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Freed Italian Says Rebel War Is Justified By Ian Fisher The New York Times Saturday 02 October 2004 Rome - One of the two Italian aid workers freed after three weeks in captivity in Iraq said the fight against American troops and their allies there was not terrorism but legitimate resistance to occupation. "I distinguish between terrorism and resistance," the woman, Simona Torretta, told an Italian daily newspaper, Corriere della Sera, in an interview published Friday. "The guerrilla war is justified, but I am against the kidnapping of civilians." Ms. Torretta and Simona Pari, both 29, were welcomed home on Tuesday with great fanfare by a nation distraught at their kidnapping and horrified that even aid workers opposed to the war could be targets for kidnapping. In the interview, Ms. Torretta said she believed that she and her colleague were released because they were able to convince their captors that they were opposed to the war and that they helped ordinary Iraqis. She added, "This was a very religious and very political group, and at the end it was convinced that we were not enemies." Ms. Torretta said she did not know anything about reports, denied by the government here though widespread in the Italian news media, that $1 million had been paid to the kidnappers. "If a ransom was paid, I am very sorry," she said. "But I know nothing about it." Ms. Torretta, who had worked in Iraq since 1997, repeated her call for Italy to pull its 3,000 troops from Iraq, and said that neither the election called for January nor the interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi was legitimate. Dr. Allawi's government, she said, is "a puppet in the hands of the Americans." Since their release, both the women have said they wanted to return to Iraq. In the interview, Ms. Torretta said she would not do so anytime soon. "I have to wait until the end of the American occupation," she said. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Go to Original European News Organizations Are Reducing Presence in Iraq By Jacques Steiberg The New York Times Saturday 02 October 2004 Citing the ongoing danger and unpredictability of the Iraqi insurgency, news organizations from France, Germany, Italy and other European nations have recently scaled back their presence in Iraq. While most American news organizations with offices in Baghdad have yet to follow the Europeans' lead, several American editors and producers said yesterday that the most recent spate of violence had prompted them to order additional precautions, including relying more on Iraqi freelancers. Representatives of the remaining news organizations acknowledge that they have sometimes struggled to provide readers and viewers with a full picture of life on the ground in Iraq, in part because they have restricted their correspondents' travel. When those reporters do venture out, they risk not only their own lives but also the lives of those Iraqis who agree to be interviewed by them. "It is a situation that is assessed once, twice a day," said Paul Slavin, a senior vice president of ABC News in New York. "And we will not hesitate to pull people out if the situation really deteriorates. Right now it's extremely dangerous, but within the range of tolerable." Westerners in particular have been the target of kidnappers in recent weeks, including two Italian aid workers, since released; two French journalists, their whereabouts unknown; and two American engineers, who were beheaded. Those developments were part of the reason the German Foreign Ministry recently said it had become too dangerous to remain, leading several German newspapers and television stations to pull out of Iraq altogether. About 10 days ago, for example, N-TV, a 24-hour German news channel, withdrew the correspondent it had had in Baghdad for the last 18 months. "I told him to come home, not to be a hero," said Volker Wasmuth, the station's foreign editor. A German public television station, ZDF, said that it had recently recalled its Baghdad correspondent, and that while it would continue to maintain an office there, it would be staffed only by Iraqi reporters. To cover the Iraqi insurgency, the newsweekly Der Spiegel had been sending reporters from either Cairo or its headquarters in Hamburg on brief, special assignments, as an alternative to establishing a permanent bureau. But, the magazine said last week, it has halted even those brief tours. The news organizations directly affected by the insurgents' attacks on Westerners have also made adjustments in staffing. The newspaper Le Figaro - the employer of Georges Malbrunot, one of the French journalists kidnapped in August - withdrew its only other reporter in Iraq around Sept. 20. The other French journalist taken hostage was Christian Chesnot of Radio France, a state-owned network, who had been traveling with Mr. Malbrunot. Mr. Chesnot had been sent to Iraq while a freelance reporter working for Radio France, Nicolas Henin, left on vacation. Radio France has since told Mr. Henin that he may not return, and that it would assign no one else to Iraq. Two other French television networks, the state-owned France 3 and the private TF-1, have also pulled their remaining staff out of Iraq during the last 10 days. Not all of the French television networks have followed suit, though. France 2, a network that is also state-owned, said last week that its correspondents would remain in Baghdad, though for how much longer was unclear. "We want to be in Baghdad as long as the French journalists and their Syrian driver will remain hostages," said Arlette Chabot, executive editor of France 2. "We want to be there as a sign of solidarity and of friendship. We want to be in Baghdad as long as they are not freed." The departures of the European correspondents follow those earlier this year of several dozen Japanese journalists. They had chronicled the arrival of Japanese troops in Samawa, in southern Iraq, but nearly all had left by early spring, as the insurgency worsened. Only two Japanese newspapers, Asahi and Mainichi, have correspondents in Iraq. For those news outlets that remain in Iraq, the constraints on normal reporting are often formidable. The lone correspondent in Baghdad for The Daily Telegraph of London, for example, is not permitted to venture beyond the city limits without the permission of the newspaper's foreign editor, Alan Philps. "Wherever possible," Mr. Philps said, "no one leaves the hotel without us knowing." Ethan Bronner, deputy foreign editor of The New York Times, said the five staff reporters now in Iraq - roughly the same number assigned there in recent months - had experienced frustration at their travel limitations inside the country. "Our reporters feel they cannot wander unaccompanied," Mr. Bronner said. "There's even concern about not returning to a place they've been, for their own safety and for the safety of the people they've been visiting. "It's not possible to report the way we'd like," he said, "or the way we're used to." The Mulindwas Communication Group "With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy" Groupe de communication Mulindwas "avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie" |
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