Iraqi urges Muslims to denounce terror (AP) Updated: 2005-11-15 23:15
His comments came shortly after two attacks in Iraq targeting police Tuesday:
a car bomb blast in Baghdad that killed four police officers and gunfire in the
northern city of Kirkuk that left four officers dead. U.S. and Iraqi forces,
meanwhile, pressed ahead with an offensive against suspected insurgents near the
Syrian border.
"A barbarous type of terrorism exists in Iraq that is being carried out by
al-Qaida and the most fundamentalist terrorists," Talabani said. "Terrorism is a
scourge that the world is suffering under. ... It will grow if we don't act."
Talabani also challenged the widespread European opposition to the U.S.-led
occupation of Iraq, saying that war was the only way to end the brutalities of
Saddam Hussein's regime.
The deputy speaker of Iraq's parliament, Hussain al-Shahristani, added that
"if terrorism is allowed to defeat freedom and democracy in Iraq, then other
parts of the world will also be threatened."
Earlier, Afghan President Hamid Karzai warned that the failure to defeat
Taliban-led terrorism in his country could have wider consequences. Twin suicide
bombings in the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Monday killed at least nine people and
was blamed on militants with links to al-Qaida.
"Individual acts of terrorism we will continue to suffer
for quite some time as well as the rest of the world," Karzai told reporters
after his speech.
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