Monday, June 04, 2007
INM daily summary – 4 June 2007
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- Turkey will deliver a report to the United Nations this week spelling out its concerns about militant Kurdish separatists in Iraq and reaffirming its legal right to take action against them.
- U.S.-led forces have control of fewer than one-third of Baghdad's neighborhoods despite thousands of extra troops nearly four months into a security crackdown.
- After years using outside contractors to tend to the needs of its Iraq bases, the US military is now building zones outside its army posts so Iraqi businesses can actually benefit from their presence.
- Senior British officers in Iraq have produced plans to speed up the withdrawal of troops, allowing the vast majority of the UK's 5,500 troops to return home within 12 months or less.
- Bomb blasts severely damaged a bridge linking a highway from Baghdad with the northern city of Kirkuk on Saturday, the police and witnesses said, heightening tensions between Arabs and Kurds and forcing traffic to detour through some of the most dangerous areas of Diyala Province.
- Web sites often used by al Qaeda-linked groups said on Monday they would soon show the abduction of three Americans, apparently referring to three U.S. soldiers who went missing in Iraq last month after a clash.
- Washington's ambassador to Iraq hinted Sunday that the United States was open to granting amnesty to former Al-Qaeda insurgents who fought against it in the blood-soaked country.
- The militia believed to have seized five British hostages in Baghdad last week has called for UK forces in southern Iraq to be confined to base.
- Kurdistan comes first out of all Iraq's regions with the highest number of landmines, the Iraqi Kurdistan anti-landmine authority – Dahuk Branch said on Sunday.
- Security round-up.
- The U.S. military in Iraq has begun issuing American M-16 rifles to some Iraq troops in exchange for their AK-47 rifles.
