Iran-backed groups using secret arms stores: US

arabtimesonline.com

BAGHDAD (Agencies): The US military said on Sunday it had evidence Iranian-backed Shiite militias in Iraq were increasingly using secret weapons stores to attack US and Iraqi forces.
The accusation comes days after Tehran postponed talks with the United States on improving security in Iraq for “technical reasons”, a move that prompted rebukes from US officials.
“In just the past week, Iraqi and coalition forces captured 212 weapons caches across Iraq, two of those inside Baghdad, (which have) growing links to Iranian-backed special groups,” military spokesman Real Admiral Gregory Smith told reporters.
The military uses the term “special groups” to describe rogue elements in the Mehdi Army militia of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. It says these militants get weapons, funding and training from neighbouring Iran.
Smith was speaking at a news conference in which he lauded recent security gains in Iraq, adding that on some days attacks had dropped to below 40 a day, the lowest level since 2004.

Highlighting the fragility of the gains, a female suicide bomber killed at least three people in central Baghdad, police said. The US military said only the bomber was killed.
Two US soldiers were also killed by insurgents in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad, the military said.
Washington, at loggerheads with Shiite Iran over its nuclear plans, accuses Tehran of destabilising Iraq by arming Shiite groups. Iran denies the accusations and blames the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 for the violence.
Smith said there was no evidence of increased arms shipments to Iraq from Iran, but added that Iranian-backed groups were increasingly using secret stores of weapons to launch attacks.
“What we’re seeing is an increase in the use of weapons by Iranian-backed special groups,” he said, adding the number of weapons caches found in January was the largest in a year.
The US-Iranian security talks are one of the few forums in which officials from the two bitter foes have direct contact. Diplomatic ties have been frozen for almost three decades.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry said technical reasons were behind the delay in talks between Iranian and US officials in Baghdad, but did not elaborate. Tehran on Thursday postponed what would have been a fourth round of discussions.
David Satterfield, the US State Department’s Iraq coordinator, said on Friday Iran was “intent on continuing to promote violence within Iraq”.
Violence has fallen 60 percent across Iraq since 30,000 additional US troops became fully deployed in June.
Vital to better security has been a decision by Sunni Arab tribal leaders to turn against Sunni Islamist al-Qaeda, and form groups to drive them out.
The US-backed groups, called concerned local citizens (CLCs) by the military, have 80,000 men across Iraq. They man checkpoints and provide intelligence on militant hideouts.
But cracks have appeared in ties with US and Iraqi forces.
One CLC group said it was suspending its activities after three members were killed in an incident near the town of Jurf al-Sukr, south of Baghdad on Friday.
The unit blamed US soldiers for the deaths. The US military said attack helicopters had responded with rockets after security forces came under small-arms fire.
Smith said any incidents were investigated.
“Coalition forces are working with CLCs to bring about security. They are certainly not targeting CLCs,” he said.
In the southern city of Basra, a CBS News journalist continued to be held by kidnappers after being captured a week ago. Efforts to free the Briton, who has not been named, were being held up over talks about how he should be released, negotiators said.
Encounter
Iran on Sunday played down a rare encounter with the United States at an anti-money laundering watchdog in Paris, insisting that no direct talks had taken place with its arch-foe.
Tehran also said that the latest round of its talks with the United States on Iraq had been postponed for “technical reasons,” but did not give any date for when the next discussions could take place.
The United States said that senior US Treasury official Daniel Glaser attended a meeting alongside Iranian officials at the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in Paris last month.
“No direct talks were held,” foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told reporters. “All that was said was within the framework of this meeting,” he added.
“The meeting was aimed at looking into issues related to money laundering. This is an international forum and the United States is also a member of that international forum.”
The Jan 29 meeting brought together representatives of 14 countries, including the United States and Iran, US State Department officials said.
Iranian Economy Minister Davoud Danesh Jafari said the Americans sought information at the meeting about new anti-money laundering laws Iran has passed.
“An expert from the central bank and the ministry of economy took part in the meeting and had exchanges, but this was not a high-level meeting,” he was quoted in the press on Sunday as saying.
The United States has in the past accused Iranian state banks of acting as a conduit for terror financing, and has imposed sanctions against several institutions. Iran vehemently denies the charges.
“Iran has taken considerable measures to counter money laundering,” said Hosseini.
It is unusual for US and Iranian officials to sit down at the same table even for multilateral talks. Last year they did hold three rounds of talks over Iraq, their highest level direct public talks for almost three decades.
US ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and his Iranian counterpart Hassan Kazemi Qomi held face-to-face talks on May 28 and July 24. Both sides also met at experts’ level on Aug 6.
But there has been no meeting since then and Iraqi officials have said the fourth round of the talks – which according to Baghdad were to have taken place in the past week – were called off at Iran’s behest.
“The postponement of the talks is for technical reasons and not over any other issues,” Hosseini told reporters, without elaborating. He insisted that Iran had never given “any specific date for the upcoming meeting.”
The postponement came as Iraq’s government said that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is due in Baghdad on March 2 for the first visit ever by an Iranian president to the country.
The date has yet to be confirmed by Iranian officials, however.
The United States accuses Iran of meddling in Iraq by helping to train Shiite militias and shipping in armour-piercing bombs for attacks against US troops. Iran vehemently denies the charges.
Iran and the United States have had no diplomatic ties since 1980, when Washington cut relations in the midst of the 444-day siege of its embassy in Tehran by Islamist students in the wake of the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Bomber
A woman suicide bomber fled into a Baghdad shop chased by Iraqi troops who tried to stop her on Sunday and then triggered her explosives, killing two people, Iraqi security officials said.
The suicide attack in which at least 10 people were also wounded occurred near the National Theatre in Baghdad’s central Karrada neighbourhood, defence and interior ministry officials said.
“Troops at a checkpoint noticed the woman’s suspicious behaviour and wanted to search her. She appeared to be wearing something bulky beneath her abaya,” an interior ministry official said.
“She fled and the soldiers chased her. She ran into an electrical shop where she triggered her vest,” the official added, declining to be named. “Two people were killed and 10 were wounded.”
The US military disputed that anyone other than the bomber was killed, however.
“The only death from this event was the female suicide bomber,” it said in a statement.
“The woman, dressed in black, gave the appearance of being a beggar, with something bulky around the mid-section,” it said.
“When (Iraqi soldiers) directed her to raise her hands, she only raised one and had something concealed in her other hand with wires apparent. Soldiers fired three rounds prior to her staggering back to a nearby shop where she detonated.”
It was the latest in a string of attacks by female suicide bombers in Iraq, blamed by Iraqi officials and the US military on al-Qaeda.
Meanwhile, anger grew on Sunday at an air attack by US forces on Jurf al-Sakher village about 120 kms (75 miles) south of Baghdad in which three people were killed.
The leader of a US-backed “Awakening” anti-Qaeda front in the village said the dead were members of his group, while the American military said the situation was confused and that they had returned fire after being attacked.
The Awakening leader, Sabah al-Janabi, and local police official Ali al-Lami said that a US helicopter fired on the group very early on Saturday, killing three.
The attack, coming on the heels of others in which a total of 19 group members have been killed, sparked mass resignations from the Awakening, according to Janabi.
“It was the third incident in a month. We have lost 19 men while 12 have been injured because of coalition attacks,” he said.
“The group, which comprises 110 members, resigned in protest at organised assassinations by the coalition forces,” Janabi added.
A member of the group, Mohammed al-Rariri, 32, expressed his anger at the incident on Sunday.
“We have been badly affected and are very angry at this aggression,” said Rariri. “Whether it was an error or intentional, it proves that the coalition is not worried about the stability of our area.”
Another member, Abdallah al-Janabi, 29, accused the US military of deliberately sowing disorder so that they can stay in Iraqi “for as long as possible.”
“They ensure that chaos and terrorism continues by all possible means,” he said.
US military spokesman Rear Admiral Gregory Smith told a news conference in Baghdad on Sunday that US forces had shot back after coming under fire.
“There was aggressive conduct by members of an armed group,” he said.
“It is a very challenging environment out there. Operations are conducted in close proximity to (Awakening) members, who are often used by the enemy as human shields.
Trial
A former deputy health minister accused of involvement in Iraq’s sectarian violence will go on trial this week, the first senior official charged with terrorism since the 2003 US-led invasion, his lawyer said on Sunday.
Hakim al-Zamili will appear at the Criminal Court of Rusafa in Baghdad on Tuesday along with the former head of the security force that provides protection to the Health Ministry, his lawyer, Abu Firas al-Mutairi, told Reuters.
Mutairi said both men were innocent and the trial was politically motivated.
He said about eight people had filed charges against Zamili, a member of influential Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s political movement, and his co-defendant, accusing them of being the masterminds behind the killing of their relatives.
“My clients, Hakim al-Zamili and the security chief of the ministry, were referred by the investigative judge to be tried according to the Terrorism Law,” Mutairi said.
US and Iraqi forces raided the Health Ministry in February 2007 and arrested Zamili on suspicion he had infiltrated rogue members of Sadr’s feared Mehdi Army into the ministry and had helped funnel millions of dollars to Shi’ite militiamen.
The arrest was condemned by Sadr’s supporters at the time.
According to Mutairi, the two defendants were referred to the court based on article 4 of the Terrorism Law, which permits the death penalty for those convicted.
The law was passed by the Iraqi government in November 2005 to try those suspected of acts of terrorism.
“It’s the first time since 2003 that a high Iraqi official stands trial on such a serious charge of terrorism,” said Mutairi.
Sadr’s movement had alleged that Zamili’s arrest was part of a campaign to target them. Mutairi said the accusations against the two men, who are being held in US custody, lacked any legal basis.
“If Hakim al-Zamili and his co-defendant were guilty of killing innocent people, I myself would support a severe penalty against them,” the lawyer said. “We respect the law and we are confident in Iraq’s legal system.”
The arrest was seen at the time as evidence that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s Shi’ite-led government would not stand for government officials, even fellow Shi’ites, fomenting sectarian bloodshed.