Washington, D.C.

U.S. puts numbers on troop strength

Military officials plan to keep as many as 138,000 U.S. troops in Iraq through the end of next year, maintaining a higher-than-expected level of forces there to quell the insurgency and to provide security to the country long after it is slated to become a sovereign nation. Officials also plan to send more heavy equipment, such as tanks and armored vehicles, into Iraq to help secure U.S. forces against attack.

The Defense Department announced Tuesday that officials plan to deploy 10,000 soldiers and Marines this summer to replace troops in the 1st Armored Division and the 2nd Light Cavalry Regiment who have had their stays in Iraq extended, and officials plan to identify 10,000 more troops soon to complete the replacement. About 6,000 National Guard and Reserve troops — from more than a dozen states — whose stays were extended also will be spelled in the next deployment.

An additional 37,000 combat support troops — including about 16,000 reserves — have been notified that they will rotate into Iraq this fall or early next year for possible 12-month deployments. The support units will provide services such as transportation, military police, logistics, maintenance and intelligence.

Baghdad

Iraqi staff quits U.S.-backed newspaper

Many of the editors and reporters of al Sabah newspaper, a U.S.-funded publication that occupation officials have called a model for journalism in the Middle East, walked out this week and said Tuesday they would launch their own paper. American overseers had threatened their future editorial independence, they alleged.

“We thought that the Americans were here to create a free media,” editor-in-chief Ismael Zayer said. “Instead, we were being suffocated.”

Zayer said he could not accept Iraq administrator L. Paul Bremer’s plan to keep the paper within the Iraqi Media Network, a body that occupation officials created to develop a public broadcasting service. Zayer contended that the newspaper would be subject to interference by a future Iraqi government.

The exodus from al Sabah is the latest setback in U.S. efforts to shepherd Iraq into a new media era. The effort has faced allegations of wasted funding and uninspired programming. Many Iraqis view the outlets created as mouthpieces of the occupation, not independent voices.

Turkey

Bomb plot suspects all reported captured

Turkey’s interior minister said Tuesday that authorities have detained all of the suspects in an alleged plot to bomb a June NATO summit to be attended by President Bush and other leaders.

A Turkish court Monday in the northwestern city of Bursa charged nine suspected members of Ansar al-Islam, a group linked to the al-Qaida terrorist network, with membership in an illegal organization. The charges came after authorities said they had foiled a plot to attack the June 28-29 summit in Istanbul.

Asked whether there would be future operations against the group, Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu said: “There won’t be a continuation. It was one group and they’ve been detained.”

Bursa prosecutor Emin Ozler confirmed Tuesday that authorities suspected the group was plotting an attack at the NATO summit, but declined to give details.