IRAQ - Zarqawi Threatens Election Staff.The Zarqawi gang, the most feared among Wahhabi groups, has sent letters to the authorities warning it will kill anyone involved in administering the January poll. In one of the typewritten type·write intr. & tr.v. type·wrote , type·writ·ten , type·writ·ing, type·writes To engage in writing or to write (matter) with a typewriter. letters, to the Mosul and Baghdad offices of the Independent Electoral Commission South Africa The Independent Electoral Commission in South Africa has managed all the country's national and local government elections since the first multiracial election on 27 April 1994. and quoted by the Guardian newspaper, the group says: "The members of the [commission] and anyone associated with fraudulent democracy, will feel the sword of righteousness on their necks", the group says in one of the typewritten letters shown to the Guardian. The Zarqawi group, formerly known as Al-Tawhid Wal-Jihad, changed its name on Oct. 23 to Al-Qaeda Organisation for Jihad in Mesopotamia, and declared loyalty to Osama Bin Laden Osama bin Laden: see bin Laden, Osama. . It has claimed a wave of suicide bombings and hostage-takings-decapitations, including the beheading of two US engineers and their British colleague Kenneth Bigley, and execution of 49 unarmed Iraqi military recruits. Despite the security problems, the commission's chief electoral officer, Adel Al-Ami, said meeting the January poll deadline was still possible. "It is a race against time, but the technical preparations are on schedule. If the elections don't take place then, it will not be because we are not ready". Iraqis will elect a 275-seat assembly mainly to draft a permanent constitution. If adopted, the document will be the foundation for a second vote before Dec. 15 2005. The New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Times (NYT NYT New York Times NYT National Youth Theatre (UK) NYT New York Transit (New York, USA) NYT New York Tribune ) reported on Oct. 25 that 380 tons of powerful explosives had disappeared from one of the many places near Baghdad which the US forces failed to secure in April 2003. Apparently these explosives were looted by insurgent INSURGENT. One who is concerned in an insurrection. He differs from a rebel in this, that rebel is always understood in a bad sense, or one who unjustly opposes the constituted authorities; insurgent may be one who justly opposes the tyranny of constituted authorities. groups. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was so bent on proving his theory of lightning warfare that he ignored the generals who said an under-staffed and under-armed invasion force could rush to Baghdad, but could not hold the rest of the country, much less guard things like the explosives dump. Iraqi and US officials cannot explain how the explosives were spirited away from Al-Qa'qa', a well-known site just 50 km south of Baghdad. But they were warned. Within weeks of the invasion, UN weapons inspectors told Washington the explosives depot was in danger and that terrorists could help themselves "to the greatest explosives bonanza in history". The disastrous theft was revealed in a recent letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency International Atomic Energy Agency: see Atomic Energy Agency, International. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) International organization officially founded in 1957 to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy. (IAEA IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency. ) in Vienna. It was signed by the general director of Iraq's Planning and Follow Up Directorate. |
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