Gives no importance to comments by
Iraqi Prime Minister
From La Opinión,
June 7 2006
Washington , D.C. (EFE)
( The State Department
yesterday minimized the criticism that the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nuri Al-Maliki,
made of the supposed massacre of 24 civilians by US Marines in Haditha, north
of Baghdad,
towards the end of 2005.
Last week al-Maliki
condemned the US troops’ ‘practice’ against Iraqis and the ‘exaggerated use’ of
force.
The Prime Minister
added: ‘A ministerial committee will be formed to investigate this matter and
discuss it with US forces and their main military leaders’.
Al-Maliki warned the
US Army that they should not treat Iraqi citizens with disrespect and promised
that the case of the presumed massacre of civilians would first be analyzed in
a council of ministers and then the government would issue an opinion.
In addition, al-Maliki
asked the US
to share its documents from the investigation of the Haditha incident and
called what happened a ‘terrible crime’.
The Iraq
coordinator for the State department, James Jeffrey, said yesterday that ‘you
don’t have to give much importance’ to the comments of the Iraqi Prime
Minister.
He further expressed
that US troops in Iraq
are respected.
He is also convinced
that the impact of what happened cannot be compared to the scandal of Abu
Ghraib, the Baghdad prison where US soldiers tortured Iraqi prisoners and which
President George W. Bush described as the worst mistake the US has made in Iraq.
Jeffrey said: ‘I don’t
think it’s going to have the same impact [as Abu Ghraib] in terms of the
insurgency turning the population against us or changing the opinion that the
Arab world has of us’.
The Pentagon is
carrying out two ‘thorough’ investigations of the matter, Jeffrey said — one of the deaths themselves and the other to
determine if the soldiers tried to cover-up what happened, but to date their
official statements have been very limited.
What is known now is
that 24 civilians, including women and children, died in Haditha last November
19, after an ambush of a Marine patrol in which a US soldier lost his life.