Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and other top politicians yesterday praised as "historic" the last-minute compromises that negotiators reached on the draft constitution and urged Iraqis to vote "yes" in this weekend's referendum.
But insurgents continued attacks apparently aimed at wrecking Saturday's vote. A suicide bomber set off hidden explosives in a crowd of men waiting outside an Iraqi army recruitment center in the northwestern town of Tal Afar, killing 30 Iraqis and wounding 35, officials said.
In Baghdad, a government minister escaped an apparent assassination attempt when a convoy of government cars preparing to pick him up at his office was hit by a suicide car bomb that wounded five of his bodyguards and five Iraqi bystanders, police said.
Those and other militant attacks yesterday raised Iraq's death toll over the last 17 days to 425, according to police reports.
Still, the Iraqi government stepped up its campaign urging Iraqis to ignore militant attacks aimed at wrecking Saturday's constitutional referendum and to vote "yes" for the document aimed at advancing the country's democratic reforms.
"I have good news for the Iraqi people on this historic day. An agreement has been reached on amendments to the draft constitution," Talabani said during a nationally televised news conference. "There is no excuse for Arab Sunnis to boycott the vote now that we have responded to all their demands and suggestions."
He was followed at the microphone by several other Iraqi politicians who also praised the compromises reached on Tuesday night by Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish powerbrokers on the charter ahead of Saturday's referendum.
The breakthrough deal reached on Tuesday night by powerbrokers from Iraq's Shiite majority and Sunni and Kurdish minorities attempts to address concerns among Sunnis that have prompted many of them to say they will vote "no" in the referendum.
The deal that the negotiators reached on Tuesday night agrees on a mechanism to consider amending the constitution after it is approved in Saturday's nationwide vote.
A Chinese freighter that allegedly snapped an undersea cable linking Taiwan proper to Penghu County is suspected of being owned by a Chinese state-run company and had docked at the ports of Kaohsiung and Keelung for three months using different names. On Tuesday last week, the Togo-flagged freighter Hong Tai 58 (宏泰58號) and its Chinese crew were detained after the Taipei-Penghu No. 3 submarine cable was severed. When the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) first attempted to detain the ship on grounds of possible sabotage, its crew said the ship’s name was Hong Tai 168, although the Automatic Identification System (AIS)
An Akizuki-class destroyer last month made the first-ever solo transit of a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ship through the Taiwan Strait, Japanese government officials with knowledge of the matter said yesterday. The JS Akizuki carried out a north-to-south transit through the Taiwan Strait on Feb. 5 as it sailed to the South China Sea to participate in a joint exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces that day. The Japanese destroyer JS Sazanami in September last year made the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s first-ever transit through the Taiwan Strait, but it was joined by vessels from New Zealand and Australia,
CHANGE OF MIND: The Chinese crew at first showed a willingness to cooperate, but later regretted that when the ship arrived at the port and refused to enter Togolese Republic-registered Chinese freighter Hong Tai (宏泰號) and its crew have been detained on suspicion of deliberately damaging a submarine cable connecting Taiwan proper and Penghu County, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement yesterday. The case would be subject to a “national security-level investigation” by the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office, it added. The administration said that it had been monitoring the ship since 7:10pm on Saturday when it appeared to be loitering in waters about 6 nautical miles (11km) northwest of Tainan’s Chiang Chun Fishing Port, adding that the ship’s location was about 0.5 nautical miles north of the No.
SECURITY: The purpose for giving Hong Kong and Macau residents more lenient paths to permanent residency no longer applies due to China’s policies, a source said The government is considering removing an optional path to citizenship for residents from Hong Kong and Macau, and lengthening the terms for permanent residence eligibility, a source said yesterday. In a bid to prevent the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from infiltrating Taiwan through immigration from Hong Kong and Macau, the government could amend immigration laws for residents of the territories who currently receive preferential treatment, an official familiar with the matter speaking on condition of anonymity said. The move was part of “national security-related legislative reform,” they added. Under the amendments, arrivals from the Chinese territories would have to reside in Taiwan for
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