Iraqi Government Condemns al-Zarqawi

04/26/2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Iraqis on Wednesday condemned terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as a foreigner determined to destroy their country, saying his new video promising more attacks may have surfaced in response to the breakthrough in the formation of a unity government.

Al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born head of al-Qaida in Iraq, made a dramatic and unprecedented appearance on a video Tuesday, dismissing the new Iraqi government as an American “stooge” and a “poisoned dagger” in the heart of the Muslim world. He also warned of more attacks to come.

Sheik Khalid al-Attiyah, the Iraqi parliament’s newly appointed first deputy speaker, said the video shows that al-Zarqawi remains determined “to inflame a civil war” in Iraq. But al-Attiyah said it also indicates the insurgent leader, an outsider to many Iraqis, fears the country’s new government will unify Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.

The video - the first released by al-Zarqawi showing his face - was posted on the Internet only days after a breakthrough in Iraq’s political process allowing its Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish leaders to start assembling a government.


“I believe that al-Zarqawi was caught off guard by the new government taking shape because it will be very strong one representing all Iraqis,” al-Attiyah said.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who made an unannounced trip to Iraq on Wednesday along with Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, also mentioned the ability of the new government to battle the insurgency.

“The answer to the Zarqawi video is not anything that the United States can say, it’s what the Iraqis are saying in having formed a government of national unity despite all the threats and all of the violence,” she said on the plane en route to Baghdad.

Prime minister-designate Jawad al-Maliki on Sunday began the tough task of assembling a Cabinet out of Iraq’s Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish parties. He has 30 days to do it, but the parties are under enormous pressure - from Americans and even Shiite religious leaders - to move quickly to rein in both the Sunni-led insurgency and the Shiite-Sunni killings that escalated during months without a stable government.

Meanwhile, the violence continued Wednesday.


A bomb exploded aboard a minibus in Baghdad, killing four Iraqis and wounding two, police said. Elsewhere in the capital, police received a tip that two men were traveling with explosives hidden beneath their clothes. After a brief gunbattle, the explosives detonated and killed both men.

Those and other attacks Wednesday raised to nearly 100 the number of Iraqis who have been killed in violence since al-Maliki was appointed Saturday.

Jamal Salman, 40, a minority Sunni Arab who lives in eastern Baghdad, said he believes al-Zarqawi is “very serious” about his threats.

“He was speaking at a time of serious terrorist attacks, not only in Iraq but in other Arab countries such as Egypt,” the Oil Ministry employee said, referring to a suspected terrorist attack Monday in the Egyptian resort town of Dahab that killed 24 people.

The video came only two days after al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, to whom al-Zarqawi has sworn allegiance, released an audiotape calling on Muslims to resist what he called the West’s war on Islam.


In the video, al-Zarqawi addressed Sunnis in Iraq and across the Arab world, warning that their community was in danger of being caught between “the Crusaders and the evil Rejectionists,” the terms used by radical Sunnis for the Americans and Iraq’s majority Shiites.

The message appeared to be an attempt by al-Zarqawi to rally Iraqis and foreign fighters to his side and show his strength at a time when U.S. and Iraqi officials are touting political progress as a setback to insurgents.

“God almighty has chosen you (Sunnis) to conduct holy war in your lands and has opened the doors of paradise to you ... So mujahedeen, don’t dare close those doors,” he said. “They are slaughtering your children and shaming your women.”

Any new government - “whether made up of the hated Shiites or the secular Zionist Kurds or the collaborators imposed on the Sunnis - will be stooges of the Crusaders and will be a poisoned dagger in the heart of the Islamic nation,” he said.

He also addressed President Bush, telling him, “Your dreams will be defeated by our blood and by our bodies. What is coming is even worse.”

A U.S. intelligence official, who declined to be identified in compliance with office policy, said a technical analysis had determined that the voice on the tape was al-Zarqawi’s.

Al-Zarqawi has claimed responsibility for some of the bloodiest suicide bombings in Iraq since the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein and for the beheadings and killings of at least 10 foreign hostages, including three Americans and a Briton.

Arab television network aired portions of the tape Tuesday at the same time that Iraq’s government-owned TV showed an interview with al-Maliki, who called for Iraq’s sharply divided Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds to unite in a front against terrorism.

“If we can reach unity between all the components of the people, the canals of terrorism will dry up,” al-Maliki said.

Azzat al-Shahabandar, a spokesman for former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, leader of Iraq’s National Accord Party, also condemned al-Zarqawi on Wednesday and said he took his threats seriously.

“Al-Zarqawi is the poisoned dagger in the Islamic world. This dagger will eventually turn and stab al-Zarqawi himself because he is crippled and unable to appear in public,” al-Shahabandar said. He predicted that al-Zarqawi’s bombers would now target civilian establishments such as restaurants and schools.

The video, which al-Zarqawi said was filmed Friday, threw the militant leader back into the public spotlight, after months of taking a lower profile amid criticism of bombings against civilians. It was his first message since January.

He seemed healthy, shown in one scene standing and firing a heavy machine gun in a flat desert landscape that resembled the vast empty stretches of western Iraq, where he is believed to be hiding. He was dressed head-to-toe in black with a black scarf around his head and a beard and mustache.

It was believed to be the first time al-Zarqawi’s group has released a video showing his face, said Ben Venzke, head of IntelCenter, an Alexandria, Va.-based firm that provides counterterrorism intelligence services to the U.S. government.