WORLD IN BRIEF (1/17/07)

Campaign under way to evict Starbucks from Forbidden City By Tim Johnson, McClatchy… Campaign under way to evict Starbucks from Forbidden City By Tim Johnson, McClatchy Newspapers

The discreet outdoor sign is gone from the Starbucks coffee shop in Beijing’s most famous historical site, the Forbidden City.

But the outlet there is generating sudden heat on the Internet and in newspapers, sparked by a journalist who contends that its presence is “obscene” and a “trashing of Chinese culture.”

“All I want is for Starbucks to move out of the Forbidden City peacefully, quietly. And we’ll continue enjoying Starbucks elsewhere in the city,” Rui Chenggang, a popular television anchorman who set off the drive, said.

By Tuesday, the issue hit the front page of the high-selling Beijing News, and Rui’s personal blog on the matter drew a half-million page views and thousands of responses, many of them nationalistic calls for the removal of the Starbucks outlet.

The Forbidden City, surrounded by a 20-foot-deep moat in the heart of Beijing, was the sanctuary of imperial dynasties from about 1420 until the last dynasty fell in 1911. Inside dwelled an absolute ruler considered the “son of heaven.”

Renamed the Palace Museum, the massive site, comprising a labyrinthine complex of 9,000 rooms, is one of the most popular tourist venues in the world.

Seattle-based Starbucks has some 200 coffee shops in China, including one near a Great Wall of China site in Badaling, a short drive from Beijing. The company believes China will become its largest market outside the United States.

Execution of Saddam accomplices goes awry By Leila Fadel, McClatchy Newspapers

Two weeks after hooting Shiite Muslim guards marred the execution of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi government’s effort to execute two former officials of his regime with more dignity went awry on Monday when one of the men was decapitated by the noose.

Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Saddam’s once-terrifying leader of intelligence, and Awad Hamad al-Bandar, the head of Saddam’s revolutionary court, were hanged shortly before dawn. The two men, like Saddam, had been convicted of murder in the deaths of 148 men from the Shiite town of Dujail. A videotape of their execution was later played for reporters.

Bandar shook with fear and wept as men in ski masks tightened the noose around his neck. He repeated the creed of Islam, “There is no god but God and Muhammad is his messenger,” even from beneath the darkness of the black hood that was put over his head. Tikriti remained defiant, denying his guilt.

When the trapdoor fell from beneath them, Bandar’s body dangled at the end of the twisting rope. But Tikriti’s head was ripped from his body, which plunged unhindered to the floor, its head coming to rest a few feet away, still in its black execution hood.

“I came close and looked down, and it was so strange,” said Jaafar al-Moussawi, the chief prosecutor in the case and a witness to the execution. “We couldn’t comprehend it. Barzan’s body was lying on his stomach, his head was in the hood, and blood was everywhere.”

Residents say snipers are firing at random as siege continues By Nancy A. Youssef and Zaineb Obeid, McClatchy Newspapers

The two top U.S. officials in Iraq voiced confidence Monday that Iraq’s Shiite Muslim-led government would show no favoritism in its efforts to secure Baghdad, even as residents of a Sunni Muslim neighborhood complained that Shiite Iraqi security forces and government-backed militias were preventing them from evacuating wounded and going for food.

Eight days after a joint U.S.-Iraqi offensive began to take control of the Haifa Street area in central Baghdad, residents said they had no water and no electricity and that people seeking food had been shot at random. They said they could see American soldiers nearby, but that the Americans were making no effort to intervene.

“The Americans are doing nothing, as if they are backing the militias,” said one resident, who asked to be identified only as Abu Sady, 36, for security reasons. “This military siege is killing us. … If this plan continues for one more week, I don’t think you will find one family left on Haifa Street.”

U.S. officials downplayed the reports. U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and Army Gen. George Casey told a news conference Monday that Iraqi officials had assured them that they’d target both Shiite and Sunni extremists in their efforts to pacify the city.

“I am encouraged by what I have seen. We need to give them the benefit of the doubt, and let’s see what happens,” Khalilzad said. If sectarian problems arise, “that will be a conversation down the road. I hope it will be unnecessary. At this point, what we are focused on is to help implement the plan based on the premises we agreed on.”