The US military said on Tuesday it will shortly withdraw 3,500 soldiers who were deployed in Iraq as part of the controversial “surge“ in February last year.
According to AFP, soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division will return to their base in Fort Benning in Georgia “in the next several weeks,“ the military said in a statement.
The return of the troops is in line with a US plan to complete a withdrawal of the 30,000 “surge“ troops deployed since February last
year to curb an increase in sectarian violence in Iraq.

More Elite Troops Needed
Meanwhile, even as the overall US force in Iraq shrinks, the number of elite troops known as special operations forces is likely to grow, the US military’s top command told The Associated Press on Monday.
More of these specially trained, often secretive forces may be required in Iraq in order to fill a niche role in the development of Iraqi security forces as the number of conventional Army troops goes down, Adm. Eric T. Olson, commander of US Special Operations Command, said in an interview.
The total US force in Iraq of about 158,000 troops--including about 5,000 special operations troops--is scheduled to drop to about 40,000 by the end of July as two more Army combat brigades leave. Without offering a prediction, Olson said the need for elite troops is likely to go up.
In addition to their role in training Iraqi soldiers and police, US special operations forces perform small-scale raids, long-range reconnaissance and other secretive operations in search of Al-Qaeda and other terrorist suspects. They also work quietly with Iraqi tribal leaders to undermine the insurgency.

US soldiers head forward with Iraqi soldiers during a joint air assault operation in Al-Rudwaniyah southwest of Baghdad on May 2.

Olson made it clear he is not seeking a bigger role for special operations forces. In fact his forces already are so heavily engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan that they are unable to fully perform their traditional mission in other parts of the world. To illustrate that point, Olson said that when the 7th Special Forces Group, whose normal area of focus is Latin America, rotates into Afghanistan for seven-month tours, it takes two of its three battalions there, leaving just one in Latin America.

Contractors Accused in Torture Suit
Employees from US military contractors helped torture Iraqi civilians detained at Abu Ghraib prison five years ago, according to a federal lawsuit filed in Los Angeles on Monday, AFP
reported.
Lawyers for Emad Al-Janabi said the 43-year-old blacksmith and other prisoners were subjected to months of abuse while being held at the notorious Baghdad jail following his arrest in September 2003.
Al-Janabi was later released without charge in July 2004.
According to the lawsuit, Al-Janabi was subjected to physical and mental torture which included being shown a mock execution of his brother and nephew, being repeatedly deprived of food and sleep and threatened with dogs.
The lawsuit is lodged against defense contractors CACI International Inc, CACI Premier Technology, L-3 Communications Titan Corporation, and former CACI contractor Stephen Stefanowicz.
The complaint alleges that CACI provided interrogators used at Abu Ghraib and that Titan Corp, now owned by L-3, employed translators at the detention facility. Al-Janabi and other Abu Ghraib detainees are being represented by lawyers from the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Insurgents attacked an Iraqi army checkpoint in Diyala province north of Baghdad on Monday, killing 10 soldiers, the US military said.
It blamed Al-Qaeda “terrorists“ for the attack, in which another 13 soldiers were wounded, AFP reported.
An Iraqi security official said the victims had their heads cut off after the shooting.
“After killing the soldiers, the gunmen beheaded them,“ the official from Baquba in Diyala province said on condition of anonymity. He said the attack took place at around 7:00 pm.

Women Suicide Attackers Spike
As many women carried out suicide attacks in Iraq so far this year as in the five previous years combined, and attacks by women are expected to spike again in the coming months, a US terrorism expert said.
“Between January and April, there were 12 suicide attacks by women in Iraq. That marks an exponential increase,“ Farhana Ali, a US international policy analyst of Pakistani origin, told AFP after a symposium on terrorism at the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting in Washington.
Twelve women carried out suicide attacks in Iraq in the first few months of this year compared with 11 between 2003 and 200 7.
“So long as this conflict continues, you will see greater instability in Iraq and women will be greatly victimized--you will see more women in Iraq choose suicide terrorism in the next few months,“ she predicted, adding that she had warned US officials and policy makers of the threat since 2005.

Hamas security forces patrol the streets of Gaza, May 5.

The international community’s policy to weaken Hamas has failed and should be reevaluated, two leading EU diplomats have said.
The blockade imposed on Gaza is not fulfilling its objectives of weakening Hamas and is just causing great suffering to the civilian population of the strip, European Union Ambassador to Israel Ramiro Cibrian-Uzal said Monday.
“We need to think about alternative policies, because this has not been successful. This is important to recognize,“ he added, Presstv reported.
Meanwhile, European Commission representative John Kjaer also stated that the closure of the crossings into Gaza had been counterproductive.
Both envoys maintained that there would be no EU contacts with Hamas until the organization accepted the Quartet’s three conditions for engagement: recognizing Israel’s right to exist, renouncing terrorism, and accepting previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements.
Since the Islamic movement Hamas took power in the Gaza Strip nearly a year ago, the Zionist regime has held a tight grip on the Gazans, allowing a slim aid inflow into the impoverished region.
The severe shortage of necessities in Gaza from food and water to fuel and medication has sounded alarms over a humanitarian crisis unfolding in the densely-populated strip.

7 Palestinians Wounded
Seven Palestinians have reportedly been wounded in a clash between PA security forces and Palestinian activists in the occupied West Bank.
The clash erupted in Qabatiya, south of the city of Jenin, when the security forces fired at the activists ’massively and indiscriminately’, Israeli Ynetnews quoted the residents as saying on Tuesday.
Ahmad Kamil, one of the injured civilians, who sustained critical wounds, is reportedly in a state of brain death.
Two Islamic Jihad activists were also wounded in the attack, the sources said.

UN Receives Fuel
The UN relief operation in Gaza said it has received enough fuel from Israel to continue working for the next 20 days, AP reported.
UN spokesman Chris Gunness said Monday it was disgrace that his organization would be deprived of fuel.
On Sunday he said tanks were empty.
Gaza residents rely on Israel for all their fuel. The army said it had to stop transferring fuel on Sunday.
About 860,000 of Gaza’s 1.5 million people receive aid from the UN.
The economic situation has worsened since Israel closed crossings and cut off most supplies in June.
Egypt has been trying to broker a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, but the efforts have not yielded results so far.

Unfulfilled Promise
In other news, Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told the Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas in a meeting Monday that he understands the Palestinians need to see their lives improve if peacemaking is to succeed and pledged to take tangible steps, officials said, AP reported.
The meetings between Olmert and Abbas have produced few obvious results since peace talks were resumed last year.
The negotiations are meant to solve the most contentious issues in the decades-old conflict, including borders, Palestinian refugees and the dispute over Beit-ul-Muqaddas.
Abbas aides said the Palestinian president is giving the negotiations two or three months to produce progress and will consider resigning if he believes the talks have failed.
They spoke on condition of anonymity because Abbas has not yet made a final decision.
Palestinians want all of the West Bank--which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East War--as part of their state, but are ready to give up nearly 2 percent of the territory in exchange for an equal amount of land from what is now known as the illegitimate regime of Israel.

In a bid by the two major parties to prevent November’s presidential election from being turned into a referendum on the war in Iraq, the Bush administration and the Democratic leadership in Congress are both working to craft new war funding legislation that would pay for the fighting to continue at the present level well past January, when the next president takes office.
According to media reports, the congressional Democrats are still debating howÑnot ifÑthey will approve the money needed to continue the ongoing wars against the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Last Friday, President Bush formally submitted a detailed request for a $70 billion “bridge“ appropriation that would fund the wars from the beginning of the next fiscal year in October 2008 through the spring of 2009. This comes on top of the $108 billion that the administration has requested for the current fiscal year.
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, the new spending bills would bring the total amount approved by Congress to pay for the two wars since their inception to $875 billion.
While the congressional leadership had projected that legislation could be introduced as early as this week and wrapped up before the Memorial Day recess, key Democrats have indicated that the process may not prove that speedy.
Representative Steny Hoyer, the Democratic House majority leader, said he thought it was unlikely that a vote on the measure would come this week as initially anticipated.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Democrat of Nevada) said that there was no certainty that Congress would meet the Memorial Day deadline and insisted that it did not really matter. “We will do best to finish this by the Memorial Day break,“ Reid said. “But if we don’t, it’s no big deal, there is money there.“ The Pentagon, he noted, has adequate funding to pay for the war into June.
Apparently at issue is a disagreement between House and Senate Democratic leaders about how far they should take the political charade that is organized each time the war spending measures come up. The aim of this exercise is to allow Democratic legislators to posture as war opponents, while assuring that the necessary votes are forthcoming to pass the legislation paying for the wars.
According to the Associated Press, House Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey “are pushing to avoid a veto“ by Bush, while the Senate leadership is more willing to drag the process out.

Pelosi’s Point
“We would rather just save time and get it over with right from the start,“ Pelosi told Capitol Hill reporters last Thursday.
Pelosi reportedly is proposing to organize a separate vote on a troop withdrawal amendmentÑrather than writing it into the funding legislation itselfÑand is attempting to short circuit any consideration and debate within the relevant congressional committees.
In a May 3 article on the dilemma facing the congressional Democratic leaders, the Wall Street Journal cited their fear that they “could seem insensitive to the military if they push too hard to add their spending priorities to the measure.“ At the same time, the Journal noted that “they also could frustrate their vocal antiwar base if they cave in too readily to White House demands.“
Such is the political tightrope upon which Pelosi, Reid and their Senate and House colleagues are performing. They are committed to passing the war spending measure, out of fear that they could be tarred as weak on national security and accused of failing to “support our troops.“ At the same time, they want to carry out this support for the war in a way that does not appear to “cave in too readily“ to the White House, so as to preserve the illusions of those who still look to the Democrats as some kind of antiwar alternative to the policies of the Bush administration.
Pelosi has promised to introduce language that would tie domestic spending initiatives, such as a 13-week extension of unemployment benefits and a new college benefits package for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, to the war spending bill.
These add-ons are being proposed with the knowledge that the White House will threaten a veto unless they are removed. The intention, congressional Democrats have indicated, is to thereby “expose“ the Republicans as placing a greater priority on continuing the war than on solving social needs at home.
In the end, however, the Democrats will act to approve legislation based on these same priorities. “The leadership has decided to avoid a confrontation,“ a senior Senate aide told the Wall Street Journal. “It’s a strategic decision to avoid picking a fight where he [Bush] wants to pick a fight.“
The strategy of the Democratic leadership has the effect of diverting the debate over the Iraq war away from any consideration of the criminal character of the war itself into one over budgetary priorities and processes, in which the Bush administration will inevitably take the offensive, accusing the Democrats of larding up a military spending bill with non-military appropriations.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s office has called local media reports about his ruling Justice and Development (AK) party’s planned response to a bid to close it down “untrue“.
A leading broadcaster and national newspaper had claimed that Erdogan would form a new party if the constitutional court shuts his existing one down, Aljazeera reported.
The case could see 71 members of the AK party, including Erdogan, banned from politics for five years.
Kanal D, a Turkish broadcaster, reported on Monday that Erdogan also said that if he was personally banned, he would call elections and run as an independent candidate.
The broadcaster said he disclosed the information to a group of journalists at a dinner on Saturday evening.
The statement from Erdogan’s office read “the stories do not reflect the exact truth in terms of the contents of the conversation, the nature of the invitation and the list of invitees.“
The prime minister was quoted in Vatan newspaper as saying the Turkish economy could not cope with an extended court process, so the case would be completed in July.
It also quoted him as saying he did not expect the court to actually shut the party down and that he would not seek constitutional changes to avert the closure.
Last week, the AK party submitted its preliminary defense in the case.