Iraqi Leader

LONDON -- Britain objected yesterday to the German government over a planned trip by former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt to Baghdad for talks with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.The Bonn government has approved the initiative by Mr. Brandt, 1972 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, despite agreement at the European summit in Rome last weekend to discourage such visits.British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd told the German Foreign Ministry that the Brandt trip was contrary to the Rome agreement and "must be discouraged."

BAGHDAD -- Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki declared a halt yesterday to raids on armed Shiite Muslim gangs in Baghdad and southern Iraq, just a day after announcing his intentions to carry out operations in districts of the capital that are under de facto control of a key Shiite cleric's militia. The new statement, released by al-Maliki's office, left unanswered whether the prime minister was retreating or taking a break from his pledge to take on lawless elements often associated by U.S. and Iraqi officials with cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia.

AMMAN, Jordan -- Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, making no reference to a political settlement, exhorted his army yesterday to prepare for a long conflict in defense of occupied Kuwait.Dressed in military fatigues and a beret, Mr. Hussein told a nationwide radio and television Army Day audience, "Victory in this battle is certain, God willing."The Iraqi armed forces have unshakeable faith in their mission, in their struggle which will not stop regardless of the sacrifices."Army Day, a national holiday in Iraq's martial society, fell four days before scheduled talks in Geneva between Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz and U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III, but the Iraqi leader spoke only of war."

BAGHDAD -- The leader of Iraq's most influential Shiite party offered surprisingly conciliatory remarks yesterday about the former insurgents and other Sunni Arabs who have banded together into militias to work with U.S. forces, stating that the groups had helped improve security and should be continued. In a speech in Najaf, the Shiite holy city, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the party that has long been the backbone of the main Shiite political alliance, said a major reason for recent security improvements was not merely a dependence on official security forces but also a reliance on tribal groups and local councils.

Even as Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi attempts to assert his nation's newly restored sovereignty, he travels through his own turbulent land and around the Middle East with a protection detail supplied by the U.S. military. Allawi's accompaniment by gun-toting Americans - in plainclothes but with U.S. flags on their vests - has been noted with dismay by some critics in Iraq and the Arab world as a visible symbol of his dependence on the United States, experts on the region say. But with a price placed on Allawi's head in a recent posting on a jihadist Web site, and other government officials already killed by insurgents, Allawi has evidently calculated that the increased security provided by the Americans is worth any possible damage to his credibility.

WASHINGTON - Uncertainty about the fate of Saddam Hussein is contributing to the unrest in Iraq, fueling the attacks by his supporters on U.S. troops and instilling fear in ordinary Iraqis, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday. Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon that the "absence of closure" on the Iraqi leader is "unhelpful" to current operations to restore stability in Iraq. Remnants of Hussein's Baathist regime, which U.S. officials say are the lead elements in the hit-and-run attacks that have killed 25 U.S. soldiers since President Bush declared May 1 that major combat had ended, hope the Iraqi leader and his sons will return to power, the defense secretary said.

WASHINGTON -- As President-elect Bill Clinton prepares t take command, his defense advisers are calling for a sharp escalation in air strikes against military targets in Iraq to apply greater pressure on Iraqi armed forces to topple Saddam Hussein, according to transition sources.The sources said yesterday that Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and several Clinton advisers are eager to break with what they see as the Bush administration's wavering, inconsistent policy, which they believe has ceded the initiative to Mr. Hussein.

WASHINGTON -- CIA director Robert M. Gates has provided a new, detailed account of one of the most historically significant and controversial actions of the Bush administration: the decision to leave Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in power at the end of the Persian Gulf War.In an interview with the Los Angeles Times this week as he prepared to leave office, Mr. Gates, deputy national security adviser at the White House before and during the war against Iraq,...

DAMASCUS, Syria -- The head of Iraqi military intelligence during the Persian Gulf War tried but failed to overthrow President Saddam Hussein early this month, according to American intelligence reports.Wafiq Samaraii, a retired major general who was relieved of his military intelligence post in a purge, apparently tried to mount a coup with Iraq's main opposition group and with help from the Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the south, the reports said.Although there have been myriad reports of coup plots against the Iraqi leader since the end of the war in 1991, the Clinton administration took this plot seriously because it indicated some attempt to coordinate opposition in the north and south, senior administration officials said yesterday.

JUST WONDERING:* Has a sitting member of the U.S. House of Representatives ever before used television to urge the assassination of a head of state of another nation?That was a remarkable moment on WJZ-Channel 13 Sunday when Rep. Helen Delich Bentley, the conservative Maryland Republican, said of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein that "someone should go in and bump him off real fast."Bentley was in Channel 13's studios, being interviewed live on the 11 p.m. newscast by weekend anchor Richard Sher following her return from Kuwait, where she was part of a delegation of political and business leaders.

BAGHDAD -- An Iraqi judge has ruled that there is enough evidence to try two former Shiite Health Ministry officials in the killing and kidnapping of hundreds of Sunnis, many of them snatched from hospitals by militias, according to American officials who are advising the Iraqi judicial system. The case, which was referred last week to a three-man tribunal in Baghdad, is the first time that an Iraqi magistrate has recommended that such high-ranking Shiites be tried for sectarian violence.

BAGHDAD -- President Bush and his top envoy in Baghdad offered tepid endorsements of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki yesterday in comments suggesting a new distancing from the beleaguered Shiite political leader. Bush, speaking in Montebello, Quebec, said al-Maliki's future was in the hands of the Iraqi people. "Clearly, the Iraqi government has got to do more through its parliament to help heal the wounds of years of having - having lived years under a tyrant," said Bush, at a news conference concluding two days of meetings with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon.

BAGHDAD -- Iraqi political leaders warned yesterday that sectarian violence is likely to increase if thousands of Shiites gather next week at the damaged Golden Mosque in Samarra. Their warnings came on a day in which at least 38 Iraqis died in bombings in the capital. Iraqi leaders have been pressuring Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to abandon plans to lead a July 5 procession to the Golden Mosque, also known as the Askariya Shrine, in the heart of the mostly Sunni Arab city of Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad.

BAGHDAD -- Iraq's first constitutionally elected government might rise or fall with the success of a U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown in Baghdad, Iraqi politicians and analysts said yesterday. Amid growing signs that the government of national unity is beginning to fracture, experts say Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has increasingly invested his political survival in the ambitious, two-month-old security campaign. After a promising start, which boasted a noticeable decline in certain types of sectarian attacks, violence is once more increasing.

FALLUJAH, Iraq -- Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates arrived in Iraq yesterday with a message that U.S. patience with the slow pace of political reconciliation measures is limited. Gates is expected to meet today with government and sectarian leaders in Baghdad, to urge progress on laws designed to ease tensions among the groups and divvy up government revenues and oil wealth. Those compromises are among the benchmarks the Bush administration has said will need to be met before U.S. troops can be withdrawn.

Baghdad, Iraq -- The U.S. military released a senior member of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's movement yesterday at the request of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The decision, officials said, was made with the hope of easing tensions between al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia and U.S.-led forces in Iraq. Sheik Ahmed Shibani, who had been in prison for 2 1/2 years, was handed over to the office of the Shiite prime minister. "In consultation with the prime minister and following his request, coalition leaders determined that Sheik Shibani, who was detained since 2004, could play a potentially important role in helping to moderate extremism and foster reconciliation in Iraq," Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a U.S. military spokesman, said in a statement.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- President-elect Bill Clinton said yesterday that he would not rule out renewing the ground war against Iraq if necessary to force compliance with United Nations resolutions, but he also indicated that he was ready for a fresh start with President Saddam Hussein.Mr. Clinton, in an interview with the New York Times, said he was not "obsessed" with Mr. Hussein and that he could imagine a normal relationship with the Iraqi leader, provided he behaved in accordance with international norms.

President Bush's extraordinary activism in foreign affairs during the lame-duck phase of his White House tenure has now culminated in renewed air strikes against a recalcitrant Iraq. After intervening in Somalia to avert mass starvation, signing a new arms control agreement with Russia and ratcheting up U.S. pressure on Serb revanchists, this final blow at Saddam Hussein is a very personal affair. It must rankle that an Iraqi leader who has brought appalling destruction upon his own country will still be in power as Mr. Bush departs.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his Shiite-dominated government reached out to former members of Saddam Hussein's regime yesterday, inviting them to claim government pensions and rejoin the army in a gesture meant to calm the country's sectarian passions. "The Iraqi army opens its doors to officers and soldiers from the former army who wish to serve the country," al-Maliki said during a national reconciliation conference of politicians and sectarian leaders in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki scolded lawmakers at a closed Parliament session yesterday for putting sectarian concerns over national interests, and he promised sweeping Cabinet changes, after complaints that his unity government has been ineffective at containing violence that killed nearly 100 people in 24 hours. He later told journalists that he has authorized the use of "extreme force" against private militias blamed for surging bloodshed between Iraq's dominant Muslim sects that has claimed more lives lately than the anti-U.