Irate Iraq premier backs off

Keep away from politics, he tells army

Syrian Kurdish peshmerga fighters help a sick Yazidi woman to a clinic Tuesday inside a Syrian refugee camp where she and other Iraqi refugees have landed after escaping Iraq with the aid of the fi ghters. An Iraqi military helicopter ferrying aid to refugees stranded in northern Iraq crashed, killing the pilot.
Syrian Kurdish peshmerga fighters help a sick Yazidi woman to a clinic Tuesday inside a Syrian refugee camp where she and other Iraqi refugees have landed after escaping Iraq with the aid of the fi ghters. An Iraqi military helicopter ferrying aid to refugees stranded in northern Iraq crashed, killing the pilot.

BAGHDAD -- Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki appeared to back away Tuesday from an implied threat to use force to stay in power, issuing a statement saying the army should stay out of politics.

Al-Maliki had reacted angrily Monday to the Iraqi president's decision to nominate a different Shiite political figure to be prime minister in his place. He decried the step as unconstitutional, threatened court action and complained that the United States was scheming to oust him. He also deployed special security units in Baghdad, raising the specter of a coup.

But he appeared to soften his stance Tuesday in the face of growing opposition to his continued rule.

Iran, a Shiite powerhouse and longtime supporter of al-Maliki's, rallied behind the president's choice for prime minister, Haider al-Ibadi, as a badly needed unifying figure in the face of an insurgency by Sunni militants of the Islamic State extremist group.

The secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani, congratulated al-Ibadi during a meeting of Iranian ambassadors, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry said Iran "supports all the steps taken in line with completing the political process in Iraq," referring to the general election in April and the subsequent choices of a new president, parliament speaker and now prime minister.

photo

AP

Displaced Yazidis from Iraq reach for food Tuesday at a refugee camp inside Syria, where they were taken with the help of Syrian Kurdish fighters who rescued them from the Sinjar mountains in northern Iraq.

U.S. President Barack Obama's administration, which has sent warplanes to strike the Sunni militants in northern and western Iraq, also has been pressuring al-Maliki to step aside.

Obama and his top aide congratulated al-Ibadi on Monday and exhorted him to quickly form an inclusive government that would depart from al-Maliki's polarizing policies, which have alienated many Sunni Arabs, Kurds and other members of minority groups.

Al-Maliki's office released a statement on his website Tuesday that said: "Prime Minister Maliki urges commanders, officers and individuals to stay away from the political crisis and to commit to their military and security duties and tasks to protect the country, and not to intervene in this crisis. Leave this issue to the people, politicians and justice."

Shortly after the statement was released, al-Maliki appeared on state television, sitting around a table with his military commanders, where he delivered the same message.

Al-Maliki did not back away from the threat of a legal challenge to the nomination of al-Ibadi, a lawmaker from al-Maliki's Shiite Islamist Dawa Party. Al-Maliki has said he has a legal right to make the first attempt at forming a new government, because his bloc won the most seats in recent elections.

And he raised the specter of further unrest by saying Sunni militants or Shiite militiamen might put on military uniforms and try to take control of the streets on the pretext of supporting him. He warned against such actions.

"This is not allowed because those people, wearing army uniforms and in military vehicles, might take advantage of the situation and move around and make things worse," he told the senior army and police commanders.

Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurdish politician who formerly served as foreign minister in al-Maliki's government, said military commanders in Baghdad "have assured the president and prime minister-designate that they will not take sides, that they will abide by the constitution and they will support democratic institutions in the country."

"Also Shiite armed militias made similar pledges that they will not undermine the security of the people," Zebari said.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday that he welcomed the formation of a new government "acceptable to all components of Iraqi society," and he also warned against the Iraqi military taking sides in the political dispute.

"It is imperative that the security forces refrain from intervening in the political process," Ban said.

More U.S. aid

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday urged al-Ibadi to work quickly to form an inclusive government and said the U.S. is prepared to offer it significant additional aid in the fight against Islamic State militants.

"Without any question, we are prepared to consider additional political, economic and security options as Iraq starts to build a new government," Kerry said. He added that the assistance would be "very much calculated to try to help stabilize the security situation, expand economic development and strengthen democratic institutions."

The U.S. has already increased its role in fighting the Islamic State militant group, which has threatened the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq. The airstrikes, which began Friday, have reinvigorated Iraqi Kurdish forces.

On Tuesday, a U.S. drone destroyed a militant mortar position threatening Kurdish forces defending refugees in the Sinjar area near the Syrian border.

In Washington, Lt. Gen. William Mayville, the director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the 15 targeted strikes have slowed the Islamic State's advance but done little to degrade the militants' capacity as a fighting force.

"In the immediate areas where we've focused our strikes we've had a very temporary effect," Mayville said. "I in no way want to suggest that we have effectively contained, or that we are somehow breaking the momentum of the threat posed by" the Islamic State group.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Tuesday that 130 U.S. troops arrived in Iraq, in addition to the 250 already functioning as military advisers in the country. He referred to the 130 as "assessors."

"This is not a combat boots on the ground kind of operation," Hagel said.

Another defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the extra troops are Marines and special operations forces whose mission is to assess the situation in the Sinjar area and to develop additional humanitarian assistance options. Another official said the mission for the 130 troops could last less than a week.

U.S. allies also announced modest military steps Tuesday in support of the U.S. effort in northern Iraq.

David Johnston, the Australian defense minister, said his country would drop humanitarian aid by air to thousands of civilians from the Yazidi religious group who have been besieged on Mount Sinjar. British officials said the Royal Air Force would deploy a "small number" of Tornado aircraft to carry out surveillance missions in support of the airdrop mission.

The decision to use the planes to improve reconnaissance followed an episode in which a British airdrop was aborted at the last minute because the pilots feared the loads could injure those waiting on the ground.

"We are providing humanitarian assistance," the British foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, said Monday. "This is not simple -- getting it in is very challenging, getting people off that mountain is even more challenging."

Militants from the Islamic State have targeted the Kurdish speaking Yazidis, who practice an ancient Mesopotamian faith, as well as Christians and other members of minority groups.

France and Britain also stepped up support Tuesday for thousands of people fleeing the Islamic militants in northern Iraq, pledging more airdrops, money, and equipment to ease suffering and bolster fighters battling the Sunni insurgents.

Britain fast-tracked $5 million in aid. The European Union said it wants to "bring vital assistance to hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians trapped by the fighting" and was increasing its aid by $7 million for a total of about $23 million this year.

EU Aid Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva said the funding will help "vulnerable Iraqis, including the minority groups besieged in the mountains of Sinjar" and the communities hosting a growing number of refugees.

There were also moves to help local forces fend off the Sunni insurgents. Britain said it had agreed to transport critical military supplies for the Kurdish forces "from other contributing states" so they can protect the refugees from the militants. It didn't specify what kind of supplies or which states would supply them.

France pressed the European Union to arm outgunned Kurdish fighters, known as peshmerga, an idea backed by Britain and the Czech Republic. Germany said it planned to send vehicles, night-vision gear and bomb detectors to the Iraqi government, which could then pass them to the Kurds.

"On the one side, this horrible terrorist group of the Islamic State has advanced weapons that they took from the Iraqi army on the way, and on the other side are the peshmerga, who are extremely brave but don't have the same resources," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told France Info radio on Tuesday. "We could stand by and say, 'There's nothing we can do,' but that is not our position."

Helicopter crashes

Also Tuesday, a helicopter carrying aid from Iraq's Kurdish government to the Yazidi refugees crashed Tuesday, killing the pilot and injuring other passengers, including a Yazidi member of the parliament and a New York Times journalist.

Alissa Rubin, 56, the Times' Paris bureau chief and a longtime war correspondent, apparently suffered a concussion, at least one broken wrist and possibly some broken ribs but was reported to be conscious. Adam Ferguson, 35, a freelance photographer working for the Times who was accompanying Rubin, said via text message that he suffered some minor bumps.

The Russian-made helicopter, with a four-person crew of peshmerga fighters, had just delivered emergency aid and picked up 20 to 25 Yazidi evacuees when it crashed shortly after it took off from the remote mountainous region, Ferguson said. The aircraft landed upside down and survivors had to crawl out of the wreckage, he said.

Fouad Hussein, the chief of staff for the president of the Kurdistan region, Massoud Barzani, said two rescue helicopters later took the survivors to safety at a peshmerga base. Ferguson said the aircraft might have been overloaded, but Hussein attributed the crash to an accidental loss of control by the pilot when the aircraft hit a boulder as it was lifting off.

Meanwhile, officials said that for the past few days, Syrian Kurdish fighters had been rescuing Yazidis from the mountain, transporting them into Syrian territory to give them first aid, food and water, and returning some to Iraq via a pontoon bridge.

The U.N. initially estimated that about 50,000 Yazidis fled to the mountain. But by Sunday, Kurdish officials said at least 45,000 had crossed through the safe passage to Syria, leaving thousands more behind and suggesting the number of stranded was higher.

Syrian Kurdish officials said they began fighting to create a safe passage soon after the Yazidis fled their villages. The Syrians clashed with Islamic State fighters upon entering Iraq, losing at least nine fighters, but by Thursday had secured a safe valley passage, cramming Yazidis into jeeps, trucks and cars to take them some 25 miles away. Some of the ill were rushed to the hospital.

"We answered their cries for help. They were in danger and we opened a safe passage for them into safety," said military official Omar Ali. "We saw that we had to help them and protect them; they are Kurds and part of our nation."

Iraq's Kurds, who have managed a self-ruled territory for more than two decades, are dominated by factions that have built up strong ties with neighboring Turkey. Syria's Kurds, however, are closer to longtime Turkish Kurdish rebels and until the 2011 uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad were firmly under his control.

"The [Syrian Kurds] opened a path for us. If they had not, we would still be stranded on the mountain," said Ismail Rashu, 22, in the Newroz camp in the Syrian town of Malikiya some 20 miles from the Iraqi border.

Information for this article was contributed by Tim Arango, Rick Gladstone, Michael R. Gordon, Alan Cowell and Thomas Erdbrink of The New York Times; by Vivian Salama, Sameer N. Yacoub, Sinan Salaheddin, Adam Schreck, Edith M. Lederer, Juergen Baetz, Matthew Lee, Julie Pace, Nedra Pickler, Robert Burns, Lara Jakes, Ken Dilanian, Bradley Klapper, Lolita C. Baldor, Danica Kirka, Frank Jordans, Lori Hinnant, Pablo Gorondi, Diaa Hadid, Bassem Mroue and Vanessa Gera of The Associated Press.

A Section on 08/13/2014

Upcoming Events