Arab journalists confront Powell
BAGHDAD -- Calling the US occupation of Iraq a "failure," about two dozen Arab journalists walked out of US Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's press conference here yesterday to protest the killing of two television reporters by US troops on Thursday.
An Iraqi journalist interrupted the beginning of Powell's remarks with a controlled but angry speech, which marred the secretary's surprise visit to the Iraqi capital timed to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the war.
"The security situation in Iraq has become tragic," said Najem al-Rubaie, a journalist with The Constitution, an Iraqi newspaper. All the Arab-language journalists in the room stood in silence while Rubaie addressed Powell.
"There are too many innocent victims among the Iraqi people because of the American policy that has proved a failure," he said before the journalists filed out of the room past a bank of television cameras.
Powell said the walkout was itself a potent manifestation of Iraq's newfound freedom, and expressed regret for the deaths of two journalists for the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya network, cameraman Ali Abdelaziz and correspondent Ali al-Khatib. Abdelaziz died instantly, and Khatib died yesterday in a Baghdad hospital. According to colleagues, they were shot at a US roadblock.
The soldiers were apparently firing at another car, and coalition officials said the episode is under investigation.
In a pair of briefings and during Powell's seven-hour visit, US and coalition officials tried to present a united message on the progress in Iraq since Saddam Hussein's government fell last April 9, even while bracing for a surge in attacks in the lead-up to June 30, when sovereignty will be handed over to Iraqis.
"There has been a spike in attacks on coalition forces and soft targets," Powell said, referring to attacks on civilians. "We have to shift as the enemy shifts. They move from harder targets to softer targets."
Insurgents killed two US Marines in western Iraq, military officials said yesterday, but provided no details. A First Infantry Division soldier also died after his Bradley fighting vehicle plunged into the Tigris River about 120 miles north of Baghdad.
Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, which has run Iraq since last May, said that despite the recent violence in Iraq, the effort to restore security and basic services such as electricity and water had been unexpectedly successful.
Bremer recalled landing in a shattered city last May to take charge of the US-led occupation authority in Iraq; there were few passenger cars on the streets, almost no electricity, and no Iraqi police on the job, he said.
"When I look at how far we've come in these 10 months, and a year since the war started, it's an astonishing record," he said.
He pointed to several coalition statistics that are impossible to verify: electricity production is back at prewar levels; unemployment is at half of a high of 60 percent; once-pervasive attacks against oil and electricity infrastructure are down to two a month; and 70,000 Iraqi police are working.
Still, officials warned that attacks against coalition targets and civilians would spike as the handover of power to Iraqis nears.
"There will be difficult days ahead," Powell said, pledging that coalition troops, working with a growing number of Iraqi security forces, would not back down in the face of terrorist attacks.
"We must not let anybody believe that we won't prevail," he said.
Powell stayed less than a day in Iraq and did not leave the secure Green Zone in central Baghdad where the coalition has its headquarters. He flew to Saudi Arabia before nightfall.
His visit follows a flurry of attacks against Iraqi civilian, foreign, military, and coalition targets, including repeated shelling of the Green Zone. Those attacks prompted coalition officials to renew security precautions inside their secure base this week.
Last night after 8, explosions were heard from the direction of the Green Zone.
At least three hotels frequented by foreigners were also attacked this week; seven foreigners were killed in those attacks. Violence on Thursday killed another 10.
"There's not enough concrete in the hemisphere to protect every hotel in Baghdad," Major General Martin Dempsey, the commander of US troops in Baghdad, said a day before Powell's visit.
Thanassis Cambanis can be reached at tcambanis@globe.com.
