Negroponte behind Samarra blast

According to an informed source John Negroponte plotted the attack during an unannounced trip to Iraq on June 12 in order to fuel insecurity and sectarian violence in the country.

Negroponte's motive was to overthrow Iraq's legitimate government, the same source added.

Negroponte, who was a staunch supporter of right-wing death squads in Central America during the 1980s, held several informal meetings with Iraqi officials prior to the June 13 terrorist attack on the revered Shia shrines in Samarra, the source said.

During his meetings, Negroponte reportedly strongly cautioned that the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki must change.

Negroponte also asked several Iraqi officials, including Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi, to resign- a move the source said was aimed at paving the way for al-Maliki's government to eventually 'topple'.

The source said Negroponte made “empty promises” to the Iraqi officials, saying they would be appointed to key governmental posts.

But the US still wants to return the Baathists, the loyalists of the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, to power.

The blast in Samarra which destroyed the minarets of the sacred shrines of the Shia Imams was performed with the assistance of the former Saddam regime's security agents, the source added.

As ambassador to Honduras, Negroponte played a key role in US aid to the Contra death squads in Nicaragua and in shoring up the brutal military dictatorship of General Gustavo Alvarez Martinez in Honduras.

During his term as ambassador there, diplomats alleged that the embassy's annual human rights reports made Honduras sound more like 'Norway than Argentina.'

However, according to a four-part series in the Baltimore Sun, in 1982 alone the Honduran press ran 318 stories of murders and kidnappings by the Honduran military.

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