number at 72.
In another incident, two children were killed by a roadside bomb while collecting firewood in Tarmiya, about 25 miles (40 km) north of Baghdad, about noon Friday, the U.S. military said. U.S. officials said the attack was probably targeting Awakening Councils, or Sons of Iraq -- Sunni groups who have turned against al Qaeda in Iraq.
Also, a roadside bomb in the Diyala town of Khalis struck a minibus, killing six members of an extended family -- two of them brothers -- Friday afternoon, a medical source in the province confirmed.
In the Sadr City violence, the militia used rockets and mortars, in addition to small arms fire, the official said. A fire broke out in Jamila Market, where dozens of shops were destroyed last month during an indirect attack.
However, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad said he wouldn't describe the situation as intense fighting.
"There has been sporadic gunfire, harassment fire, taking place all day," said Lt. Col. Steve Stover.
He confirmed the death of a "criminal" who was killed while planting an explosive. "Other than that, nothing spectacular and nothing the ISF couldn't handle."
Clashes also broke out Friday evening in the Shiite enclave of Abu Dsheer in the predominantly Sunni district of Dora in southern Baghdad, where Mehdi fighters clashed with Iraqi security forces backed by U.S. troops. At least three people were wounded, and an infirmary was set ablaze during the fighting, according to the official.
According to Sadr City residents, the Mehdi Army used loudspeakers at mosques Thursday to warn Iraqi security forces to avoid the area, saying the Mehdi Army was unbeatable.

China-to-Zimbabwe arms ship 'blocked'

A Chinese ship loaded with arms and ammunition bound for Zimbabwe has turned away from a South African port after dockworkers refused to handle the cargo, their representative said.
The ship was "probably going to the nearest port, which is Maputo, Mozambique, from where it could also be transshipped to Zimbabwe," David Cockroft, general secretary of the International Transport Workers Federation, told CNN International on Friday.
"This was a normal transaction, but it's intended to be used against the people of Zimbabwe," Cockroft said. "(The dockworkers) have colleagues in Zimbabwe against whom they do not want those 3.5 million rounds to be used."
The Chinese Foreign Ministry issued a statement in a fax to the Reuters news agency saying that China and Zimbabwe have normal trade relations, that the Chinese government takes a "prudent and responsible" position on arms deals and that it does not involve itself in the internal affairs of other countries.
CNN could not immediately confirm with the South African government that the China-flagged An Yue Jiang had sailed away from Durban.
Cockroft said that the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union, which belongs to his group, had notified him of the movement.
Zimbabwe is in turmoil after elections last month. The opposition Movement for Change party won a majority of seats in the parliament, but Mugabe's ZANU-PF party contested 16 seats, claiming the MDC had cheated.
Further adding to concerns were the presidential election. The government of President Robert Mugabe, who has been in power since Zimbabwe won its independence in 1980, has refused to release results of that vote before a recount.
The MDC says its candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, won the election, but ZANU-PF has claimed the MDC engaged in election tampering. The delay in releasing the vote sparked violence and a government crackdown on opposition members.
"This union has a proud history of taking action against regimes which it disapproves of in the past, but this is certainly the first time it has gotten involved in an African regime like Zimbabwe," Cockroft said.
"I don't think there's much doubt that the (dock) workers ... are very strongly against the Mugabe regime," he said.
Cockroft said that arms had almost certainly been shipped to Zimbabwe through Durban in the past, but the size of this shipment -- "more than a million pounds" and 3.5 million rounds of rifles, small arms, mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades -- was noteworthy.
Earlier, South African Revenue Service spokesman Adrian Lackay told CNN "that it is commonplace for landlocked neighboring states in southern Africa to use South African ports of entry for the transshipment of goods."
Lackay indicated the ship had complied with South African regulations requiring it to disclose the contents of the cargo it is carrying.
"There were arms on the ship," a government spokesman, Thembo Maseko, told CNN

Clinton friend defects to Obama

Robert Reich, a former Clinton cabinet member and longtime friend of the former president, has formally endorsed Barack Obama's White House bid, saying Friday that "my conscience won't let me be silent any longer."
"Although Hillary Clinton has offered solid and sensible policy proposals, Obama's strike me as even more so," Reich wrote on his blog. He served as the Secretary of Labor from 1993-1997 and is currently a professor at UC Berkeley.
"His plans for reforming Social Security and health care have a better chance of succeeding," Reich continued. "His approaches to the housing crisis and the failures of our financial markets are sounder than hers. His ideas for improving our public schools and confronting the problems of poverty and inequality are more coherent and compelling. He has put forward the more enlightened foreign policy and the more thoughtful plan for controlling global warming."
Reich, whose relationship with the Clintons dates back to their law school days at Yale, has long been a critic of the New York senator's White House bid. Shortly before the Iowa caucuses in January, he wrote that voters would have a choice "between someone who talks the talk, and somebody who's walked the walk."


McCain releases his taxes, not wife's

Sen. John McCain is considered one of the wealthiest members of Congress, but you wouldn't know it by looking at tax returns released Friday by his presidential campaign.
Out of 535 members of Congress, Roll Call newspaper last year ranked McCain the ninth richest.
In 2007, McCain's total income was $405,409; his taxable income was $258,800; he paid $188,660 in taxes.
The campaign did not release tax returns for McCain's wife, Cindy, heiress to a fortune from her father's beer distribution company, Hensley and Company, for which she now serves as chairman.
According to last year's Senate financial disclosure form, the McCains have assets of at least $36.5 million. Some estimates put her worth at $100 million.
Before marrying 27 years ago, the McCains signed a prenuptial agreement to keep their finances separate and they file their taxes separately.
McCain's campaign said Cindy is not releasing her returns "in the interest of protecting the privacy of her children."
Michelle Obama, who has young children, did release her tax records, filed jointly with her husband, Sen. Barack Obama.
Sen. Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton file taxes jointly.
"My life has not been one of privilege and luxury. I had the great honor of serving in this country," McCain has said.
The 71-year-old presumed GOP nominee received about $23,000 last year in Social Security, and paid nearly $18,000 in alimony to his ex-wife. He received more than $58,000 from his Navy pension.
He earned nearly $177,000 in book royalties, which he and his wife donated to charity -- and McCain donated an additional $17,000.
McCain donated about 26 percent of his income to charity. By comparison, the Clintons gave 15 percent, and the Obamas gave 6 percent.
Almost all of McCain's donations went to the John and Cindy McCain Family Foundation. The foundation supports charitable ventures such as clearing land mines and aid for children with cleft palates, which the McCains' adopted daughter had.
The Democratic National Committee released a statement Friday calling the McCains' lack of transparency troubling and said not releasing Cindy McCain's taxes "raises questions about what he is hiding."
McCain campaign advisers defended not releasing his wife's tax returns by comparing the situation to Democratic Sen. John Kerry's campaign four years ago. Kerry's multimillionaire wife refused to disclose all of her tax returns, which Republicans criticized


Carter meets with exiled Hamas leader

Former President Carter met Friday with a top Hamas politician, exiled leader Khalid Meshaal, in Damascus, Syria, Carter aides said.
Carter, Meshaal and lower-level officials had a closed-door meeting that lasted more than an hour and a half.
The ex-president's visits with top Hamas officials this week have drawn condemnation from the U.S. and Israeli governments. They said Carter is engaging in diplomacy with a group they consider a terrorist organization.
Carter's controversial tour of the Middle East included a meeting Thursday in Cairo, Egypt, with two other senior Hamas politicians.
"I'm not a negotiator. I'm just trying to understand different opinions and communicate, provide communications between people that won't communicate with each other," Carter said at the start of his trip.
Most Israeli officials have refused to receive Carter during his visit to the region, angry over his insistence that Israel should talk to Hamas Israelis dislike Carter's observations about Israeli policies toward the Palestinians in his 2006 book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid."
U.S. and Israeli officials said they believe that Carter's talks with Hamas will achieve little and even could harm the Middle East peace process
"Regrettably, Hamas will try to take political advantage of this," David Welch, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, said Friday. However, he added, "I think President Carter's sincere. This man worked hard on peace."
At a State Department briefing Friday in Washington, spokesman Sean McCormack said, "I don't think people are going to confuse the efforts of a private citizen ... with the very clear policies of the United States government."
U.S. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said earlier, "We think it is not useful for people to be running to Hamas at this point and having meetings with Hamas."
But those who, like Carter have spent their careers trying to make peace have another view.
"You should never give in to the terrorists; you should never accept their demands, but you should never be the ones refusing to talk," said Jonathan Powell, who was chief of staff for former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
In more than a decade in his job, Powell supported a secret channel of communication to sworn enemies in the Northern Ireland conflict. He said it was the only way to make peace.
"Any democratic government finds it very, very hard to talk to people who are killing their people. It is a very difficult thing to do," Powell said. "But my argument is that you have to have that contact unless you believe that in some way, it's going to be solved militarily."
For the Israelis, a military solution is an elusive one, but they insist that talks with Hamas won't bring peace in the Middle East conflict.
"Hamas is conducting war against the citizens of Israel," said Ron Prosor, Israel's ambassador to Britain. "What do you say to people who say, 'Why don't you talk, try and talk, and not to shoot'? It sounds very good, but the question is, at what stage do you do that?"
Diplomats and statesmen frequently wrestle with the issue of whether talking with adversaries means giving in to them.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said that his government has had discussions with the Taliban.
"We are willing to talk to those of the Taliban who are not part of al Qaeda or the terrorist networks," Karzai said last fall.
Nevertheless, Karzai then expelled two foreign diplomats for talking to the Taliban
Carter, who helped broker the historic peace agreement between Egypt and Israel in the late 1970s, has said he's on a "study mission" to support peace, democracy and human rights in the region.
"It's my dream and my hope that someday in my lifetime, hopefully this year, we'll see a major breakthrough," he said

Bolivia struggles with floods

Floodwaters have destroyed more than 1.2 million houses, according to Bolivian officials, with the northeastern department of Beni seeing the worst flooding in 50 years.
"There are still about 29,000 to 30,000 families that will need food for the next four or five months," said Victoria Ginja, director of the World Food Programme in Bolivia.
Bolivia needs nearly $10 million to ease the hunger of the thousands of displaced people and more than $800 million to recover from the disaster, officials said.
In the entire area, much of it low-lying areas, more than 19,000 families remain in a critical condition after having lost their means of subsistence, officials said. Of those, 16,000 families are living in shelters.
For some, this is the third consecutive year that flood waters have sent them fleeing their homes.
"Everything's lost, even my children's birth certificates," said Virginia Salvatierra, one of the displaced.

Taliban kill son of Dutch army chief

The son of the new Dutch defense chief was killed Friday by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan, and the Taliban claimed that they deliberately made him a high-profile victim of their deadly insurgency.

Lt. Dennis van Uhm was killed in Afghanistan a day after his father was made head of the Dutch army.
Lt. Dennis van Uhm, 23, was one of two Dutch soldiers killed in the explosion 7 miles (12 kilometers) northwest of Camp Holland, the Dutch military base in restive Uruzgan province, spokesman Lt. Gen. Freek Meulman said. Two more soldiers were injured, one critically.
Meulman was standing in for Gen. Peter van Uhm, who was installed as defense chief only on Thursday and would likely have delivered the news had his son not been among the victims.
Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi claimed that the militants knew in advance about van Uhm's movements.
"When he came out, the Taliban planted a mine, which killed him," Ahmadi said in a phone call from an undisclosed location.
The Dutch government, however, rejected the claim.
"Our information is that there is no indication of any link between this cowardly deed and the fact that it was the son of the defense chief," Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said in The Hague.
Balkenende and a military spokesman, Lt. Col. Robin Middel, refused to comment when asked whether van Uhm, who began his tour of duty in Afghanistan only about two weeks ago, received any special protection.
Wim van den Burg of the Federation of Military Personnel agreed that it was very unlikely the Taliban deliberately picked off the defense chief's son.
"I doubt they even knew who van Uhm was," van den Burg said. "This is just propaganda for them."
This year, Britain's Prince Harry had to be flown out of Afghanistan after news leaked that he was posted there.
Harry spent almost 10 weeks in Afghanistan's volatile Helmand province, with his deployment kept secret by a deal between officials and media.
U.S. presidential candidate John McCain had a son serving in Iraq, and the son of Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the former second-in-command in Iraq, had his arm blown off in August 2004 while serving in Iraq.
Van den Burg said that high-profile troops should be no problem so long as their presence is not widely known.
"As soon as it's made public, it becomes a risk," he said.
The attack raised the Dutch death toll in Afghanistan to 16 since the government made the unpopular decision to send 1,650 troops to fight in the NATO force in August 2006.
In November, Balkenende's government again defied public opinion and decided -- under pressure from NATO -- to prolong the mission by two years until mid-2010, but only after pledges from allies such as France and Australia to send more troops to the region.
Van den Burg predicted that the latest casualties would spark fresh criticism of the government's decision.
"What you can't avoid is that every time there is an attack, there is more discussion," he said.
Van den Burg's organization, which represents thousands of troops, opposed extending the mission, saying it was stretching the Dutch military too thin, both in Afghanistan and at home.
Balkenende originally managed to convince a skeptical public that the Dutch mission would not only fight the Taliban but devote time to building roads, schools and hospitals to help Afghanis recover from years of conflict.
But as the Taliban have gained strength in the south, Dutch troops have been forced to spend more and more time fighting instead of focusing on reconstruction efforts.
Six years after a U.S.-led invasion toppled the hard-line Taliban regime, hostilities show little sign of easing.
Suicide attacks in Afghanistan spiked last year, with the Taliban launching more than 140 such missions -- the highest number since the insurgency began after 2001. The fighting is most intense in the south of the country.
More than 1,000 people, mostly militants, have died this year in insurgency-related violence in Afghanistan, according to an Associated Press tally of figures provided by Afghan and Western officials.
In The Hague, government and military officials were visibly upset by the latest deadly attack.
Balkenende called van Uhm's death "an unprecedented tragedy" and said the weekly Dutch Cabinet meeting was briefly halted so ministers could reflect privately.
In the small town of Ermelo, 80 kilometers (50 miles) east of Amsterdam, where both the slain soldiers had been stationed, local authorities lowered flags to half-staff and opened a condolence register at the town hall for local residents to sign.
"It is particularly bitter that after yesterday's ceremonial changing of the military command, we heard that this family -- which yesterday was so happy -- got such terrible news," Balkenende said.
The attack that killed van Uhm came a day after a suicide attack in southwestern Nimoz province killed 24 people and wounded more than 30 others, mostly civilians, in the latest in a series of bloody strikes blamed on Taliban militants.
The attack took place as men were getting ready for the evening prayer at the central mosque in Zaranj, the provincial capital, Gov. Ghulam Dastagir Azad said.
Separately, another roadside blast hit a convoy of a private security firm in central Logar province, killing three Afghan security guards and wounding another, provincial police chief Mustapha Khan said