Foreign Terrorists Use Iraqis to Achieve Their Aims
By John D.
Banusiewicz
AFPS
Terror groups
from other countries are going out of their way to use Iraqi citizens
in pursuing their objectives, a coalition military official said
at a Baghdad news conference today.
"They
have demonstrated time after time that the foreign terrorists
will fight to the last Iraqi to achieve their aims here in Iraq,"
said Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy operations director
for Combined Joint Task force 7.
The coalition
has no indication the foreign fighters are working in concert
with or alongside Iraqi anti-coalition elements, Kimmitt said.
Former Iraqi regime elements and criminals – as well as
foreign terrorist groups such as al Qaeda – still pose a
threat and get the same kind of focus and attention from coalition
and Iraqi security forces.
"We just
don’t necessarily differentiate them into different groups,"
the general said. "We see them as threats to the coalition.
We see them as threats to the Iraqi people. As soon as we gain
intelligence, we use that for actionable intelligence and conduct
operations to kill or capture."
Ambassador
L. Paul Bremer III, Coalition Provisional Authority administrator,
warned one foreign terror group – the Kurdistan Workers
Party, known as the PKK and by other names as well – that
there is "no place for terrorism or terrorist organizations
in the new Iraq" in a Jan. 28 statement.
"Ambassador
Bremer has said for some time, as has President Bush, that Iraq
is now the central front in the war on terrorism," coalition
spokesman Dan Senor said at today’s news conference, "and
that we will pursue terrorists in this country with great intensity."
Senor said
PKK and its affiliate organizations have been operating in Iraq,
and Bremer’s statement put them on notice that the coalition will
continue to pursue them. "We will continue to capture or
kill them," Senor said.