The resistance to US and foreign troops in Iraq is becoming unified and now controls 70 percent of attacks, one of its leaders told AFP, adding that Jordanian extremist Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi had been given an ultimatum for violating its ideology. "There is one leadership comprising Iraqis and other Arab nationals which heads 70 percent of the operations being carried out in Iraq against the Americans and those who cooperate with them," said the source, who had close ties to Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden up until three years ago. The Iraq-based source, who declined to be identified and met an AFP correspondent in an Arab country outside Iraq, said "Zarqawi was given an ultimatum by the leadership of the resistance. They threatened to quash him by force" after he repeatedly violated Islamic ideology, and "the leadership of the resistance banned Zarqawi from publishing communiques and from violating (its rules)," he said.
He claimed that the beheading of US hostage Nicholas Berg attributed to Zarqawi in May had not been welcomed by the resistance leadership. "There was no proof that he was a US agent, even if he was a Jewish American," he said of Berg, the first of a number of hostages beheaded in Iraq by their captors. "Our religion does not tolerate killing for the sake of killing. There must be proof of involvement" in pro-US activity, he said. Killing Iraqi policemen or national guards "is legitimate because they are servile agents in the pay of the Americans and responsible for the death of hundreds of Iraqis", he said.
The source said he "recognised Zarqawi's profile" in the video of the beheading which was shown on an Al-Qaeda linked website in May. According to the source, "Zarqawi is an ace when it comes to explosives and in planning military operations", "He received a protection from the resistance but now most of them are against him because of deep ideological differences," he said. |