Iraq rebels threatened with ‘sharp sword’
“Whoever said before that they were fighting the occupation, we now tell them the occupation has gone,” said interim President Ghazi al-Yawar.
“We will be a sharp sword against anyone who attacks Iraq,” he said. “If they don't stop, we will not hesitate for a moment to use any kind of force required to protect the Iraqi people.”
Mr al-Yawar was speaking two weeks after the US handed sovereignty over to an interim Iraqi government. The handover, however, has not quelled the violence that has wracked the country since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime nearly 15 months ago.
Foreign and local insurgents have launched numerous attacks in Iraq in an effort to force coalition forces to leave and to thwart the country’s reconstruction. The attacks have killed scores of US troops and hundreds of Iraqi civilians.
Mr al-Yawar promised mercy for repentant rebels, saying the interim government that took over on June 28 would announce an amnesty within days.
The government, led by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, last week announced a new security law enabling it to impose emergency law in troubled areas, but it has yet to use its new powers.
Mr al-Yawar said capital punishment would be reinstated after the amnesty offer. It would apply to a limited range of crimes, not the 114 offences punishable by death in Saddam’s era.
The EU, from which Iraq is seeking aid, has urged Baghdad not to restore the death penalty.
Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot, whose country holds the current EU presidency, said the bloc had restated its opposition to capital punishment during talks between EU foreign ministers and their Iraqi counterpart Hoshiyar Zebari in Brussels.
Mr Zebari said he had campaigned against the death penalty in the past. “On the other hand we are facing a serious security and terrorist challenge to the new order,” he added.
Iraqi officials have said they hope the death penalty will deter those behind the violence that has bedeviled postwar Iraq and halt a wave of murder, rape and hostage-taking.
Meanwhile, kidnappers threatening to kill a Filipino and two Bulgarians seized in Iraq kept their families on tenterhooks.
The kidnappers holding a Filipino truck driver hostage said that he was still alive, but had been moved to the place where he was to be killed if the Philippines did not agree to remove its troops from Iraq, according to a video shown on the Al-Jazeera channel.
The Filipino government said that the kidnappers had extended the deadline they had set for the murder of Angelo de la Cruz.
Mr de la Cruz pleaded with the country’s president, Gloria Arroyo, to withdraw the troops before they were scheduled to leave on August 20 so that he would not be killed. However, he also asked that his body be delivered to his own country.
The militant group, the Iraqi Islamic Army-Khaled bin al-Waleed Corps, said it had done everything in its power to prove it had wanted to spare Mr de la Cruz.
Bulgaria said it was still confident its two captured nationals were alive despite the passing of an execution deadline on Friday.
Meanwhile, Iraq and France, which had opposed the US-led war that toppled Saddam, restored diplomatic relations after they were severed 13 years ago during the first Gulf War.
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