Iraq banned from Beijing Game: NOC chief

Iraq have been banned from next month's Beijing Games because of a government decision to disband the country's National Olympic Committee (NOC), a senior official said on Thursday.

"This morning we were informed of the final decision of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to suspend the membership of the Iraqi Olympic Committee," NOC general secretary Hussein al-Amidi told Reuters.

"It is a blow to Iraq and its international reputation, its athletes and its youth."

The government of Iraq disbanded the NOC in May because of a dispute over how it had been assembled. The IOC gave Iraq a deadline to reinstate the committee but the government has refused to back down.

Iraq had planned to send a small team despite violence that has killed more than 100 athletes in the country since the 2003 United States-led invasion.

At least seven Iraqi athletes, two rowers, a weightlifter, a sprinter, a discus thrower, a judoka and an archer, had won places in Beijing.

"There's nothing I can do. The government of Iraq wanted this. I can't believe I'm not going to take part in the Beijing Olympics. The news is hard to take," archer Ali Adnan told Reuters from Egypt where he had been training.

IOC DISAPPOINTED

The IOC, which has long supported Iraqi athletes training abroad to prepare for the Games, said it was very disappointed.

"We sent a letter to the Iraqi government today saying that as the situation stands today it is unlikely to have Iraqi athletes at the Beijing Games," said IOC spokesperson Emmanuelle Moreau.

The chances of Iraq reinstating the NOC seem slim. The government has said the committee was illegitimate because it lacked a quorum and had failed to hold new elections.

"There is no review of the government's decision because it was taken in accordance with the law," Youth and Sports Minister Jasem Mohammed Jaafar told Reuters.

However, the IOC said the Olympic Charter forbids political interference in the Olympic Movement.

Rule 28(9) of the Charter provides for the suspension of an NOC in the event "any governmental body...causes the activity of the NOC...to be hampered."

The Iraqi government was invited to go to (the IOC's headquarters in) Lausanne to discuss possible remedies but did not positively respond to the invitation, the IOC said.

DETERMINED ATHLETES

Iraqi athletes had been determined to make their presence felt in Beijing despite the difficulties they faced.

Athletes's reputations and international links make them and their families targets for violence in Iraq and the country's sports infrastructure has decayed over decades.

Former basketball player and NOC boss Ahmed al-Hadjiya was kidnapped along with other sports officials by gunmen who stormed a conference in broad daylight in 2006. They are still missing.

Sport gave Iraqis arguably their greatest moment of unity since the fall of Saddam Hussein when the national soccer team, including members of all its main warring groups, defeated a heavily favored Saudi Arabia to win the Asian Cup last year.

Over the last five years the IOC and the wider Olympic family have provided funding and training opportunities to support Iraq's NOC and more than 50 Iraqi athletes and coaches.

"The Iraqi government's actions have destroyed this progress," an IOC official said.

McCain denies he misstated timing of Iraq surge

Republican John McCain is pushing back against Democratic criticism that he misstated the timing of the buildup of troops ordered by President Bush in early 2007. He says parts of the new strategy began months earlier.

The Arizona senator has told reporters during a stop at a super market in Bethlehem, Pa., that what the Bush administration calls "the surge" was actually "made up of a number of components." McCain says some components of the surge began before Bush ordered more U.S. troops into Iraq.

McCain says U.S. Col. Sean MacFarland started carrying out elements of a new counterinsurgency strategy as early as December 2006.

In Iraq, Kurds walk out of parliament in protest

Kurdish lawmakers walked out of parliament Tuesday in protest over a vote on conditions for Iraq's provincial elections that called for ethnic groups to share power in Kirkuk, an oil-rich city that Kurds consider part of their territory.

The walkout, which included shouting and accusations of a conspiracy against Kurds, appeared to reduce the chances that the elections would be held this year. There is no law setting out election procedures.

U.S. and Iraqi officials have hoped that provincial balloting would ease tensions among the country's main ethnic and religious factions.

Although the measure Tuesday was passed by parliament through a secret ballot, it requires approval by the three-member presidential council, led by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd who is all but certain to reject the legislation.

The contentious issue was among several points that have delayed a vote on legislation to set up the first local elections since January 2005, when most Sunni Arabs and many followers of Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr boycotted the vote. U.S. officials believe participation of such groups could go a long way toward righting the balance of power in provincial politics, in which a small number of parties, mainly Kurdish and Shiite Muslim, have dominated.

The elections, sought by U.S. officials for more than a year, have been stalled amid political competition, with parties in the Iraqi government fearing that local elections could cost them influence. Disagreements have centered on the question of whether voters should be allowed to choose individual candidates or pick from closed party lists. Lawmakers have also argued about whether parties could use religious imagery in the campaign and whether parties with links to militias could participate.

The government had aimed for elections in October. But the country's election commission announced over the weekend that the date was unrealistic and that the legislation must be passed by the end of the month if Iraq wanted to hold the elections by December.

The status of Kirkuk has proved to be a major stumbling block. Last week, the parliament's Kurdish bloc staged its first walkout over a draft of the electoral legislation because of its provision to either delay provincial elections in Kirkuk until the city's future is decided or to redistribute power equally among Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens.

The Kurds in parliament had argued that Tamim province, of which Kirkuk is the capital, should be treated no differently than any other region in Iraq. The Kurds swept to victory in 2005 provincial elections in Tamim, largely a result of the decision by Sunni Arabs to skip the vote. The Sunnis, who dominated Iraqi politics under Saddam Hussein's rule, now regret the decision.

Arabs fear that they would be subjected to discrimination under a Kurdish government in Kirkuk.

On Tuesday, Kurdish legislators said they intended to compromise on the electoral legislation but parliamentary Speaker Mahmoud Mashadani, a member of the parliament's main Sunni coalition, backed a measure to hold a secret ballot regarding the provision on Kirkuk.

The leader of the Kurdish bloc, Fuad Masoom, led his coalition's lawmakers out of parliament in anger. Kurdish lawmaker Adil Barwari said Masoom called Mashadani's move a conspiracy, and others shouted that the vote violated the constitution.

Of the remaining 142 lawmakers, 127 approved the measure. The provision called for a committee to be set up to review the problems in Kirkuk and take interim steps until local elections are scheduled, including apportioning power in the provincial government equally among Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens.

Arab lawmakers defended the push for a secret ballot, saying that parliament members would have been pressured by the Kurds to vote against the provision if it had been a public vote.

"It was feared that there might be pressure exerted on the MPs, so this was chosen in order to give them freedom to express their opinion," Sunni lawmaker Farhan Awad said.

Before Mashadani backed the call for a secret ballot, Barwari said, the Kurds had worked with their main Shiite partners on a compromise measure to set up their own parliamentary committee to investigate the situation in Kirkuk and delay elections.

The parliament's deputy speaker, Khalid Attiya, a prominent member of the ruling Shiite coalition, joined the Kurds in criticizing the vote.

"By doing this, we will likely lose the chance to hold elections in 2008," Attiya told reporters.

Kurdish politicians said the row was almost certain to slow progress on other contentious issues, such as a national oil law, which has stalled in parliament for more than a year.

Barwari said the quarrel could also spill into violence in northern Iraq if the measure approved Tuesday was ratified.

"The measure voted on today is impossible to be implemented peacefully in Kirkuk," he said.

When, not if, to leave Iraq

Call it a timetable, phased withdrawal or (our favorite) "joint aspirational time horizons." The Iraq debate has shifted to when - not if - on the subject of a troop pullout.

The big winner in this shift must be Sen. Barack Obama. His quickie Mideast tour put the presumptive Democratic nominee in sync with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki who said he now favors a U.S. troop departure on roughly the same 16-month time frame that Obama suggests.

Even the White House got in the act by deploying the Bush-speak term "time horizons." The presumptive GOP nominee John McCain sidestepped the remarkable shift by denouncing, yet again, Obama's qualifications as a military leader.

The political parrying can't obscure what's happening. The Iraqi leadership is prepared for a U.S. exit. Daily life has stabilized, a fragile truce exists among warring factions, and Al Qaeda rebels aren't gaining ground. Any of these factors could change and delay a withdrawal, as worried U.S. military leaders cautiously suggest.

But the whispers and hints are gone, replaced by statements. Credit a stabilized Iraq or the pressures of a presidential race, but the leave-taking has begun.

For Obama, the past week was a gift. Challenged by McCain to prove his foreign-policy chops, Obama could have sleepwalked through a war-zone junket. But Iraqi leader al-Maliki essentially embraced his position for a withdrawal by the end of 2010. Obama's visit to Afghanistan allowed him to repeat a pledge to upgrade U.S. military numbers there to face an ascendent terrorist threat.

McCain's team must wonder what hit them. The senator found his stay-the-course message on Iraq disowned by nearly everyone. He was left to rail against Obama's inexperience and past vote against extra troops for Iraq, which McCain credits for today's relative peace.

Talk of a withdrawal timetable may neutralize the hot topic of Iraq in the presidential race. But that's only a short-run effect. The bigger, more important result may be an end to a disastrous chapter in the history of two countries.

Candidates' positions on Iraq differ less than you'd think

It would have been interesting to be a fly on the wall in Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's office a few days ago when the call came from the U.S. Embassy, demanding that he "clarify" his endorsement of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's plan to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq in 16 months.

(Photos, left to right - In March: Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham landing in Baghdad / Tech. Sgt. Jeffrey Allen, Reuters; On Monday: Democratic Sen. Barack Obama and Gen. David Petraeus in Baghdad / Ssg. Lorie Jewell, AP)

Not only did that boost the credibility of the Democrat's plan, it contradicted President Bush's position that there should be no timetable for a U.S. pullout. A few hours later, U.S. officials transmitted al-Maliki's statement that his remarks to the German magazine Der Spiegel had been "misunderstood (and) mistranslated."

Problem fixed? Apparently not. On Monday, as Obama visited Baghdad, al-Maliki's spokesman defiantly repeated the timetable idea, in English this time, saying the Iraqis would prefer to have U.S. troops out of Iraq by the end of 2010.

This tense back-and-forth was a vivid reminder that as conditions improve in Iraq, the U.S. is losing its ability to dictate terms to the sovereign government it has worked so hard to put in place. Less noticed is that the rapidly shifting events are beginning to make the presidential candidates' debate over Iraq seem oddly out of sync with reality.

Obama and Republican John McCain are maximizing their differences when they talk to voters, but in practical terms there's less and less daylight between them.

Rhetorically, Obama backs a fixed timetable for withdrawing American troops while McCain wants to stay as long as "victory" takes and beyond. But if the Iraqis want the U.S. out and they prove capable of taking over, both ideas lead to the same end on about the same schedule.

It's difficult, for example, to imagine a President McCain insisting on keeping U.S. troops in Iraq indefinitely if Iraq's government demands that they leave. Al-Maliki is acknowledging the reality that most Iraqis and most Iraqi politicians want U.S. forces out, at least as soon as they are confident that their own government can protect them.

At the same time, it's equally difficult to imagine a President Obama insisting on an inflexible withdrawal timetable if that means squandering security gains won with great American sacrifice. Though Obama has repeatedly insisted on a timetable, he has pointedly not said that every U.S. troop will be gone when the timetable ends. In fact, he has promised to leave a "residual force" of undefined size in Iraq, and carefully left himself an escape hatch in case the situation worsens. "You've got to make sure the country doesn't collapse," he says.

Thanks largely to the troop surge that Obama opposed, violence has lessened to the point that a timetable seems less and less unthinkable to its fiercest opponents, provided that it's linked to success on the ground. President Bush has signed on to a "time horizon" for withdrawing U.S. troops, and McCain said Monday that U.S. troops "could be largely withdrawn" within two years because the war is being won. That's remarkably close to what Obama wants.

So while the candidates demonize and distort each other's positions, reality is drawing them closer and closer. Both also support sending additional troops to Afghanistan.

The wild card is whether U.S. forces can hand off the fighting to their Iraqi counterparts, and here the news is promising. Lt. Gen. James Dubik, who until recently was in charge of the Army's effort to build Iraqi forces, told Congress earlier this month that Iraqi units would be able to take over front-line fighting as soon as April, allowing U.S. ground troops to shift to a support role.

The presidential debate over Iraq needs a reality check. Voters would do well to understand that the familiar differences echoing from the campaign trail are less significant than the new reality emerging in Iraq.

McCain Aide Says New York Times Rejection of Iraq Essay Unfair

John McCain was unfairly treated by the New York Times, which rejected an opinion piece the Republican presidential candidate wrote on Iraq after publishing one by Democratic rival Barack Obama, a top McCain adviser said.

``I'm sure they didn't tell Obama what he had to write,'' McCain aide Mark Salter said last night in Manchester, New Hampshire, where the Arizona senator will appear at a fundraiser today. ``Is it fair? No. But we don't expect fairness from them.''

The Times decided against publishing McCain's essay because it needed the candidate to revise the article to say specifically what he planned to do in Iraq, the newspaper said on its Web site, quoting David Shipley, editor of the op-ed page. Andrew Rosenthal, editor of the newspaper's editorial and op-ed pages, said the decision to ask for changes was ``standard procedure.''

``We look forward to publishing Senator McCain's views in our paper just as we have in the past,'' Rosenthal said in a statement on the Web site. ``We have published at least seven Op- Ed pieces by Senator McCain since 1996.''

The spat comes as Obama, 46, is on a weeklong overseas tour, including stops over the weekend in Afghanistan and Iraq, to burnish his foreign policy credentials. McCain and Obama have skirmished over Iraq policy, with McCain saying President George W. Bush's troop increase has helped quell violence and Obama calling for a timetable for bringing U.S. troops home.

In his July 14 essay in the New York Times, Obama said he would shift the focus of U.S. military operations from Iraq and send as many as 10,000 more U.S. troops to fight in Afghanistan.

`Is What It Is'

Earlier yesterday, when asked whether he felt Obama was getting unfair coverage because of his overseas trip this week, McCain said he would campaign as usual. ``It is what it is,'' McCain said.

Over the years, McCain, 71, and the New York Times have had a high-profile relationship.

When McCain was shot down in 1967 by the North Vietnamese, the Times put the story of his capture on its front page. At the time, McCain's father was commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific. The newspaper also put on its front page news of McCain's release as a prisoner of war five-and-a-half years later.

Earlier this year, the Times suggested, again in a front-page story, that McCain had had a romantic relationship with a telecommunications lobbyist about the time he considered running for president in 2000. McCain flatly denied that charge.

The Times endorsed McCain in the Republican primary.

In Iraq, senator finds support for troop pullout plan

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama conferred with senior Iraqi leaders, US officials, and military commanders yesterday, as a spokesman for the Iraqi government declared that it would like US combat forces to complete their withdrawal in 2010.

The comments by spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh marked the second time in recent days that a senior Iraqi had endorsed a timetable for US withdrawal that is roughly similar to the one advocated by Obama. Dabbagh suggested a combat force pullout could be completed by the end of 2010, which would be about seven months longer than Obama's 16-month formulation.

Dabbagh made the statement after Obama's meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has recently faced pressure from the White House to clarify published comments that he supported Obama's 16-month plan.

Dabbagh declared that his government was working "on a real timetable which Iraqis set" and the 2010 deadline was "an Iraqi vision."

The White House responded quickly to Dabbagh's remarks, which, along with Maliki's earlier comments, have been a thorny political problem for an administration that has opposed attaching firm dates to troop withdrawals as it negotiates the future US-Iraqi relationship.

"We don't think that talking about specific negotiating tactics or your negotiating position in the press is the best way to negotiate a deal," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said, suggesting that Dabbagh was responding to domestic pressure.

Dabbagh said Maliki did not discuss troop withdrawals with his visitor. "Senator Barack Obama is a candidate, and we are talking to the administration which is in power," he said. But in many ways - from the red carpet rolled out at Maliki's residence to Obama's seat of honor next to Maliki during formal consultations - he was treated like a visiting head of state.

The White House has said that Maliki and President Bush had reached an agreement to set a "time horizon" for the withdrawal of US combat troops. But administration officials have steadfastly declined to indicate what that time horizon might be.

"Obama is closer to Iraqi opinion on the issue of withdrawal of US forces," said Ali al-Adeeb, a top official in Maliki's Dawa Party. "We don't know him personally, but we like his opinion and his calls to set a timetable to withdraw forces."

The presumptive Democratic presidential candidate arrived in Iraq yesterday morning, traveling as part of a congressional delegation that includes Senators Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, and Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, both critics of the war.

Obama and the other senators released a statement late yesterday noting that Iraqis want an "aspirational timeline, with a clear date," for the departure of US combat forces.

"Prime Minister Maliki told us that while the Iraqi people deeply appreciate the sacrifices of American soldiers, they do not want an open-ended presence of US combat forces. The prime minister said that now is an appropriate time to start to plan for the reorganization of our troops in Iraq - including their numbers and missions. He stated his hope that US combat forces could be out of Iraq in 2010," the statement said.

The senators also acknowledged a significant decline in violence in Iraq but added that while there has been some forward movement on political progress, reconciliation, and economic develop- ment, there has not been enough to bring lasting stability to Iraq.

Obama, a first-term senator who is seeking to convince voters that he has enough foreign policy experience to succeed in the Oval Office, is scheduled to travel to Jordan, Israel, Germany, France, and Britain by the end of the week.

Interviewed on NBC's "Today" show yesterday morning, Obama's Republican rival, Senator John McCain, said he "was glad" Obama was meeting with General David Petraeus, the top US commander, and hearing firsthand about the buildup of US troops over the last year.

"I hope he will have a chance to admit that he badly misjudged the situation, and that he was wrong when he said the surge wouldn't work," McCain said.

The US delegation's first stop in Iraq was the southern city of Basra, where the Iraqi army - with support from British and US troops - recently wrested control from extremist Shi'ite militias. The senators did not venture into the city center, where 30,000 Iraqi soldiers patrol the streets.

In Baghdad, a red carpet with yellow trim was unfurled at 1:50 p.m. outside Maliki's residence.

Ten minutes later, the senators and their entourages arrived, accompanied by US Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker and David M. Satterfield, the State Department's Iraq coordinator. After meeting for nearly an hour with Maliki, Obama declined to say what they discussed.

Obama's convoy arrived next at the residence of the Iraq president, Jalal Talabani, who was with chief of staff Naseer al-Ani and two other senior advisers.