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Group denies killing US Marine, Iraq pipeline hit An Islamist militant group in Iraq denied on Sunday it had beheaded U.S. Marine Wassef Ali Hassoun, seen in earlier televised pictures being threatened with a sword by captors.
While Washington sought to verify what had happened to Hassoun, guerrillas attacked a strategic pipeline linking Iraq's northern and southern oil fields, further cutting exports already halved by sabotage to another pipeline 24 hours earlier.
"This statement that claimed to be from us has no basis in truth," the Army of Ansar al-Sunna said on Sunday on what it called its official Web site.
There was no way to verify which, if either, of the statements attributed to Ansar al-Sunna was authentic. The U.S. military, the Lebanese Foreign Ministry and Hassoun's family said they had no evidence he was dead.
Compounding confusion, Hassoun's kidnapping was first claimed by a group calling itself the Islamic Response Movement.
Arabic Al Jazeera television aired a video tape a week ago of militants holding a sword over a blindfolded Hassoun. The U.S. military says Hassoun has been absent from his unit since June 21.
OIL PIPELINE SABOTAGE
Smoke rising into the air from the pipeline sabotaged on Sunday in the Hawijat al-Fallujah area could be seen from Baghdad some 50 miles to the northeast.
Attacks on the oil industry -- Iraq's main source of revenue -- could hinder the new Iraqi interim government's attempt to boost the economy and improve poor living conditions that feed insurgency and political unrest.
Industry insiders say crude was being secretly pumped through the pipeline from northern Kirkuk fields for export through two offshore southern terminals.
"(The saboteurs) seem to have access to maps and inside information about pumping. They do not want anybody to do business in Iraq, and they are succeeding," said an international oil company executive, who declined to be named.
Oil prices are hovering around $36 a barrel for Brent crude and $2 higher for U.S. light crude, partly as a result of uncertainty of Iraqi supplies because the industry has been a target for guerrillas.
Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said his interim government's first week in office since Washington handed over sovereignty had been successful, particularly in putting Saddam Hussein before an Iraqi judge.
"We have witnessed a drop in insurgency activities so far. We hope this drop will continue," Allawi, expected soon to outline his government's plans to stamp out guerrilla attacks, told American ABC television.
ALLAWI: "WE WILL WIN"
"I am sure that we will win," said Allawi, whose government shares Washington's view that Saddam supporters and foreign Islamic militants are behind guerrilla attacks.
Allawi has already proposed offering an amnesty to Iraqis who resisted the U.S.-led occupation "out of a sense of desperation" to separate them from foreign militants and others whose sole objective he said was to kill and make Iraq fail. But he said militias, including those loyal to firebrand Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr who led a rebellion against the U.S.-led occupation, must lay down their weapons. "The position of the government is very clear. There is no room for any militias to operate in Iraq," Allawi said. Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari criticized nearby countries for backing militants, but did not name any. "Why they are doing it we cannot say, but we know where the support is coming from. We have plans to put this before the public within days and it will have a substantial impact," Zebari told Britain's Sunday Telegraph newspaper. U.S. President Bush, campaigning for re-election in November amid slipping opinion poll ratings over his Iraq policy, praised the sacrifices of U.S. troops. "We must be relentless and determined and do our duty," Bush told cheering, flag-waving supporters in Charleston, West Virginia, vowing there could be no negotiation with terrorists. More than 630 American soldiers have been killed in combat since the U.S.-led invasion in March last year. |
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