US: Hezbollah training Iraqis in a camp near Tehran; Truce reached between Baghdad and Sadr militias, supposedly brokered by Iran; Balckwater’s contract renewed for another year
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    • A Week after an Iraqi parliamentary delegation went to Tehran to urge authorities to cease their alleged support to insurgents inside Iraq, The New York Times citing American officials reported that the Lebanese militant group, the Hezbollah was training Iraqis in a camp near Tehran. Iran on its part has consistently denied such allegations. Iraqi government spokesperson Ali al-Dabbagh meanwhile called on Iran to keep its commitments to play a positive role1. Iran also announced that it was suspending its talks with the US on Iraqi security due to the continued American and Iraqi actions in Sadr City. However, Tehran did help to broker a ceasefire deal with the Sadr militias late in the week to end more than a month of fighting which claimed several hundred lives2.

    Meanwhile, the wife of Iraq’s President Jalal Talabani escaped unhurt in a roadside bomb attack in the Karadi neighbourhood of Baghdad on May 4. The US military also reported that 4 marines were killed in Anbar province in the previous week in a roadside bomb attack. Reports noted that this was the deadliest attack on US forces in the province which had experienced relative calm over the past few months3.

    In other developments, reports noted that the contract of the controversial private security firm Blackwater had been renewed for another year by the US State Department. The firm had been under a cloud since the September 2007 shooting at a Baghdad intersection which left 17 Iraqis dead. Over 800 guards of Blackwater provide security to diplomatic personnel working for the US State Department in Baghdad4.

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