26_September [Archives:2003/633/Press Review]

24 April 2003
Main headlines:
– President Saleh: democracy the most of what we are proud of
– 8.3 million voters go to polls to choose their representatives in the parliament
– American ban on travel to four Gulf countries, abolished
– The car that carried escapees from Tawahi prison seized
– Killer of nuns executed
– Jarallah killer confesses: We were planning to assassinate 31secular personalities
– YR 387 million, state support for opposition parties

Columnist Nadeem al-Jamali says in an article the sound of guns in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities stopped but argument on the future of Iraq would continue inside Iraq and all Arab and European capitals as is the case in Washington and London. If the United States and Britain see that they have achieved a military victory in Iraq in the way giving them a right decide the fate of that country and control on the course of matters in it, the remainder world capitals say the United States and Britain have defeated the regime in Iraq. They say it has been an incomparable war and the use of force was without a cover of international legitimacy or acceptance of the entire world public opinion. The military victory could in the short-run change into a political defeat if the Iraqis do not accept a government imposed on them or perhaps the military in the long-run if the United States was forced to withdraw from Iraq as a result of an armed resistance. There are several indicators suggesting that the road of re-building Iraq would not be strewn with flowers because voices in the United States and Britain began to question the two governments about the legitimacy of the war after it has been proved that the justification the war was launched for was fabricated and that president Bush and prime minister Blair have deceived their peoples on Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction and consequently be accounted because of that deceit. The political and religious movement now seen in Iraq against the occupation confirms to America and Britain that however refusing the Iraqi people were to Saddam Hussein's regime, their hatred and refusal of the occupation is bigger and greater.
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