World

Chalabi Escapes Shootout

September 1, 2004 / 6:34 PM EDT / CBS/AP

Gunmen opened fire on a convoy carrying former Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi in an apparent assassination attempt that wounded two of his bodyguards, Chalabi's spokesman said. Meanwhile, talks to end fighting between U.S. forces and Shiite militants in the Baghdad slum of Sadr City have stalled.

Chalabi's convoy was attacked in southern Baghdad at about 7:30 a.m. as he returned from the holy city of Najaf, said spokesman Mithal al-Alusi.

"The doctor (Chalabi) is in good health. He is safe but two of his bodyguards were injured," al-Alusi said.

Chalabi, a one-time Pentagon favorite who fell out of favor with the United States, returned to Iraq from Iran earlier this month to face counterfeiting charges.

In other recent developments:

Seven employees of a Kuwaiti trucking company who had been kidnapped in Iraq are free and headed to Kuwait, a company spokeswoman told The Associated Press Wednesday. The three Kenyans, three Indians and one Egyptian were abducted July 21. The kidnappers had repeatedly changed their demands and extended deadlines set for killing the seven.

Thousands of protesters ransacked a mosque and clashed with police in the Nepalese capital on Wednesday to protest the killing of 12 Nepalese hostages by Iraqi militants. "We want revenge," demonstrators shouted as they stormed the Jama mosque — the only Muslim house of worship in Katmandu. They broke windows and set fire to carpets, furniture and parts of the building, which was empty at the time.

In Baghdad, several mortar rounds exploded near the convention center where delegates to Iraq's new National Council met for the first time Wednesday inside the heavily guarded Green Zone, wounding one person, the U.S. military said.

In Mosul, gunmen shot and killed three Iraqi women who worked at a U.S. base in northern Iraq and a mortar barrage killed another civilian, police said. The three women were killed late Tuesday as they were returning home from the base in Mosul, said police 1st Lt. Ziyad Mahmoud Danoun. It was not immediately known what jobs they held there. A fourth woman in the vehicle escaped unharmed, Danoun said.

A warrant issued by an Iraqi court accused him of counterfeiting old Iraqi dinars, which were removed from circulation after the ouster of Saddam Hussein last year. Chalabi denies the allegations, saying he collected the fake currency in his role as chairman of the Governing Council's finance committee.

Despite the warrant, the Iraqi Interior Ministry has said it won't arrest Chalabi until unspecified legal issues are cleared up, leaving him free to move around the country.

Chalabi's nephew, Salem Chalabi — who heads the special tribunal in charge of trying ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein — faces separate murder charges.

The Sadr City talks broke down when the Iraqi government refused militant demands for American troops to keep out of the troubled district, officials said Wednesday.

Naim al-Kaabi, a spokesman for rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, said a tentative agreement was initially reached Monday with government negotiators on a six-point proposal that would have barred American troops from entering Sadr City without Iraqi government permission.

But on Tuesday, government negotiators backpedaled, expressing concern that such a deal would incite residents of other Baghdad neighborhoods or Iraqi cities to also call for restrictions on the movement of U.S. troops, al-Kaabi said.

Iraqi government officials declined to comment on the issue.

Maj. Phil Smith, an Army spokesman for the Baghdad-based 1st Cavalry Division, said U.S. commanders were not involved in any talks and that as far as he was aware, "no agreement has been reached."

Al-Kaabi said that al-Sadr representatives were willing to hold further talks to reach an accord and had issued a proposal that would allow U.S. troops to enter Sadr City without government approval only if they were going there to carry out reconstruction work. He said he hoped to receive an answer from the government later Wednesday.

U.S. forces and al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia have clashed sporadically in Sadr City since the firebrand cleric launched an uprising in April.

On Saturday, fighting in the slum killed 10 people and wounded 126, the Health Ministry said. Since then, however, the impoverished district has been calm. On Monday, al-Sadr's aides said the cleric called his followers across Iraq to end fighting against U.S. and Iraqi forces.

The latest developments in Sadr City came after Friday's peace deal in the southern holy city of Najaf that ended three weeks of fighting between the Mahdi Army militia and U.S. and Iraqi forces. The agreement was brokered by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's top Shiite Muslim cleric.