Iraq can't stop US use of its soil against Syria
Talabani opposed to action against Damascus, 20 killed in bomb blast
Afp, Dubai
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said he opposed military action against neighbouring Syria but lacked the power to prevent US troops from using his country as a launchpad if it chose to do so. "I categorically refuse the use of Iraqi soil to launch a military strike against Syria or any other Arab country," Talabani told the London-based Arabic daily Asharq Al-Awsat in an interview published Tuesday. "But at the end of the day my ability to confront the US military is limited and I cannot impose on them my will." Talabani spoke before the UN Security Council unanimously approved a resolution Monday demanding full Syrian cooperation with a UN inquiry into the assassination in Beirut in February of five-time Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri. US Secretary of State Condo-leezza Rice had stern words for Syria in her speech to the council accusing it of supporting terrorism, interfering in the affairs of neighbouring countries and having a "destabilising behaviour in the Middle East." The Iraqi government and its US backers have long accused Syria of not doing enough to prevent the flow of men and materiel across its borders to insurgents fighting US-backed troops in Iraq. On Monday, US warplanes struck what commanders described as a house sheltering an "al-Qaeda cell leader" near the border town of Al-Qaim, in the latest in a string of operations against suspected foreign fighters in the region. But medics in the town and Arabic media reports spoke of 35-plus civilian deaths in the air strike. In violence at least 20 people were killed when a car bomb tore through a crowded market in the southern port city of Basra as Iraqis shopped for the Muslim festival of Eid-ul-Fitr, security sources said. Meanwhile, the month of October, the fourth deadliest month of the war for the United States, ended with the deaths of seven more US soldiers in roadside explosions Monday. According to an interior ministry source "twenty people, mostly civilians, were killed and 45 wounded in the car bomb attack," late Monday in Basra just ahead of the holiday to mark the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. The bomb exploded as a police patrol passed, he said, quoting police reports from Basra. On September 13, four Iraqi private security guards were killed and two wounded in a roadside bombing outside Basra, the biggest city in southern Iraq, in the last attack to hit the relatively quiet region.
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