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ABC News Officials Say Iraq Won't Be Islamic State Ukraine Begins Troop Pullout; Shiites and Kurds Say Iraq Won't Be Islamic State By RAWYA RAGEH The Associated Press Mar 12, 2005 - Ukraine withdrew 150 servicemen from Iraq on Saturday, be ginning a gradual pullout, as Shiite and Kurdish politicians refined pla ns to form a coalition government that officials said includes an agreem ent not to turn the country into an Islamic state. In Mosul, gunmen killed three policemen and wounded a fourth at a funeral procession, the second time in as many days that mourners have been tar geted in that northern city. It was unclear if the mourners were Shiites, but the police officers were participating in a procession for a colleague's wife and two children w ho died in a roadside bomb attack a day earlier, policeman Ammar Hussein said. Insurgents led by Sunni Arabs, a minority that was dominant under Saddam Hussein, are targeting Shiite funeral processions and ceremonies in an a pparent campaign to spark a sectarian war. On Friday, relatives gathered in small groups to bury 50 people killed a day earlier by a suicide bomber in Mosul. A mass funeral procession was canceled for fear of another attack. The Ukrainian company that was based near Suwayrah, 25 miles south of Bag hdad, left Iraq and was expected to return home by Tuesday, the Ukrainia n Defense Ministry said. Earlier this month, President Viktor Yushchenko and top defense officials ordered a phased withdrawal of Ukraine's 1,650-strong contingent from t he US-led coalition in Iraq. Ukraine has lost 17 soldiers in Iraq and the deployment is deeply unpopular among people in the former Soviet rep ublic. Bulgarian military investigators, meanwhile, said US troops who killed a Bulgarian soldier had opened fire without warning but did not "deliber ately" kill Pvt. Gardi Gardev on March 4 The shooting occurred the same day US forces killed an Italian intellig ence agent and wounded an Italian journalist who had been held for a mon th as a hostage of insurgents, straining relations with two of the Bush administration's rare European partners in Iraq. The US military also said a US soldier was killed Friday during opera tions west of the Iraqi capital in the volatile Anbar province "in a non -hostile accident." The military said it was investigating the death but gave no other details. As of Friday, at least 1,513 members of the US military have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press co unt. In political developments, the country's main Shiite and Kurdish coalitio ns were putting the finishing touches on an agreement they hope to sign on Monday forming a coalition government. Any US exit strategy hinges on having a new government organize Iraq's army and police to take over responsibility for security. A senior member of the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, Ahmad Chal abi, traveled late Friday to Sulaimaniyah, 160 miles northeast of Baghda d, for talks with Jalal Talabani, a Kurdish leader who is slated to beco me Iraq's next president. The Kurds have agreed that conservative Islamic Dawa party leader Ibrahim al-Jaafari will be Iraq's prime minister. "There is discussion and there is an agreement on the basic principles. The atmosphere was positive," said alli ance member Ali al-Faisal. Kurds and alliance officials said both sides agreed that Iraq would not b ecome an Islamic state, a desire also expressed by the country's most po werful Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party, said the Kurds w ould oppose any attempt to turn Iraq into an Islamic state. "I think the Shiites well understand that implementing an Islamic governm ent ... will bring a lot of problems," Barzani told Dubai's Al-Arabiya t elevision. We were both oppressed , and we both struggled against the old regime, but if they insist on ha ving a religious government we will oppose to them." An alliance member, Ali al-Dabagh, said there were no plans to turn Iraq into a religious state or a secular one. "We neither want to establish a religious nor a secular state in Iraq, we want a state that respects the identity of the Iraqi people and the ide ntities of others" al-Dabagh said. The Kurds won 75 seats in the 275-member National Assembly during Jan. The alliance won 140 seats and needs Kurdish support to asse mble the two-thirds majority to elect a president, who will then give a mandate to the prime minister. In other developments, The US military said it had launched an investigation into the "possibl e mistreatment" by soldiers of two Iraqi civilians detained by American troops last month. The civilians received minor injuries while being tra nsported to a detention facility during an operation on Feb. The six soldiers being investigated were serving under the c ommand of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. Insurgents blew up two oil pipelines, one near Samarra and the other in t he area near Riyadh, a town close to Kirkuk. Associated Press writers Sameer N Yacoub and Qasim Abdul-Zahra in Baghda d and Yahya Barzanji in Kirkuk contributed to this report. This material m ay not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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