Juan Cole

*Dawn reports that a senior US State Department official has said, Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are in safe hands and the United States is satisfied with the measures Islamabad has taken to secure them, says a senior official of the US State Department. The official was not named by Dawn but presumably was Undersecretary of State […]

Kurdish civilians are scattering from their towns, fearful of being bombarded with poison Iraq by the Baath Party if war breaks out with the US. The Baathists hit the Kurds with poison gas in 1988 for colluding with Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. The horrible attack on Halabja in March of that year left an […]

*In an interview on an Arabic television program in Dubai, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said that in the case of a war, there would be only a brief period of rule over Iraq by a US military leader, so as to ensure order. He said the US wanted to rebuild Iraq, not to […]

*Iraq is denying earlier reports that it has closed its borders to Iranian pilgrims seeking to visit the holy shrines of Najaf and Karbala. Turning the tables, the Iraqi spokesman said it was Iran that was preventing people from making the pilgrimages. *Reuters and Asharq al-Awsat report impressions from Iranians interviewed that they despise Saddam […]

*Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, speaking in Berlin, expressed the view that Washington is unlikely to give Saddam Hussein more than two or three weeks to disarm. He said he himself agreed that the inspection process should not go on forever. He advised Saddam to comply. He also said Saddam would not be welcome in Egypt […]

*Turkish newspapers report that that country is prepared to send as many as 55,000 troops into Northern Iraq to establish a demilitarized zone in case war breaks out in Iraq. The Turkish president said that his country’s support for a US invasion would depend on having an “international” decision (i.e. a second UN Security Council […]

*The head of French intelligence insists that there is no proven link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. Pierre Bousquet de Florian told Television Channel 2,”One thing is certain. There is no physical link between the regime of Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.” He admitted that even though Saddam and Osama despise one another, “sometimes they have […]

*A new, 50-minute Bin Laden tape aired on al-Jazeerah, calling for Muslims to make a united stand against the looming US war in Iraq. Like Bush, Bin Laden insisted that Muslims are either with him or against him, no shades of grey. He called the Gulf leaders cooperating with the US “Karzais,” a reference to […]

* Pakistani sucurity forces believe the US is overestimating how many al-Qaeda members are in Pakistan’s tribal belt. They complain that in 90 percent of cases, information supplied by the CIA and Centcom about targets lead to nothing when the Pakistanis follow up on them. Pakistani officials think there are only 30 to 50 al-Qaeda […]