February 16, 2005

Islamic militants waging a deadly insurgency against U.S.-led forces in Iraq pose an emerging international terrorism threat, CIA Director Porter Goss said on Wednesday. Unrest in Iraq is providing Islamist militants with training and contacts which could be used in new attacks abroad, the head of the CIA has warned. In his first public appearance as CIA director, Porter Goss said the conflict had become a "cause for extremists". It was only a matter of time, he added, before militant groups like the al-Qaeda network attempted to use weapons of mass destruction. Mr Goss was testifying before a Senate hearing on threats to the US. More than three years after the 11 September attacks, the CIA director stressed that militants were still trying to strike inside the US. He accused Iran of supporting terrorism, aiding Iraqi insurgents and seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. FBI director Robert Mueller, who also testified, warned: "The threat posed by international terrorism, and in particular Al-Qaeda and related groups, continues to be the gravest we face." Mr Goss, one of several intelligence chiefs to appear before the panel, was providing the CIA's annual threat assessment. Correspondents say the committee has decided to subject US foreign intelligence to new scrutiny in the hope of avoiding mistakes committed before the war on Iraq. "Those jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced in and focused on acts of urban terrorism. They represent a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups and networks," Goss said. President Bush , who portrays U.S.-led actions in Iraq as the leading edge of democratic reform in the Middle East, cited Iraqi backing for international terrorism as a reason for the 2003 invasion. But a top level U.S. inquiry found last year that there had in fact been no collaboration between al Qaeda and Iraq under President Saddam Hussein [more] and [more] and [more]

Pictured above: A Bahrain man looks on as he walks past images of the Iranian late revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, left, and the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, right, Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2005, in Barbar village, Bahrain. Shiite muslims in Bahrain are preparing to mark Ashura, which commemorates the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, who was killed in Iraq more than 1,300 years ago. [more]