Iraq wants U.S. to end Blackwater contracts

BAGHDAD - Iraqi authorities want the U.S. government to sever all contracts in Iraq with Blackwater USA within six months. They also want the firm to pay $8 million in compensation to families of each of the 17 people they say were killed when Blackwater guards sprayed a traffic circle with machine-gun fire last month.

The demands - part of an Iraqi government report examined by the Associated Press - also called on U.S. authorities to hand over the Blackwater security agents involved in the Sept. 16 shootings to face possible trial in Iraqi courts.

The tone of the Iraqi report appears to signal further strains between the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the White House over the deaths in Nisoor Square, which have prompted a series of U.S. and Iraqi probes and raised questions over the use of private security contractors to guard U.S. diplomats and other officials.

Maliki ordered the investigation by his defense minister and other top security and police officials Sept. 22. The findings mark the most definitive Iraqi positions and contentions about the shootings.

The report also highlights the differences in death tolls and accounts that have complicated efforts to piece together the chain of events as one Blackwater-protected convoy raced back toward Baghdad's Green Zone after a nearby bombing, while a second group in four gun trucks sped into the square as a backup team.

The Iraqi investigation found that agents in the four Blackwater vehicles called to the square began shooting without provocation. Blackwater says its employees came under fire first.

The government, at the conclusion of its investigation, said 17 Iraqis had died. Initial reports put the toll at 11.

The government said the compensation - totaling $136 million - was so high "because Blackwater uses employees who disrespect the rights of Iraqi citizens even though they are guests in this country."

The United States has not made conclusive findings about the shooting, though there are multiple investigations under way and Congress has opened inquiries into the role of private security contractors. Last week, the FBI took over a State Department investigation, raising the prospect that it could be referred to the Justice Department for prosecution.

The Iraqi government report said Iraq's courts were the proper venue in which to bring charges.

It said Blackwater's license to operate in Iraq expired June 2, 2006, meaning the company had no immunity from prosecution under Iraqi laws set down after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

The government report also challenged the assertion that a decree in June 2004 by then-Iraqi administrator L. Paul Bremer granted Blackwater immunity from legal action in incidents such as the one in Nisoor Square. The report said the Blackwater guards could be charged under a criminal code from 1969.

U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Mirembe Nantongo said the diplomatic mission would have no comment on the report. Iraq's Interior Ministry spokesman, Abdul-Karim Khalaf, said the document was in U.S. hands.

A suicide bomber drove his truck into a police station north of Baghdad yesterday, crumbling the squat concrete building

and damaging a school in the deadliest of a series

of blasts that killed at least 24 people across Iraq.

The blast in Dijlah, a village in the Sunni heartland

60 miles north of the capital, tore through a nearby empty school and several stores. At least 13 people - three officers

and 10 civilians - were killed, police said.

In the capital, a bomb

in a parked car exploded

at a market near Baghdad University's technology department, killing five people.

Iran, meanwhile, reopened

five border-crossing points with Kurdish-run northern Iraq. They had been

closed Sept. 24 to protest U.S. detention of an

Iranian official.

The border points were reopened after a Kurdish delegation traveled to Iran to say the region should not be punished for something Americans

had done.

- Associated Press

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