Basra refuses to deal with Britain after raid

[plasticsundance]

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The Iraqi city of Basra will not cooperate with Britain until it receives an apology and compensation after a British raid to free two soldiers, Basra's governor and other senior officials said on Thursday.

"The governing council met yesterday and decided to stop all cooperation with the British until they meet three demands," Basra governor Mohammed al-Waili told Reuters.

"To apologize for what happened, to guarantee that it does not happen again, and third, to provide some compensation for all the damage they did during the operation," he said.

Waili said the 41-member council had reached its decision by a unanimous vote on Wednesday, although he himself and his deputy were not eligible to vote.

Basra refuses to deal with Britain after raid

[marmar]

1. There's some nepharious shit going down in Basra...

I think this is going to blow up into something huge.

[rodeodance]

2. can we say that things are not going well in Irag? or is still taboo???

[The Traveler]

3. To be a Republican zombie

You must drink the zombie elixir. Drink, believe, and know the peace of the Bushistas. :evilgrin:

[tainowarrior]

7. is that like the blood of Kali-mah in Indiana Jones 2?

Indy! Don't drink the Iraq blood, Indy!

[Joe Chi Minh]

4. Not if you want

to help the sick and the dying in New Orleans, apparently.

[leftchick]

6. It is not just Basra

Iraq is now filled with US/UK death squads and secret ops from Basra to Mosul. They just happened to get caught in Basra.

[0007]

9. Exactly! We can guess where all that lost money can be found.

[krkaufman]

10. Yeah, Basra *had* been one of the quiet areas...

... and now, even there, the Iraqis are getting fed-up w/ occupation.

[Dhalgren]

5. NPR this morning was doing their now common white-washing

of the news to help their fascist masters. The report made it sound like this is just some kind of misunderstanding; but it was encouraging that their report didn't make any sense. Anyone who was unfamiliar with the incident would be scratching her head saying "WTF?"

[leftchick]

11. I heard it too

it is getting harder and harder to cover up the crimes of the misadministration without sounding like a complete fool.

[slaveplanet]

8. UNANIMOUS vote from the Governing council

Pretty hard to spin that the entire council is infiltrated by militia.

They must have some good evidence to all vote the same.

[Dhalgren]

12. Yeah, I think a destroyed jail-house, several dead cops, and a

carload of explosives is some pretty good "evidence". The US has become a geopolitical disease - it looks like the Brits have "gone over" to the dark side (if they truly ever left...)

[struggle4progress]

13. Iraqi and British government meeting to quell uprising of police ..

.. in Bassora

Bassora, 22 September - In the aftermath of the British occupation forces' raid on the police building to free their undercover agents, some 200 Iraqi policemen in Bassora staged a demonstration demanding that the head of the Bassora police force be fired and the two "British terrorists" be handed over to Iraqi jurisdiction. Meanwhile, the Iraqi government is trying to quell the rage of the Bassora police force, in which the Bassora province governor joined in calling the British assault, in which 5 people were killed, a "barbaric act".

In an official statement the Iraqi prime minister's office denied there was a crisis with Great Britain insisting that "both governments are in close contact, and an inquiry will be conducted by the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior into the incident." But while the Iraqi prime minister Jaafari hurried off to meet the British defense minister John Reid in London, himself facing the opposition's demands for a withdrawal timetable, the Iraqi interior minister, Bayan Jabor publicly slammed the official British account of the Bassora events handed out to the media, which had tried to justify the raid against the Bassora prison claiming the British troups had been forced to act in order to rescue the two undercover agents after the Iraqi police had allegedly surrendered them to Moqtada al-Sader's militia.

In a statement to the BBC Bayan Jabor insisted that the Bassora police had never released the two British agents from it's custody, despite the effectively high percentage of anti-occupation militants inside the Iraqi police force which the British commander Colonel Bill Dunham acknowledged as "something that affects the Iraqi police across Iraq as a whole," adding "we are aware of rogue elements in the Iraqi police service. The trick that we have to pull off now with the Iraqi authorities is to identify those elements, to weed them out and to reinforce the good parts of the Iraqi police service."

http://www.arabmonitor.info/news/dettaglio.php?idnews=11401&lang=en