Sadr ministers quit Iraqi cabinet

Moqtada Sadr's political group has six cabinet ministers

The head of Moqtada Sadr's Iraqi parliament bloc says the radical cleric has ordered his ministers to withdraw from the cabinet.

Mr Sadr's bloc, which has six cabinet ministers, is trying to press Prime Minister Nouri Maliki to set a timetable for a US troop withdrawal.

Mr Maliki has refused, saying a pullout depends on conditions on the ground.

Analysts say Mr Sadr holds great power among Iraq's Shia majority, but the unity government is likely to survive.

Last week, hundreds of thousands of people attended a rally in the Shia city
of Najaf organised by Mr Sadr to protest against the continued presence of US-led troops in Iraq.

Mr Sadr did not appear at the rally in person. US officials say he has fled to Iran, but aides say he is still in Iraq.

Popular will

Sadr parliamentary bloc leader Nassar Rubaie announced the move at a news conference in Baghdad, attended by allies from the bloc.

"Considering the public interest, we found that it was necessary to issue an order to the ministers of the Sadr bloc to immediately withdraw from the Iraqi government," he said, reading a statement from Mr Sadr.

"The six ministries shall be handed over to the government itself, hoping that this government would give these responsibilities to independent bodies who wish to serve the interests of the people and the country."

Mr Sadr's bloc has 32 lawmakers in the country's 275-member government.

The BBC's Jim Muir in Baghdad said the decision to quit did not come as surprise, and was not being seen as an attempt to bring down the government.

The gesture of calling for independent technocrats was welcomed in a statement from Mr Maliki, who also said he appreciated the Sadr movement's support for the political process.

While it has withdrawn from the cabinet, the Sadr group has not left the governing coalition.

Our correspondent says Mr Sadr's decision appears to have been triggered primarily by the government's failure to heed the Najaf demonstration.

Late last year Mr Sadr's bloc staged a two-month boycott of parliament to protest against the continuing closeness of the relationship between Mr Maliki and the US administration.

Fresh protests

Mr Sadr's Mehdi Army militia has been described by the US as the greatest threat to security in Iraq.

Before Mr Sadr entered mainstream politics the Mehdi Army launched two uprisings against US-led foreign forces in Iraq.

Separately on Monday, about 3,000 people marched through the centre of Basra demanding the resignation of the provincial governor.

The protesters accuse Muhammad al-Waili of corruption and say he has failed to improve the supplies of essential services including power and water.

Mr Maliki had asked for the demonstration to be called off, saying complaints about the governor should be dealt with through the democratic process not through street protests.

Mr Waili accuses organisers of march of being a front for political foes, including radical Mr Sadr's militia.

MOQTADA SADR

Age: Early 30s

Youngest son of influential cleric Muhammad Sadiq Sadr (assassinated in 1999)

Formed Mehdi Army in 2003

Joined main Shia coalition in 2005, but periodically withdrew over its close ties with US

Profile: Moqtada Sadr

Analysis: Sadr ups pressure

Bush Repeats Call for War Funding Bill Without Conditions

President Bush meets with opposition leaders who control Congress Wednesday over differences blocking additional funding for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. VOA White House Correspondent Scott Stearns reports, Democrats want a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

President Bush says he will veto legislation passed by Democrats in the House and Senate because he says it undercuts American troops.

"They passed bills that would impose restrictions on our military commanders and set an arbitrary date for withdrawal from Iraq, giving our enemies the victory they desperately want," he said.

Both votes were close, making it highly unlikely Democrats will find the two-thirds majority needed to override the promised veto.

President Bush says Democrats are trying to score political points, so they should send him the bill quickly so he can veto it and get legislators back to working on a new bill without timetables for troop withdrawals.

Democrats say it is President Bush who is politicizing the war by accusing them of under funding troops when their legislation approves all the money he is asking for. Democrats say that when voters elected Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate last year, it was a mandate to push for a new direction in Iraq.

President Bush says he is changing course with a surge of additional U.S. troops, but that the strategy needs time to work. The Bush administration broadened its campaign for additional funding this past week with Washington appearances by both the Iraqi Ambassador and the Iraqi government spokesman.

White House officials say Wednesday's meeting with Congressional Democrats is not a negotiation because the president will never accept a timetable for troop withdrawal.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer says Democrats welcome a discussion with the president on Iraq that has no preconditions. But in a written statement, Hoyer said Democrats will not rubber-stamp what he calls the president's "failing, stay-the-course strategy" in Iraq.

U.S. is extending tours of army in battle zones

By David S. Cloud

WASHINGTON: The United States military announced Wednesday that most active duty army units now in Iraq and Afghanistan and those sent in the future would serve 15-month tours, three months longer than the standard one-year tour.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who announced the change at a news conference at the Pentagon, said that the only other way to maintain force levels would have been to allow many soldiers less than a year at home between combat tours.

Gates said the problem was evident even before President George W. Bush ordered an increase in troops for Iraq this year. Officials said the change became inevitable as the numbers of extra troops that were needed — and, most likely, the time the extra forces would have to stay — increased.

"This policy is a difficult but necessary interim step," he said. "Our forces are stretched, there's no question about that."

Democrats in Congress and outside military experts said the prolonged combat assignments risked damage to morale, possibly undermining recruiting and retention efforts. Tens of thousands of soldiers are facing their third tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and casualties have continued to mount inexorably.

"This new policy will be an additional burden to an already overstretched army," said Representative Ike Skelton, a Missouri Democrat and the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. "I think this will have a chilling effect on recruiting, retention, and readiness."

Among soldiers in the field and their families, speaking in interviews and in postings on the Internet, reactions to the announcement varied — some of them stoical, some distraught, some grim and some sardonic. Gates said no decision had been made about how long beyond August to extend reinforcements in Iraq. The total force is around 145,000 and is building toward around 160,000 by early summer. Active-duty army troops currently total around 79,000 in Iraq and around 18,000 in Afghanistan, along with an additional 7,000 soldiers in Kuwait, who would also be covered by the new policy. The tours of Marine units, which typically are shorter and more frequent, are not being extended; nor are the tours of brigades whose time has already been extended under previous changes to their orders.

Army National Guard or Army Reserves are supposed to be mobilized for no more than a year at a time, including nine months in Iraq or Afghanistan, under a policy announced by Gates in January.

By ordering longer tours for all other army units, the Pentagon will be able to maintain the current force levels for another year and still give soldiers a full year to rest, retrain and re-equip before having to go back to Iraq or Afghanistan, Gates said.

The new policy calls for soldiers to receive a minimum of one year at home between tours, he said.

Word of the extensions reached the American military command post in Juwayba, Iraq, in a rural area east of Ramadi, overnight when a sergeant spotted it while surfing the Internet. It was greeted with a mixture of anger and resignation among the few soldiers who were still awake. "We're just laughing," said Captain Brice Cooper, 26, the executive officer of Company B, First Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment of the First Infantry Division. He was chuckling nervously, his frustration palpable. "It's so unbelievable, it's humorous."

The soldiers crowded around the outpost's few computers, sending e-mail messages to their families and parsing Gates's words in the hope of finding possible loopholes that would exclude them from the extension. The unit was scheduled to return to its base in Germany in June. The extension meant it would probably have to stay here until September.

"I'm fixing to lose my girlfriend," one soldier grumbled.

Though the tours of some army units have been extended beyond 12 months in recent years as troop levels have fluctuated, those extensions were always done on an ad-hoc basis. Gates said the 15-month tours for all active-duty units would be a more equitable and predictable approach.

Early in the war in Iraq, the Pentagon's goal was for active-duty troops to spend two years at home for every year deployed. Eventually, Gates said, the army would like to return to that pattern. That will have to await either a reduction in overall force levels or an increase in the size of the military, which has been set in motion but will take years to accomplish.

William Nash, a retired army major general now at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that keeping units in Iraq longer might help counterinsurgency operations, by allowing troops more time to become familiar with areas where they were operating.

But he said that a soldier on his third tour who spent 18 months in Iraq would have spent more time in a combat zone than many did during World War II. Though recruiting and retention numbers generally have been strong, he predicted that many soldiers would decide to end their military careers, either before or after their next tours in Iraq.

"It has to have an impact on retention," Nash said. "I don't know how much, whether it's 2 percent or 20 percent, but it will have an impact."

Senator Joseph Biden Jr., a Democrat from Delaware and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, noted that the army was facing problems keeping junior and midcareer officers.

In a statement, he said: "Recent graduates of West Point are choosing to leave active-duty service at the highest rate in more than three decades. This administration's policies are literally driving out some of our best young officers. Instead of escalating the war with no end in sight, we have to start bringing it to a responsible conclusion."

The decision to prolong rotations comes at the same time as Congress and the White House are in a sustained fight over Democrats' efforts to set deadline for beginning troop withdrawals from Iraq, a confrontation that showed no signs of easing on Wednesday. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said Democrats would not back away from their insistence that a withdrawal date be included in the Iraq spending bill being sorted out between the House and the Senate.

Reid and the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, invited the president to the Capitol on Friday to meet with Democrats and Republicans on the Iraq spending bill. Their invitation came a day after the president asked congressional leaders to come to the White House next week, which was greeted with a cool response by Democrats.

Reid said the president was detached from the realities on the ground in Iraq.

"The president is as isolated, I believe, on the Iraq issue as Richard Nixon was when he was hunkered down in the White House," Reid said Wednesday.

2 dead after bomb rocks Iraqi parliament building

Thursday, April 12, 2007

The Associated Press

A bomb rocked Iraq's parliament building in the heavily fortified Green Zone Thursday, killing at least two lawmakers in a stunning security breach in the third month of a U.S.-Iraqi crackdown on violence in the capital, officials said.

At least four other people were wounded in the blast, which shook a cafeteria while several lawmakers were eating lunch, initial media reports said.

Mohammed Awad, a member of the Sunni National Dialogue Front, was killed in the blast, said Saleh al-Mutlaq, the leader of the party, which holds 11 seats in Iraq's legislature. Another female Sunni lawmaker from the same list was wounded, he said.

A security official at the parliament building said a second lawmaker, a Shia member, also was killed. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Apparently concerned that an attack might take place, security officials at the parliament were using sniffer dogs earlier Thursday as people entered the building — a rare precaution.

A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, which is also in the Green Zone, said no Americans were injured in the blast.

"We are aware of reports of an explosion in the Green Zone. We are investigating the nature and source of the explosion," spokesman Lou Fintor said. "No Embassy employees or U.S. citizens were affected."

The attack came hours after a suicide truck bomb exploded on a major bridge in Baghdad, collapsing the steel structure and sending cars tumbling into the Tigris River below, police and witnesses said. At least 10 people were killed.

Hospital officials said another 26 were injured, and police were trying to rescue as many as 20 people whose cars plummeted off the al-Sarafiya bridge.

Waves lapped against twisted girders, as patrol boats searched for survivors while U.S. helicopters whirred overhead. Scuba divers donned flippers and waded in from the riverbanks.

Farhan al-Sudani, a 34-year-old Shia businessman who lives near the bridge, said the blast woke him at dawn.

"A huge explosion shook our house and I thought it would demolish our house. Me and my wife jumped immediately from our bed, grabbed our three kids and took them outside," he said.

The al-Sarafiya bridge connected two northern Baghdad neighborhoods — Waziriyah, a mostly Sunni enclave, and Utafiyah, a Shia area.

Police blamed the attack on a suicide truck bomber, but Associated Press Television News footage showed the bridge broken apart in two places — perhaps the result of two blasts.

Cement pilings that support the steel structure were left crumbling. At the base of one lay a charred vehicle engine, believed to be that of the truck bomb.

"We were astonished more when we saw the extent of damage," said Ahmed Abdul-Karim, 45, who also lives near the bridge. "I was standing in my garden and I saw the smoke and flying debris."

Locals said the al-Sarafiya bridge is believed to be at least 75 years old, built by the British in the early part of the 20th century.

"It is one of Baghdad's monuments. This is really damaging for Iraq. We are losing a lot of our history every day," Abdul-Karim said.

The al-Sarafiya bridge has a duplicate in Fallujah that was built later and made infamous in March 2004, when angry mobs hung the charred bodies of U.S. contractors from the bridge's girders.

"This bridge is linked to Baghdad's modern history — it is one of our famous monuments," said Haider Ghazala, a 52-year-old Iraqi architect.

Civilian life in Iraq 'ever-worsening': Red Cross

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

CBC News

Iraqi civilians are forced to endure "unbearable and unacceptable" suffering in daily life in an "ever-worsening" humanitarian crisis, a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross said Wednesday.

The ICRC said it released the report because the international community has grown accustomed to hearing about the number of dead in Iraq and is becoming desensitized to the human face of the crisis.

It is difficult to determine the numbers of people killed in shootings, bombings and military operations, but the overall picture of what is happening in the country has been steadily deteriorating, with the ranks of refugees swelling, medical staff fleeing and other problems growing, said the ICRC's director of operations, Pierre Krahenbuhl.

"The suffering that Iraqi men, women and children are enduring today is unbearable and unacceptable. Their lives and dignity are continuously under threat," he said.

Security improved in some areas

Remaining neutral, the report doesn't point fingers at any group specifically for directly causing the worsening conditions. But it does say no one has done enough to protect ordinary Iraqis' lives.

"The ICRC calls on all those who can influence the situation on the ground to act now to ensure that the lives of ordinary people are spared and protected. This is an obligation under international humanitarian law for both states and non-state actors," Krahenbuhl said.

The report also acknowledges that security in some areas of Iraq has improved as a result of stepped-up efforts by U.S.-led multinational forces. But the central region, including Baghdad, remains greatly affected, despite American efforts to secure the capital.

Red Cross spokeswoman Leila Blacking told CBC News in London that four years after the U.S.-led invasion, Iraqi women told her their greatest fear was that there was no one to remove the dead bodies from the streets.

"When they got up in the morning to take their children to school, their greatest fear was that they were unable to protect their children from seeing this," she said.

Refugee crisis growing

The number of civilians being forced to flee their homes has increased significantly since the February 2006 bombing of the sacred Shia shrine of Samarra and the subsequent increase in violence, the report said.

"Thousands of Iraqis continue to be forced out of their homes owing to military operations, general poor security and the destruction of houses," it said.

'What we see on our television screens does not demonstrate even one per cent of the reality of the atrocity of Iraq today. … Things are so terrible here.'

—Andrew White, Anglican vicar of Baghdad

The report added the displacement problem in Baghdad and other areas with mixed communities is likely to worsen.

Iraqi officials informed the Red Cross that more than half of Iraq's registered doctors have fled the country just as the daily violence has stretched the health-care system to the breaking point, the ICRC's Nada Doumani told CBC News Wednesday in an interview from Jordan.

"Health-care facilities have difficulties to cope with mass casualties when you have a huge influx of wounded people," she said. "The medical staff is shrinking."

Andrew White, the Anglican vicar of Baghdad, said he agrees with the report's findings and wants to see a reduction in violence, as well the restoration of basic services such as water, electricity and food.

"What we see on our television screens does not demonstrate even one per cent of the reality of the atrocity of Iraq today," he told CBC News Wednesday.

"Things are so terrible here."

It is so dangerous for Red Cross workers to move around in Baghdad that it's impossible for the report to recreate a full picture of how bad daily life is, Krahenbuhl said.

"We're certainly not seeing an immediate effect in terms of stabilization for civilians currently," he said. "That is not our reading."

Thousands of Iraqis Gather for Anti-American Protests

VOA News

Taskforce Patriot patrols Baghdad's Mansour district

Thousands of Iraqis are gathering in Najaf for a protest Monday, on the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad to U.S. forces.

Radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr urged Iraqis Sunday to protest the U.S. presence in Iraq and demand that Iraqi security forces stop cooperating with the U.S. military.

The threat of car bomb attacks has prompted authorities to impose a 24-hour vehicle ban in Baghdad Monday and Tuesday.

A man stands among the carnage after a pickup truck loaded with artillery shells exploded in the town of Mahmoudiyah, Iraq, 08 Apr 2007

Elsewhere, the U.S. military says a car bomb attack Sunday near a hospital south of Baghdad killed 17 people and wounded 26.

Police say the blast in Mahmoudiyah was caused by a pickup truck loaded with explosives.

U.S. officials also said six American soldiers died in attacks south of Baghdad and north of the capital in Diyala and Salahuddin provinces.

Bombs in Iraq kill at least 104 in Shia areas

CBC News

Multiple suicide bombers struck predominantly Shia markets Thursday in Baghdad and north of the capital, killing at least 104 people and wounding dozens more.

Two of the suicide bombers struck a market in the Shaab neighbourhood of northeastern Baghdad at 6 p.m. local time, killing at least 61 people and wounding 40, Iraqi police and security officials said.

At about the same time, three suicide car bombers attacked a market in the town of Khalis north of Baghdad, killing at least 43 people and wounding 86, according to police and officials in the predominantly Shia town.

The first attacker in Khalis drove his explosives-laden car into the crowded area, followed in five-minute intervals by the other two bombers, who apparently were aiming at rescue crews and onlookers gathering in the aftermath, police said.

Police said the bombers came from two separate directions.

Khalis is in volatile Diyala province, where fighting has been raging among Sunni insurgents, Shia militiamen and U.S. and Iraqi troops.

It has been struck by bombings several times in recent months, most recently on Jan. 22 when a bomb followed by a mortar attack struck a market, killing at least 12 people and wounding 29, police said.

The Shaab neighbourhood of Baghdad was one of the first targets of U.S. and Iraqi soldiers searching for Shia militants and weapons in a six-week-old security sweep aimed at stopping the sectarian violence.

'I saw heads separated from the bodies'

By Ahmed Rasheed

Baghdad - Suicide bombers killed nearly 130 people in a crowded market in a Shi'a district of Baghdad and a mainly Shi'a town on Thursday, one of the bloodiest days in Iraq in months.

The upsurge in sectarian violence threatens all-out civil war and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shi'a, called for restraint and urged Iraqis to work with security forces to prevent the violence spiralling out of control. Bombs earlier this week in northern Iraq sparked mass reprisal killings.

Two suicide bombers wearing vests packed with explosives killed 76 people in a market in the Shaab district of northern Baghdad, police and medical sources said, in what appeared to be the latest of a string of attacks on Shi'a districts and towns blamed on al-Qaeda. More than 100 were wounded.

'It is impossible to tell the exact number of dead'

"It is impossible to tell the exact number of dead because we are basically counting body parts," said a health ministry official in Baghdad, who asked not to be named.

Most of the victims were women and children, who had been out shopping in the crowded market before the start of the nightly curfew, he said.

At about the same time, three suicide car bombs exploded within minutes of each other in Khalis, 80km north of Baghdad, killing 53 people and wounding 103, police said.

There has been a spike in bloodshed, particularly outside the Iraqi capital, in recent days. Violence between majority Shi'a and minority Sunnis has killed tens of thousands in the past year.

On Tuesday two truck bombs killed 85 people in a Shi'ite area of Tal Afar in northern Iraq. In the hours after those blasts Shi'ite gunmen, including police, shot dead up to 70 Sunni Arab men in reprisal.

'It was a scene of horror'

The top US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, confirmed on Thursday police appeared to have carried out "retribution killings" after the bombings, which he blamed on al-Qaeda. Iraq's Sunni vice-president urged the Shi'a-led government to do more to purge the security forces of militias.

In Khalis, one car bomb exploded in a commercial area and a second at a police checkpoint leading to the police headquarters and court building, police said. A third bomber attacked police patrols rushing to the scene.

"It was a scene of horror. There were charred bodies and human remains scattered about," said one policeman who spoke on condition of anonymity.

A survivor of the Shaab market blast in Baghdad, Wissam Hashim Ali, 27, said the market had been "very, very crowded" at the time of the blasts.

"I saw heads separated from the bodies and legs blown off," he said in hospital, where he was receiving treatment for his wounds.

Maliki's office said in a statement the prime minister condemned the bombs and called on Iraqis "not to let evil-doers have their way and to cooperate with security forces, who are determined to cleanse Iraq of terrorism".

New US Ambassador Ryan Crocker told his swearing-in ceremony that "terrorists, insurgents and militias continue to threaten security in Baghdad and around the country" and called Iraq America's "most critical foreign policy challenge".

The US Senate, after the House of Representatives, passed a war-funding bill on Thursday that sets a goal of withdrawing all US combat soldiers from Iraq within a year.

President George Bush, who has vowed to veto the measure, is sending up to 30 000 additional troops to Iraq, most of them to support a major security crackdown under way in Baghdad, epicentre of the violence.

While this crackdown has succeeded in reducing the number of deaths in the capital, violence has surged elsewhere.

Additional reporting by Dean Yates and Claudia Parsons in Baghdad.

Saudi's on U.S. in Iraq: 'illegitimate foreign occupation' (cnn.com)

Saudi's on U.S. in Iraq: 'illegitimate foreign occupation' (cnn.com)

POSTED: 0046 GMT (0846 HKT), March 29, 2007

Story Highlights

• NEW: U.S. disagrees; says forces are in Iraq legally and by Iraq's invitation
• Saudi king called U.S. presence in Iraq an "illegitimate foreign occupation"
• Saudi's quietly aided the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) -- King Abdullah's harsh -- and unexpected -- attack on the U.S. military presence in Iraq could be a Saudi attempt to signal to Washington its anger over the situation in Iraq and build credibility among fellow Arabs.

The White House, in a rare public retort Thursday, rejected the king's characterization of U.S. troops in Iraq as an "illegitimate foreign occupation," saying the United States was not in Iraq illegally.

"The United States and Saudi Arabia have a close and cooperative relationship on a wide range of issues," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said. "And when it comes to the coalition forces being in Iraq, we are there under the U.N. Security Council resolutions and at the invitation of the Iraqi people."

"We disagree with them," Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns told senators. "We were a little surprised to see those remarks."

The king made his remarks Wednesday at the opening session of the two-day Arab summit his country hosted in Riyadh. It was believed to be the first time the king publicly expressed that opinion.

"In beloved Iraq, blood is flowing between brothers, in the shadow of an illegitimate foreign occupation, and abhorrent sectarianism threatens a civil war," said Abdullah, whose country is a U.S. ally that quietly aided the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

The next day, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani bristled at the comment in his speech to the summit, saying the term occupation has "negative implications" and is "in contradiction" to the vision of "Iraqi patriotic and national forces."

A Saudi official said the king was speaking as the president of the summit and his remarks reflected general frustration with the "patchwork" job the Americans were doing to end violence in Iraq.

The king also wanted to send a message that Iraq is an issue that Arabs cannot turn their back on, the official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

It was not clear what kind of diplomatic fallout could result -- but the comments did nothing to help bring Arab nations closer to the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shiite.

The summit has taken a tough line on Iraq, demanding it change its constitution and military to include more Sunnis and end a program of uprooting former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party.

The Sunni-led governments of the Arab world have long been suspicious of Iraq's Shiite leadership, blaming it for fueling violence by discriminating against Sunni Arabs and accusing it of helping mainly Shiite Iran extend its influence in the region.

Abdullah's remarks came at a time when the kingdom is taking a more public role in efforts to defuse crises threatening to engulf the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia sponsored a reconciliation accord between Palestinian factions, has engaged Iran about its nuclear program, and has tried to settle simmering tensions in Lebanon. And the kingdom has been talking to various factions in Iraq.

Writers in some Arab media suggested before the summit that Saudi Arabia would seek solutions that would cater to U.S. interests.

"The king's remarks are the biggest proof that those accusations were false," said Dawood al-Shirian, a Saudi analyst. "In the issue of Iraq, Saudi Arabia went far beyond most other Arab countries. It went beyond the details and right to the cause."

Al-Shirian said he expected other Arab countries to follow Saudi Arabia's lead in considering the presence of U.S. troops an illegal occupation.

"If Saudi Arabia didn't blame the occupation, the blame would fall on the Iraqis, who are victims. How can you blame the victim?" he asked.

The U.S. called its presence in Iraq an occupation until the June 2004 handover of sovereignty to the Iraqis. U.S. troops remained in Iraq with permission from the Iraqi government and a mandate from the United Nations.

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal stood by the king's remarks Thursday, implying at some points that Iraq's Shiite-led government doesn't have the legitimacy to approve the U.S. presence.

"If that country had chosen to have those troops, then it's something else. But any military action that is not requested by a specific country -- that is the definition of occupation," al-Faisal told reporters.