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GGIEtd I.1TTAL JEWS [he battalion .S. transfers sovereignty o Iraqi government early By Tarek El-Tablawy THE ASSOCIATED PRESS BAGHDAD, Iraq — The U.S.-led coalition transferred stvereignty to an interim Iraqi government two days early Monday in a surprise move that apparently caught insur gents off guard, averting a feared campaign of attacks to sibotage the historic step toward self-rule. I Legal documents transferring sovereignty were handed over by U.S. governor L. Paul Bremer to chief justice Midhat a -Mahmood in a small ceremony in the heavily guarded Green Zone. Bremer took charge in Iraq about a year ago. •*#r < I "This is a historical day ... a day that all Iraqis have been looking forward to,” said Iraqi President Ghazi Al-Yawer. H This is a day we are going to take our country back into #j|/ the international forum.” yf Militants had conducted a campaign of car bombings, ^■dnappings and other violence that killed hundreds of t CENTUBB- a qj s i n re cent weeks and was designed to disrupt the trans- nderdoqs I, r announced by the Bush administration late last year. nu can - Intially, the Americans were thought to have planned for Ibout one more year of occupation, ting cat'jp The response in Baghdad was mixed, itty: W: I “Iraqis are happy inside, but their happiness is marred .men M b fear and melancholy,” said artist Qassim al-Sabti. “Of I, an( )i course I feel ITn still occupied. You can’t find anywhere in 1(n|C| L the world people who would accept occupation. America these days, is like death. Nobody can escape from it.” 5 B Two hours after the ceremony Bremer left Iraq on a U.S. jX P ec Air Force C-l 30, said Robert Tappan, an official of the for mer coalition occupation authority. Bremer was accompa nied by coalition spokesman Dan Senor and close members of his staff. Bremer’s destination was not given, but an aide said he was “going home.” I The new interim government was sworn in six hours after the handover ceremony, which Western governments lirgely hailed as a necessary next step. The Arab world voiced cautious optimism, but maintained calls for the U.S. military to leave the country quickly. I Interim Prime Minister lyad Allawi delivered a sweeping Ipeech sketching out some of his goals for the country, urging people not to be afraid of the “outlaws” fighting against I Islam and Muslims,” assuring them that “God is with us.” | “I warn the forces of terror once again,” he said. “We will it forget who stood with us and against us in this crisis.” Members of Allawi’s Cabinet each stepped forward to lace their right hand on the Quran and pledged to accept eir new duties with sincerity and impartiality. Behind em, a bank of Iraqi flags lined the podium. “Before us is a challenge and a burden and we ask God almighty to give us the patience and guide us to take this ic said. A historic day for Iraq’s government I raq's interim government was sworn in hours alter Monday's surprise transfer of sovereignty to 1 Iraqis and two days ahead of the origrnai June 30 date. The interim government wilt hold power until, as directed fcy a U.N. Security Council resolution, there are electrons in January 2006. country whose people deserves all goodness,” said President Ghazi al-Yawer after taking his oath. “May God protect Iraq and its citizens.” Although Iraqis are now supposed to be in charge, American security officers prevented reporters from talking with willing Iraqi ministers after the swearing-in ceremony, hustling journalists away even after the new government officials had stopped to chat with them. Several staffers from the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Communications are now serving as media advisers to Allawi. The NATO alliance quickly said it would begin training the Iraqi military, which faces a daunting task in putting down the growing insurgency threatening the country. ,ee place jftheik ere sods ity. 'Iff th G# NEWS IN BRIEF Israeli airstike hits Gaza City building after Palestinian rocket kills two )mia.« ; therpef GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli helicopters firing mis- siles struck a Hamas-linked media center early Tuesday in a ftsponse to a pair of attacks by Palestinian militants — a rock- even; et barrage that killed an Israeli toddler and a huge blast that urstoci ripped through an army outpost. devotio: The aircraft fired three missiles into a 16-story building in Gaza City, hitting the third-floor offices of Al-Jeel, a media out let run by the Islamic militant group, witnesses said. Two peo ple were hurt. Minutes later, helicopters also fired a missile at a building housing a metal workshop in the Nusseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, witnesses said. The army said Hamas used the center to release claims of responsibility and distribute inflammatory material. The workshop was used for making home-made rockets, the army said. Tuesday, June 29, 2004 Supreme Court says U.S. cannot hold terror suspects in legal limbo By Anne Gearan THE ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Monday that the war on terrorism does not give the govern ment a “blank check” to hold a U.S. citizen and foreign-born terror sus pects in legal limbo, a forceful denun ciation of Bush administration tactics since the Sept. 11 attacks. Ruling in two cases, the high court refused to endorse a central claim of the White House: that the government has authority to seize and detain ter rorism suspects and indefinitely deny access to courts or lawyers while interrogating them. A state of war “is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation’s citizens,” Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote in the most significant case of the day, a rul ing that gives American-bom detainee Yaser Esam Hamdi the right to fight his detention in a federal court. Separately, the court said that nearly 600 men from 42 countries held at a Navy prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, can use American courts to contest their treat ment. The Bush administration had argued that U.S. courts had no busi ness second-guessing detentions of foreigners held on foreign soil. The administration’s detention policies have rankled allies overseas and outraged civil liberties and human rights groups at home. Deborah Pearlstein, director of the U.S. Law and Security Program at Human Rights First, called Monday’s rulings a broad repudiation of the administration’s approach. “The court said any citizen has a right to due process and that the administration’s position that it has inherent executive authority ... to detain people is just wrong under the law.” The court declined to rule on the merits of a third case arising from the hunt for terrorists. The justices sent back to a lower court the case of Jose Padilla, a former Chicago gang mem ber and a convert to Islam who is being held as an enemy combatant amid allegations he sought to deto nate a radiological “dirty bomb” and blow up apartment buildings in the United States. The administration contends that all the men at issue in Monday’s cases are enemy combatants — neither prisoners of war protected by the Geneva Conventions nor ordinary criminal suspects with automatic rights to see lawyers and know the charges against them. Strayhorn urges deductibility of state and local taxes AUSTIN (AP) — Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn has released a report stating that Texas families and the state’s economy would benefit if state and local sales taxes were deductible on federal income tax returns. The U.S. Congress is considering legislation to allow such deductions. “The current system is unfair,” Strayhorn said, issuing her report Monday. “It discriminates against Texans and the citizens of other states who have decided against a state income tax.” As a result, she said, Texans pay a higher percentage of taxes to the federal government than their neighbors in Oklahoma and Arkansas, which have a state income tax. State income taxes are deductible on federal returns. In a March 2002 report, Strayhorn estimated the average Texas family would save $284 a year if it itemized its federal income tax returns. In her updated report, Strayhorn estimates the average Texas family would save $310 annually. 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