...Crocker and Gen Petraeus said it was a significant moment in Iraq's transition to self-reliance.

Karbala' City, the provincial capital and a centre of Shi'ite pilgrimage and worship, has been largely peaceful. But tensions between local Shi'ite factions in the holy city boiled over in August during a major festival and 52 people were killed.

The US military has poured 30,000 extra troops into Iraq as part of President Bush's new strategy to quell an explosion of sectarian violence which erupted after the bombing of a revered Shi'ite shrine in Samarra by Neo-Salafis on Feb. 22, 2006.

Allawi Using US Lobbyists To Gain Power: Iyad Allawi, a secular Shi'ite who was Iraq's interim PM from June 2004 to early 2005, is paying $300,000 over six months to Barbour Griffith & Rogers, a powerful Washington lobbying firm, with the aim of returning to power in Baghdad. The key man for Allawi at this firm is Robert Blackwill, who in the spring of 2004 was the influential Iraq director on the White House National Security Council (NSC). At the time, Blackwill pushed hard to make Allawi, a tough man with close ties to the CIA, the interim PM.

In the nearly three years since he left the White House, Blackwill has built a thriving business lobbying for the foreign governments, officials and companies he knew as President Bush's deputy national security adviser, as the US ambassador to India and as a veteran of decades in government. Among his clients are India, Serbia, Taiwan, the KRG, the Alfa Bank in Moscow and Thaksin Shinawatra, the former prime minister of Thailand and a billionaire communications tycoon who was ousted in a coup in 2006.

Since late 2005, lobbying disclosure reports at the US Justice Department show that Blackwill helped bring in fees to Barbour Griffith & Rogers from foreign clients which total more than $11m. Blackwill's story is hardly an unusual one in Washington, where foreign lobbying has been good business since at least the early 20th century. Edward von Kloberg 3rd, once known in Washington as the lobbyist to dictators, represented Saddam Hussein, Nicolae Ceaucescu of Romania and Mobuto Sese Seko of the former Zaire.

More recently, Turkey has spent millions of dollars on PR and prominent lobbyists, among them Richard Gephardt of Missouri, the former House majority leader and a Democrat, and former...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.




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