Police detained eight unlicensed welders Tuesday in connection with Monday’s deadly apartment fire in Shanghai that left 53 people dead and at least 70 injured, city officials said.

Investigators believe that the welders may have been using their equipment improperly, sparking a blaze that engulfed a 28-story building in the heart of the sprawling Chinese metropolis.

About 17 people remain in critical condition, said Shanghai Deputy Mayor Shen Jun.
Family members were reportedly scouring local hospitals for any information on missing loved ones, and aiming their frustration at authorities.

“It is hard to believe the government now. The drills on TV are successful, but when a fire truly happens, it’s just useless. We feel helpless,” a woman who gave only her surname, Liu, told the Associated Press. Her mother lived on the ninth floor of the building and died in the fire.

Chen Fei, director of the city’s firefighting bureau, said the blaze erupted on the building’s 10th floor.

Survivors either had to scamper down stairs or descend scaffolding that surrounded the tower. The apartment block, which housed 440 people, was undergoing renovations to add insulation at the time of the fire.

Firefighters facing difficulty reaching the upper levels set up hoses on top of an adjacent building to finally contain the blaze, which raged for more than four hours.

Rescuers were seen carrying survivors out of the building. Earlier attempts to airlift people off the roof with helicopters had to be called off because of thick smoke.

One resident said he and his wife climbed down to safety on the scaffolding from the 23rd floor, where their apartment was, according to the Xinmin Evening Post, a local newspaper.

The man, who identified himself as a retired teacher with the surname Zhou, said he was napping when he was awakened by smoke. He said he rushed through his front door into the hallway and uncoiled a fire hose to extinguish flames next to a window by a stairwell. He and his wife were then able to flee, the newspaper said.

Another survivor, Li Xiuyun, 61, said she hurried down stairs inside the building with her husband, son and granddaughter from their home on the 16th floor, cutting her feet on shattered glass along the way.

“The smoke was very strong and the glass from the windows was scalding,” she told the Agence France-Presse news service.

“My son took off his socks and soaked them with water, and we used them to cover our noses. I stumbled on people on the floor when walking,” she said at one of the nine hospitals that took in victims.

China’s minister of public security, Meng Jianzhu, rushed to Shanghai and called for a thorough investigation through the State Council, the country’s Cabinet, the New China News Agency said.

Although China has been undergoing a construction boom for many years, building safety has remained controversial.

Last year, firefighters could do little to stop a massive blaze in a nearly completed Beijing skyscraper housed in the same complex as China’s state television headquarters. The building, slated to be a luxury hotel, burned after being set alight by an illegal fireworks show.

Critics also point to substandard construction practices as a major source of safety problems.

They cite the collapse of thousands of buildings, including many shoddily built schools, during the deadly 2008 Sichuan earthquake as a prime example of the poor construction common in much of China.

The following year, a nearly completed 13-story apartment tower in Shanghai toppled, killing one worker in a high-profile incident that attracted stunned onlookers for days because the building remained largely intact on its side.

Chinese have come to call buildings constructed poorly for the sake of cutting costs “tofu dregs,” a reference to the mushy curds left behind in the tofu-making process.

david.pierson@latimes.com

Tommy Yang of The Times’ Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.
8 welders detained in deadly Shanghai high-rise blaze

General Motors Co. is set to reemerge as a public company this week in one of the year’s hottest initial public stock offerings, but many American taxpayers who helped rescue the company won’t be going along for the ride.

That’s because most Americans won’t have access to the new shares of the Detroit automaker. And many of those who do are likely to be well-heeled customers at big Wall Street firms.

The situation is not much of a surprise on Wall Street, where little guys often are shut out of deals, especially coveted ones where demand far outstrips supply and where fast-rising prices usually provide quick profits to anyone getting IPO shares.

But some experts said an opportunity to reward average Americans is being wasted, even though the Treasury Department said two months ago that individuals would have “ample opportunity” to participate in the IPO.

“Wall Street thumbed its nose at” individual investors, said David Menlow, president of research firm Ipofinancial.com. “We continue to help Wall Street out, and Wall Street seldom feels the need to say thank you.”

Concern about small investors getting a piece of the action underscores the nation’s outrage over the massive bailouts of banking and auto companies during the deepest recession since the Great Depression. Even the four major banking companies handling the IPO deal were bailed out by taxpayers.

The federal government put nearly $50 billion into GM to rescue it and usher it through Bankruptcy Court last year, ending up with a 61% ownership stake in the company.

On Thursday, when the offering goes public, the new owners are likely to include a wide swath of investors from large U.S. mutual funds to foreign entities, such as sovereign wealth funds and China’s largest car company, SAIC Motor Corp.

The major underwriters are JPMorgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. — all of which received billions of taxpayer dollars to rescue them during the severe credit crunch in the recession.

In one twist from the ordinary IPO, a number of female- and minority-owned brokerages are involved in the deal. Among them are Loop Capital Markets in Chicago and Williams Capital Group in New York. Helping to market shares overseas are China International Capital Corp. and two Brazilian banks, Itau and Bradesco.

“There is just an inordinate amount of foreign companies in this considering this is taxpayer money,” said Bill King, president of female-owned M. Ramsey King brokerage outside Chicago. He said his firm didn’t receive the customary request for information from the Treasury Department asking it to participate.

The IPO is garnering such demand that underwriters reportedly are expected to boost the price of initial shares to more than $30 from the stated range of $26 to $29.

The automaker plans to sell 365 million shares, or roughly one-quarter of the company, in a deal currently worth about $10.6 billion.

The Treasury Department is expected to sell $7 billion to $8 billion of its holdings, reducing its position to as little as 43%. GM has repaid $7.4 billion to the government and agreed last month to repay an additional $2.1 billion by repurchasing preferred stock from the government once the IPO closes.

By some measures, individual investors could fare better than they normally do in coveted IPOs.

Underwriters are expected to allocate about 20% of the shares to so-called retail investors, more than the 15% that’s normal in IPOs, said Scott Sweet, senior managing partner at IPO Boutique.

However, Sweet said, there were rumors last week that as much as 30% of the deal would go to individuals before demand rose among large institutional investors, forcing the retail amount to be scaled back.

Discount brokerage firms such as Charles Schwab Corp. and TD Ameritrade aren’t getting shares to allocate to their customers. Those firms sometimes get IPO shares, though it varies from deal to deal.

“In general, the hotter the IPO the harder it is to get an allocation of shares,” said Ram Subramaniam at TD Ameritrade. “We’d have loved to have gotten GM’s IPO. We just don’t have it.”

Access to General Motors stock offering won’t include many of its rescuers

At Sami Abu Hossein’s cramped bookstore, the hundred or so book titles listed on a wall aren’t bestsellers. They’re banned.

And the cheery Abu Hossein can you get you any of them, sometimes in the few minutes it takes to sit down and drink a cup of thick-brewed Turkish coffee.

“There are three no-nos,” the owner of Al Taliya Books explains with a big smile. “Sex, politics and religion. Unfortunately, that’s all anyone ever wants to read about.”

He laughs uproariously.

“These are all the banned ones,” he says, gesturing to the list taped to the wall above the store entrance, books on sexuality to ones that critically examine the life and times of the prophet Muhammad, the most taboo topic in the Arab world.

“We have them,” he says, grinning broadly, “but don’t tell anyone.”

The tubby father of five seems to get a tremendous kick out of bucking the rules. (Not that they’re strictly enforced; he’s never been arrested or even summoned by the authorities.)

His partner in thought crime is Hossein Yassin, a self-described Marxist in a worn beige linen suit. Abu Hossein summons his wiry 48-year-old comrade in for the really tough jobs.

Yassin jokes that he’s the Special Forces for getting banned or hard-to-find books. He makes allusions to a murky past as an underground revolutionary. He says he calls upon a network that stretches across the Middle East to locate and transport hard-to-find titles.

“I can get any book,” he boasts. “But don’t ask how I get them.”

The most widely requested banned book remains “The Satanic Verses,” the 1988 novel that suggested some parts of the Koran weren’t God’s words and thereby earned its author, Salman Rushdie, a fatwa issued by Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the hatred of pious Muslims worldwide.

Other top requests include “23 Years,” by the Iranian scholar Ali Dashti, which questions miracles ascribed to Muhammad in the Koran; and “The Joke in the Arab World,” by the Egyptian writer Khaled Qashtin, a sarcastic view of the Middle East, its rulers and customs.

Abu Hossein’s shop, in the capital’s rambling but lively downtown, also sells nonblacklisted books. His shelves are filled with titles from serious political studies about the Middle East to romance novels and pirated software manuals.

But his shop is known as the place in Amman to get forbidden fruits of knowledge.

Censoring books in the age of the Internet may seem like a quaint idea. Even the government official in charge of restricting them recently announced in a newspaper article that “stopping books from reaching the people is a page we’ve turned.”

The censor, Abdullah Abu Roman, occasionally stops by the bookstore to hobnob with Abu Hossein. So do plainclothes security officials. Abu Hossein serves them his Turkish coffee. They very politely ask him for the copies of the forbidden books. He hands them over. It’s all very civilized.

“Allah maakon,” he bids them farewell. God be with you.

“They are very sensitive to politics and criticism of politicians,” says Abu Hossein, who has been working at his family shop for decades. “But there are some books that are banned arbitrarily. Sometimes a censor will ban a book for a sentence he doesn’t like.”

A thickly bearded man wearing a headdress and flowing white dishdasha walks in. He’s one of the regulars, a Saudi religious scholar named Thaer Balawi who perhaps enjoys the challenge of subjecting his puritanical Salafist beliefs to the scrutiny of critical intellects. “You can’t stop an idea by censoring it,” he says.

“Mamnoueh maqroubieh,” goes the Arabic proverb. All that is forbidden is desired.

Abu Hossein recalls a memoir by a former interior minister that the censors immediately forbade for its sensitive revelations. It became a bestseller. But later, the political sands shifted, and the book was removed from the blacklist. Now it hardly sells.

In walks Raed Toguj, iPod ear buds firmly in place, a Web designer in his 20s with a penchant for philosophy and social theory. Censorship, he says, is a product of political ideology. “What I see as the solution is critical thinking,” he says.

Toguj acknowledges that the Internet has made his task superfluous. Many banned books are already available for download, and those with money can order copies from online bookstores abroad.

But Abu Hossein and his customers insisted that there’s something special about holding a book in your hand, feeling its pages, gabbing with the bookseller and fellow seekers of knowledge, like Carol Kaplanian, a 29-year-old doctoral student writing a thesis on honor killings of women in the Middle East, picking through a pile of books on gender relations.

The afternoon wears on. Abu Hossein keeps serving cups of coffee for his guests, the Salafist, the communist, the feminist and the Web dude with a passion for philosophy. They sift through titles and chat quietly, their murmurs softened by the stacks of books surrounding them.

daragahi@latimes.com
In Jordan, a bookstore devoted to forbidden titles

With Republicans expected to win control of the House in Tuesday’s election, President Obama scheduled a press conference for Wednesday in what was expected to amount to a mid-course correction to deal with the power shift on Capitol Hill.

Obama is expected to try to reach out to Republicans, who have campaigned against his economic stimulus plan, healthcare overhaul and other policies. But if the GOP gains seats in the House and Senate, as expected, heavy partisan conflict is anticipated, especially as the parties gear up for the 2012 reelection campaign.

“This election’s going to be a referendum on Obama’s policies,” Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, chairman of the Republican Governors Assn., said on MSNBC on Tuesday. “What is the president’s response going to be?”

Citing the GOP’s pledge to cut spending aggressively, Barbour added: “Hopefully, the president is going to be willing to come forward and say, ‘I recognize we have to do that; let’s work together.’ ”

But Democrats question Republicans’ sincerity, noting Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky recently said that his top priority was to make “Obama … a one-term president.”

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a former Democratic National Committee chairman, offered his own advice to the White House. “We’ve got to use the president more. He’s a great communicator,” he told MSNBC. “If tonight turns out to be better than expected for Democrats, it’s because the president got energized in the last month.”

If Republicans win control of the House, Obama will still be setting the agenda, Barbour said. “The Republicans are not going to be running the government, but they will have much more of a say than we’ve had for these two years,” he said on MSNBC.

But signaling the conflict that awaits the administration and the new Congress, Barbour said Republicans were going to try to repeal the healthcare reform bill. “If they can’t repeal it, they’re going to try to change it so that you wouldn’t recognize it,” he said on NBC’s “Today.” “They’re going to be faithful to what the voters vote for tonight.”

Fellow Republican Tommy Thompson, a former Wisconsin governor, however, told CNBC: “When it’s all said and done, you’re not going to be able to repeal healthcare because President Obama is not going to sign it, and they don’t have enough votes to override a veto. So why push a cart uphill when you know it’s not going to be able to get to the top?”

richard.simon@latimes.com
Obama’s response: President plans post-election press conference

Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman go round and round: quibbling over the slur someone in Brown’s camp used to describe Whitman and how offensive it was (or wasn’t) and whether Brown should (or shouldn’t) be more contrite. This drives Kim DuPont crazy.

DuPont, a political independent and Whitman supporter, said after Brown apologized in their last debate, “She should have just accepted, and they both should have gotten on with it.”

DuPont ticks off her concerns: jobs, the economy, making Sacramento more business-friendly. “Those are the issues affecting the state and our place in the world,” said DuPont, 50, a financial consultant in the agriculture industry. “Those are what matter.”

The race for governor has been long, contentious and, by far, the most expensive in history. To many in this rural stretch of Central California, it has also been a disappointment: feeding their cynicism, taxing their patience — they long ago tuned out the incessant advertising — and instilling little faith that either candidate can deal with the state’s paralyzing dysfunction.

The last several weeks of the campaign, dominated by debate over an inadvertently recorded epithet and Whitman’s illegal immigrant housekeeper, have seemed especially pointless.

“A sideshow,” said Margo Michael, a cook. “Silly,” said Jerry Caperton, a retired firefighter.

For the last 16 years, San Benito County has been California’s political bellwether, a slice of rich farmland just south of the San Francisco Bay Area with an unparalleled record of matching statewide voter sentiment. In 2002, Gray Davis won reelection with 47% of the vote; in San Benito County he received 49%. In 2006, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger cruised to victory with 57% support. In San Benito County, he got 56%.

If the pattern holds this November, and if San Benito again speaks for the rest of the state, then neither candidate will run away with the contest.

Democrat Brown and Republican Whitman have their partisans: people who believe political experience (in Brown’s case) or business acumen (cited by Whitman backers) would be just what’s needed to shake up Sacramento (the way politicians always pledge).

But many more voters echoed Chuck Obeso-Bradley, who was not particularly enamored of either candidate and regarded their promises, and their charges and countercharges, with a good dose of skepticism.

A Democrat, he leans toward Brown (“holding my nose a bit”). But he thinks it will be some time before the state cycles from recession to recovery, regardless of the outcome Nov. 2. “I’ll support whoever wins and wish them both Godspeed,” said Obeso-Bradley, 56, the sales manager for a software company. “They’re going to need it.”

With about 55,000 residents, roughly the population of Arcadia or Cerritos, San Benito is more rural and Latino than California as a whole. There are relatively fewer college graduates and a slightly higher proportion of registered Democrats.

But the economic hardship — the bankruptcies, jobs lost, homes foreclosed, businesses hanging by the merest of threads — are familiar to many Californians battered by the Great Recession.

In some ways, San Benito County had it worse. Even before the housing bubble burst, regulators imposed a local building moratorium until a new sewage plant was built. The work was finished just in time for the recession, which devastated the construction industry. Unemployment, always subject to the vagaries of the agricultural season, peaked near 22% in February.

There have been hopeful signs of late. Unemployment was 14.8% in August (compared to 12.4% statewide.) A long-awaited expansion of the Hollister airport may finally go forward, and the county could land a new solar farm, with the promise of as many as 650 jobs.

Still, not one person in more than 40 interviewed felt good about the direction things were headed, a contrast with 2006, when business was robust and state lawmakers passed a budget the day before the July 1 start of the fiscal year — with a surplus.

“Sacramento keeps rolling on, like it always has, but things are out of control,” said William McDonald, 39, a courier for the San Benito County Health Department and an undecided independent. “It’s October, and they’re just now barely passing a budget?”

Even though Schwarzenegger is not on the ballot, the governor loomed large in the minds of many. That has not helped Whitman. She is running on the same outsider message Schwarzenegger used in the 2003 recall election, and several voters suggested his years in office didn’t work out too well.

“He was new. He was fresh. I thought, give it a shot,” said Bob Rowlands, 59, a Democrat who sells evidence-tracking software to police agencies. “Now Whitman is talking about running Sacramento like a business, but running a business and running the government aren’t the same. Brown may not have all the answers, but at least he knows the lay of the land.”

Whitman has spent more than $140 million on the campaign — the vast majority from her own pocketbook — and that alone has put some people off, including Peggy Neubauer, a Republican who may vote Democratic for the first time in her life.

“It’s all about feeding her ego: ‘I’m going to be the governor of the biggest state in the union,’ ” said Neubauer, 55, who owns a struggling real estate and property management firm. “Well, you can’t buy it. And if she gets there, she’s going to have all the problems Arnold had, without his finesse.”

The controversy over Whitman’s illegal immigrant housekeeper — the candidate said she did not know her status until just before the woman was fired — apparently swayed few people. Mary Martinez, 67, a retired bookkeeper and political independent, was ready to back Whitman but will skip voting in the governor’s race. “I don’t like the way she was treated,” said Martinez, referring to the maid’s brusque dismissal after nine years of employment.

But most of those interviewed waved off the matter as a diversion cooked up by Democrats. That included many Brown supporters, like Lauretta Avina, 46, who suggested that candidates “do what it takes to get elected. They play dirty on both sides.”

While Schwarzenegger shadows Whitman’s campaign, Brown has to contend with the record of another California governor: himself.

“I remember him saying they weren’t going to spray for the Medfly, and then all those planes came overhead spraying all over the place,” said Jan Van Erven, referring to Brown’s equivocating stance during the 1980s agricultural infestation. Van Erven also remembered Rose Bird, the state Supreme Court justice who overturned 64 death penalty convictions and became a soft-on-crime symbol to Brown critics.

“Brown had his shot,” said Van Erven, 62, a Republican-leaning independent. “I think Whitman could do a better job dealing with the Legislature, which is nothing but a bunch of hard-core liberal Democrats.”

Unless asked, no one talked about the latest campaign flap involving someone close to Brown using the word “whore” to describe Whitman for allegedly cutting a deal to win an endorsement. The private conversation was picked up on voicemail, after Brown thought he had hung up the phone.

Caperton, 70, the retired firefighter, was typical of the overwhelming majority who rolled their eyes or simply shrugged off the remark. “You have to wonder what she calls him back in her office when no one’s listening,” he said, laughing. Unhappy with the choices, he may not vote for anyone for governor.

mark.barabak@latimes.com
State’s bellwether voters want more attention paid to issues

Seven more Western troops were killed in attacks across Afghanistan on Thursday, military officials said, bringing the two-day fatality toll for the NATO force to 13 and illustrating the war’s widening reach.

Combat deaths are running at their highest levels of the 9-year-old war. This year has already been the most lethal for Western troops’ since the U.S. invasion that toppled the Taliban movement.

NATO’s International Security Assistance Force released few details about the latest fatalities. It did not even disclose the nationalities of those killed, and provided only general details about where the deaths occurred.

The largest single fatal incident Thursday was reported in the west of the country, where three troops were killed by a single roadside bomb. National contingents serving in the west, near the Iranian border, include Americans and Italians.

Three more of Thursday’s deaths occurred in the country’s south, two in an insurgent attack and another in a roadside bombing. Yet another fatality took place in Afghanistan’s east, where insurgents often infiltrate from Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas. The majority of the troops in the east are American, but several other NATO nations have forces there as well.

A day earlier, four service members were killed by a single IED, or improvised explosive device, in Afghanistan’s south, considered the insurgency’s heartland. IEDs — low-tech, but sometimes effective even against well-armored vehicles — are the No. 1 killer of Western troops in Afghanistan.

U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan now stands at about 100,000, bolstered by a surge ordered by President Obama last December. The bulk of the American forces are in the south, where NATO is attempting to stifle the Taliban in volatile Kandahar and Helmand provinces.

Even as the fighting pushes ahead, so do efforts by the government of Hamid Karzai to broker some kind of political settlement with the Taliban. While no formal negotiations have begun, contacts have been taking place for months.

NATO officials say the Western military is helping to facilitate the informal talks by granting a measure of freedom of movement to Taliban leaders involved.

Meanwhile, the head of a newly formed government council tasked with overseeing any negotiations with the Taliban and other insurgent groups said he believed the reconciliation effort would move forward.

“We are taking our first steps,” former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani told a news conference in Kabul.

laura.king@latimes.com
Seven Western troops killed in Afghanistan

A federal judge in California issued a permanent ban Tuesday on the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gays and lesbians in the military, ordering the Defense Department to immediately halt any efforts to remove personnel because of their sexual orientation.

The government has 60 days to appeal the ruling, which gives the administration until after the midterm election next month to make a decision. But it also presents a problem for President Obama as he tries to rally his Democratic base.

As a presidential candidate, Obama said he would work to do away with the policy. But should the Justice Department appeal the ruling, it could anger many of the president’s liberal supporters, something Obama and congressional Democrats can ill afford.

In a separate case that posed a similar problem, the administration decided Tuesday to appeal two court rulings in Massachusetts that found unconstitutional the federal definition of marriage as between a man and a woman.

The administration filed a notice of appeal to protect the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, which bars gay marriages, although Obama opposes the law. A Justice Department spokeswoman told the Associated Press that the administration was obligated to defend federal laws when challenged in court.

“As a policy matter, the president has made clear that he believes DOMA is discriminatory and should be repealed,” said Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler. “The Justice Department is defending the statute, as it traditionally does when acts of Congress are challenged.”

Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, called on the administration to immediately appeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” decision. Otherwise, he said, it would “only further the desire of voters to change Congress” out of anger at “activist judges and arrogant politicians.”

Justice Department officials said no decision had been made, though the government has known for a month that the ruling might be coming. U.S. District Judge Virginia A. Phillips in Riverside said on Sept. 9 that she considered the policy unconstitutional.

At the Pentagon, spokeswoman Cynthia O. Smith said the ruling was under review. Other Pentagon officials said a task force created to examine the issue had not completed its study and that town hall meetings with military families were continuing, as was an online opinion survey. If there is no appeal, they said, the ruling would short-circuit that effort.

The “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy was enacted by Congress in 1993 in an effort to reform the military’s practice of searching out and discharging gay personnel.

Under the policy, gays and lesbians could serve in the military as long as they kept their sexual orientation secret. More than 13,000 service members have been discharged under “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

In her three-page order Tuesday, Phillips declared that the policy “infringes on the fundamental rights of United States service members and prospective service members.”

She also said it violated due process and freedom of speech, and did not allow targeted service members “to petition the government for redress of grievances” to fight for their jobs if they were outed as homosexuals.

Phillips ordered the military to immediately stop “enforcing or applying” the policy and implementing the regulations “against any person under their jurisdiction or command.”

She further ordered them “immediately to suspend and discontinue any investigation, or discharge, separation or other proceedings” that were underway.

If the government does not appeal, the question will be whether a district court judge can unilaterally invalidate a longstanding policy of the United States military.

“A federal judge always has the power to declare a law unconstitutional,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Irvine School of Law.

“The interesting question concerns a nationwide injunction. On the one hand, I think she is on strong ground in doing so. On the other hand, one district judge doesn’t have the authority to bind judges in other districts or circuits. They can decide for themselves. The key question is whether the Obama administration will appeal.”

There also is an effort underway in Congress to repeal the law. The House this year voted to repeal the act, as did the Senate Armed Services Committee. But Republicans blocked action on the Senate floor.

Drew Hammill, a spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D- San Francisco), said the speaker welcomed the judge’s order and “continues to believe, until the Senate can act on the repeal of this policy and send it to the president’s desk, the administration should place a moratorium on all dismissals under this policy.”

The judge was ruling in a case brought by the Log Cabin Republicans, the nation’s largest gay GOP political organization. In the trial in July, Justice Department lawyer Paul G. Freeborne argued that Congress and not the courts should decide the fate of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Many gay and lesbian groups praised the order, but Aaron Tax, legal director for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, predicted that the government would appeal.

With that in mind, he said, homosexual “service members must proceed safely and should not come out at this time.”

richard.serrano@latimes.com

David Cloud in the Washington bureau contributed to this report.
Judge orders halt to ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’

The hard-line Shiite group led by Muqtada al-Sadr called it the start of its ascent to nationwide power — a specter sure to spook the United States.

Washington considers the cleric a threat to Iraq’s shaky security and has long refused to consider his movement a legitimate political entity. But Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki may be unable to govern without him.

March elections failed to produce a clear winner and left the nation in turmoil — a power vacuum that U.S. military officials say has encouraged a spike in attacks by Sunni insurgents.

Final agreement on how to form the new government could still be weeks if not months away, but “the Sadrist acceptance of al-Maliki as prime minister could begin to break the logjam,” said Iraq expert Daniel Serwer of the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington.

Allying with al-Maliki poses a political risk for al-Sadr among his followers, many of whom hate the prime minister, and the cleric’s top aides refused Friday to publicly explain why he did it. The most that Sadrist lawmaker Nassar al-Rubaie would say is that both camps now seek to “open dialogue with the other winning political groups to form the government.”

But it is clear to Iraqi and U.S. officials that al-Sadr seeks unfettered and increased influence in the next government if al-Maliki comes out on top.

The cleric, whose militia once ran death squads out of the health ministry headquarters in Baghdad to target Sunnis, has been in self-imposed exile in Iran since 2007.

As part of agreeing to back al-Maliki, a leading Sadrist said the movement has demanded key government positions, including deputy parliament speaker and as many as six Cabinet-level ministry posts of the 34 to be filled.

Controlling service agencies like Iraq’s health, oil, construction and electricity ministries would allow Sadrists to hire supporters and boost political loyalty. Sadrists also are clamoring to run the trade ministry, which would carry some sway over foreign policy, and at least one of the agencies tasked with Iraqi security missions — a huge red flag to U.S. officials.

Down the road, after the American military has fully withdrawn in 2011 and U.S. diplomatic influence has waned, Sadrists will make a play for the prime ministers’ post, said a leading party official who spoke on condition of anonymity because al-Sadr has forbidden his aides from discussing the negotiations.

“In the future, the premiership will be for us,” the Sadrist official said. “We will have nominees who will compete when the next elections are held after the departure of the (U.S.) occupation.”

Having a Sadrist in power would endanger if not scuttle hopes of establishing a thriving democracy in Iraq that could be a model in the region. There are worries about how much influence Iran now carries over al-Sadr after offering him refuge for more than three years.

While saying it does not have a favorite candidate among those vying to become prime minister, the Obama administration strongly opposes giving power to al-Sadr and his followers. It is largely a moot wish: Sadrists were the only party to gain seats in parliament in the March 7 vote, winning 39 of the 325 in a signal of their rise.

That has put them in the position of being wooed by other Shiite political leaders for support.

“The Sadrists having a key role in the next government of Iraq was one of the few redlines that the Obama administration had,” said Ken Pollack, an expert at the Brookings Institute think-tank in Washington who was a key Iraq policymaker in the Bush administration.

“They’ve staged this major comeback, and the administration is very, very worried about that,” Pollack said. “This is something Iran has been trying to do for months. Clearly this is a big win for them and really bad for the U.S.”

In Baghdad, U.S. Embassy spokesman David J. Ranz avoided even using the word Sadrist when asked for an official statement Friday about the movement’s partnership with al-Maliki.

Ranz said the embassy welcomed actions that would lead to a new government in Iraq, now stalled for nearly seven months. And he said the U.S. hoped to see “an inclusive and legitimate government, responsive to the needs of the Iraqi people.”

Anti-US Shiite cleric backs al-Maliki for PM in move that could pave way for new government

Somalia’s prime minister resigned Tuesday to prevent what he called political turmoil amid an impasse with the country’s president.

Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke told reporters he was resigning while standing alongside President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, who thanked the prime minister for what he called a “courageous decision.”

“After seeing that the political turmoil between me and the president has caused security vulnerability, I have decided to resign to save the nation and give a chance to others,” the prime minister said.

The resignation comes amid a rift between Sharmarke and Ahmed over a new draft constitution. The two have not gotten along for months, and a vote of confidence on the prime minister had been scheduled over the weekend, though it was postponed.

Ahmed called Sharmarke’s decision “historic” because the impasse was settled among Somalis instead of seeking outside intervention. Sharmarke, who holds a Canadian passport, became prime minister in February 2009 after the government signed a deal with opposition groups led by Ahmed.

The prime minister appeared far from downcast as he announced his resignation. Sharmarke smiled and waved to reporters as he left the news conference, which was well-attended by members of parliament and Cabinet members. The current Cabinet will lose their posts with Sharmarke’s resignation; the next prime minister will name a new Cabinet.

“Both men looked very happy. I was not expecting them to look so. There must be a hidden agenda they have agreed to,” said Mowlid Maane, a parliamentarian, commenting on rumors swirling through Mogadishu that Sharmarke was paid to go away quietly.

The resignation won’t have much practical effect on Somalia’s weak government, which controls only a few blocks of Mogadishu. Somalia has not had an effective government for 19 years.

Ahmed said he will build a new government soon.

“Now the recent political turmoil has ended and the government is gone. Let us wait and see what is next. I hope an effective government that saves this nation,” said Abdirashid Hidig, the state minister for domestic affairs.
Somalia’s prime minister resigns