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Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, aired those and other bewildering thoughts in a two-hour verbal contest at Columbia University yesterday, providing some ammunition to people who said there was no point in inviting him to speak. Yet his appearance also offered evidence of why he is widely admired in the developing world for his defiance toward Western, especially American, power.

In repeated clashes with his hosts, Mr. Ahmadinejad accused the United States of supporting terrorist groups, and characterized as hypocritical American and European efforts to rein in Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

“If you have created the fifth generation of atomic bombs and are testing them already, who are you to question other people who just want nuclear power,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said, adding, pointedly: “I think the politicians who are after atomic bombs, politically, they’re backwards. Retarded.”

He said that there were no homosexuals in Iran — not one — and that the Nazi slaughter of six million Jews should not be treated as fact, but theory, and therefore open to debate and more research.

His speech at Columbia, in advance of his planned speech today at the United Nations, produced a day of intense protests and counterprotests around the campus. It was a performance at once both defiant — he said Iran could not recognize Israel “because it is based on ethnic discrimination, occupation and usurpation and it consistently threatens its neighbors” — and conciliatory — he said he wanted to visit ground zero to “show my respect” for what he called “a tragic event.”

And he said that even if the Holocaust did occur, the Palestinians should not pay the price for it.

He began the afternoon on the defensive.

Lee C. Bollinger, the president of Columbia, under intense attack for the invitation — one protester outside the campus auditorium where Mr. Ahmadinejad spoke passed out fliers that said, “Bollinger, too bad bin Laden is not available” — opened the event with a 10-minute verbal assault.

He said, “Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator,” adding, “You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated.”

The Iranian president, who was seated 10 feet away from him on the stage, wore a frozen smile. The anti-Ahmadinejad portion of the audience, which looked to be about 70 percent of it, cheered and chortled.

Mr. Bollinger praised himself and Columbia for showing they believed in freedom of speech by inviting the Iranian president, then continued his attack. He said it was “well documented” that Iran was a state sponsor of terrorism, accused Iran of fighting a proxy war against the United States in Iraq and questioned why Iran has refused “to adhere to the international standards” of disclosure for its nuclear program.

“I doubt,” Mr. Bollinger concluded, “that you will have the intellectual courage to answer these questions.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad did not directly answer the questions, but he did address them. Before doing so though, he said pointedly:

“In Iran, tradition requires when you invite a person to be a speaker, we actually respect our students enough to allow them to make their own judgment, and don’t think it’s necessary before the speech is even given to come in with a series of complaints to provide vaccination to the students and faculty.”

He added, to some cheers, “Nonetheless, I shall not begin by being affected by this unfriendly treatment.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s much-talked-about appearance at Columbia was the opening act of a week of dramatic theater here as the United Nations General Assembly opened its annual session. He and his nemesis, President Bush, are scheduled to address the General Assembly today.

Mr. Bush, asked about Columbia’s decision to invite Mr. Ahmadinejad, told Fox News that it was “O.K. with me,” but added that he might not have extended the invitation himself.

“When you really think about it,” Mr. Bush said, “he’s the head of a state sponsor of terror, he’s — and yet an institution in our country gives him a chance to express his point of view, which really speaks to the freedoms of the country. I’m not sure I’d have offered the same invitation.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad is allowed under international law and diplomatic protocols to travel freely within a 25-mile radius of Columbus Circle. But the police said last week that he would not be allowed near ground zero.

Inside the auditorium, the Columbia students laughed appreciatively when Mr. Ahmadinejad pushed back against the attempts by Dean John H. Coatsworth, the event’s moderator, to get him to stop rambling and answer questions directly.

“Do you or your government seek the destruction of the state of Israel?” Mr. Coatsworth asked.

“We love all people,” Mr. Ahmadinejad dodged. “We are friends of the Jews. There are many Jews living peacefully in Iran.” He went on to say that the Palestinian “nation” should be allowed a referendum to decide its own future.

Mr. Coatsworth persisted: “I think you can answer that question with a simple yes or no.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad was having none of it. “You ask the question and then you want the answer the way you want to hear it,” he shot back. “I ask you, is the Palestinian issue not a question of international importance? Please tell me yes or no.”

For that, he got a round of applause from the students, who had lined up four hours before the speech to get into the auditorium. Online tickets evaporated in 90 minutes last week, they said, almost on par with a Bruce Springsteen concert.

“I’m proud of my university today,” said Stina Reksten, a 28-year-old graduate student from Norway. “I don’t want to confuse the very dire human rights situation in Iran with the issue here, which is freedom of speech. This is about academic freedom.”

It remains unclear whether Columbia’s leaders were able to mollify critics through their critical treatment of Mr. Ahmadinejad. But they made some headway: the American Israel Public Affairs Committee sent out an e-mail message shortly after the speech with the subject line, “A Must Read: Columbia University President’s Intro of Iran’s Ahmadinejad today.”

TEHRAN — When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was first elected president, he said Iran had more important issues to worry about than how women dress. He even called for allowing women into soccer games, a revolutionary idea for revolutionary Iran.
Today, Iran is experiencing the most severe crackdown on social behavior and dress in years, and women are often barred from smoking in public, let alone attending a stadium event.

Since his inauguration two years ago, Mr. Ahmadinejad has grabbed headlines around the world, and in Iran, for outrageous statements that often have no more likelihood of being put into practice than his plan for women to attend soccer games. He has generated controversy in New York in recent days by asking to visit ground zero — a request that was denied — and his scheduled appearance at Columbia University has drawn protests.

But it is because of his provocative remarks, like denying the Holocaust and calling for Israel to be wiped off the map, that the United States and Europe have never known quite how to handle him. In demonizing Mr. Ahmadinejad, the West has served him well, elevating his status at home and in the region at a time when he is increasingly isolated politically because of his go-it-alone style and ineffective economic policies, according to Iranian politicians, officials and political experts.

Political analysts here say they are surprised at the degree to which the West focuses on their president, saying that it reflects a general misunderstanding of their system.

Unlike in the United States, in Iran the president is not the head of state nor the commander in chief. That status is held by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, whose role combines civil and religious authority. At the moment, this president’s power comes from two sources, they say: the unqualified support of the supreme leader, and the international condemnation he manages to generate when he speaks up.

“The United States pays too much attention to Ahmadinejad,” said an Iranian political scientist who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. “He is not that consequential.”

That is not to say that Mr. Ahmadinejad is insignificant. He controls the mechanics of civil government, much the way a prime minister does in a state like Egypt, where the real power rests with the president. He manages the budget and has put like-minded people in positions around the country, from provincial governors to prosecutors. His base of support is the Basiji militia and elements of the Revolutionary Guards.

But Mr. Ahmadinejad has not shown the same political acumen at home as he has in riling the West. Two of his ministers have quit, criticizing his stewardship of the state. The head of the central bank resigned. The chief judge criticized him for his management of the government. His promise to root out corruption and redistribute oil wealth has run up against entrenched interests.

Even a small bloc of members of Parliament that once aligned with Mr. Ahmadinejad has largely given up, officials said. “Maybe it comes as a surprise to you that I voted for him,” said Emad Afrough, a conservative member of Parliament. “I liked the slogans demanding justice.”

But he added: “You cannot govern the country on a personal basis. You have to use public knowledge and consultation.”

Rather than focusing so much attention on the president, the West needs to learn that in Iran, what matters is ideology — Islamic revolutionary ideology, according to politicians and political analysts here. Nearly 30 years after the shah fell in a popular revolt, Iran’s supreme leader also holds title of guardian of the revolution.

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s power stems not from his office per se, but from the refusal of his patron, Ayatollah Khamenei, and some hard-line leaders, to move beyond Iran’s revolutionary identity, which makes full relations with the West impossible. There are plenty of conservatives and hard-liners who take a more pragmatic view, wanting to retain “revolutionary values” while integrating Iran with the world, at least economically. But they are not driving the agenda these days, and while that could change, it will not be the president who makes that call.

“Iran has never been interested in reaching an accommodation with the United States,” the Iranian political scientist said. “It cannot reach an accommodation as long as it retains the current structure.”

Another important factor restricts Mr. Ahmadinejad’s hand: while ideology defines the state, the revolution has allowed a particular class to grow wealthy and powerful.

When Mr. Ahmadinejad was first elected, it appeared that Iran’s hard-liners had a monopoly on all the levers of power. But today it is clear that Mr. Ahmadinejad is not a hard-liner in the traditional sense. His talk of economic justice and a redistribution of wealth, for example, ran into a wall of existing vested interests, including powerful clergy members and military leaders.

“Ahmadinejad is a phenomenon,” said Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a former vice president under the more moderate administration of Mohammad Khatami. “On a religious level he is much more of a hard-liner than the traditional hard-liners. But on a political level, he does not have the support of the hard-liners.”

In the long run, political analysts here say, a desire to preserve those vested interests will drive Iran’s agenda. That means that the allegiance of the political elite is to the system, not a particular president. If this president were ever perceived as outlasting his usefulness, he would probably take his place in history beside other presidents who failed to change the orientation of the system.

Iranians will go to the polls in less than two years to select a president. There are so many pressures on the electoral system here, few people expect an honest race. The Guardian Council, for example, controlled by hard-liners, must approve all candidates.

But whether Mr. Ahmadinejad wins or loses, there is no sense here in Iran that the outcome will have any impact on the fundamentals of Iran’s relations with the world or the government’s relation to its own society.

“The situation will get worse and worse,” said Saeed Leylaz, an economist and former government official. “We are moving to a point where no internal force can change things.”

By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

Published: September 24, 2007

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AS he anxiously counted the minutes until he would propose to Emily Cappella on Aug. 24, Guildry Santana ran down his checklist:

Shay Stephens Photography

THAT IS THE QUESTION J. D. Norman proposed to Rebecca Layman during a trip to New York. The event was surreptitiously photographed.

Reservation at La Palapa, the Mexican restaurant in the East Village where they had their first date two years earlier.

Done.

Engagement ring removed from box and tucked discreetly into pants pocket.

There.

And this: a photographer lurking at the crowded intersection of Eighth Street and Astor Place, with instructions to snap his shutter the instant Mr. Santana dropped to bended knee.

Um, yes.

“I wanted this day to be something we could tell people about,” Mr. Santana said.

Now, not only could he tell friends and family about the circumstances of his engagement, he could show them, too, thanks to a candid shot of the proposal.

Whether inspired by tenderhearted sentiment, the desire to record history in the making or something more narcissistic, some marriage-minded men are remaking one of humanity’s most private moments into one that can be instantly shared with family, friends and even, thanks to the Internet, virtual strangers. They are conspiring with photographers who, with all the stealth of covert operatives, lurk in crowds, behind bushes and in the darkened recesses of restaurants to capture the delighted, unposed reaction of the fiancée-in-the-making.

“The trend is on the rise to have all the moments documented in your life,” said Anna Post, the author of “Emily Post’s Wedding Parties,” to be published next month by Collins. “You see it on MySpace and Facebook, where people have posted 200 photographs of themselves, and they’re not even photographs of profound moments.”

Ms. Post finds the idea of photographically preserving a marriage proposal “wonderfully romantic, personally,” she said. She warned, however, that it is not for everyone.

The idea dovetails with the current trend toward photojournalistic realism in wedding photography. In recent years the intimacies of a wedding day — a glimpse of the bride as she dons her underpinnings, the stolen mash session between the newlyweds when the guests aren’t looking — have become increasingly fair game.

“Initially wedding photojournalism was an aesthetic choice by photographers like me because it emphasized the story of the wedding,” said Terry deRoy Gruber, a New York photographer who shot the wedding of Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, among others. “But as time has gone on, with the proliferation of the paparazzi, reality television and online autobiography all kind of cooked together, people almost feel it’s really the only way to document something. Proposal photographs represent the absolute beginning of the marriage story, and for some groom who is influenced by these other forces, this is sort of an obligatory scene to record.”

Over the last four years, he and his team of photographers, who charge $500 and up for these sessions, have clandestinely snapped proposals on the Lincoln Center Plaza after the opera; masqueraded as tourists in public places; and hidden in the wings of a cavernous and empty (save two) restaurant rented for the occasion by a prospective bridegroom, cameras concealed behind black cloth, the sounds of the shutters obscured by the clatter of dishes.

Still, the idea of being secretly photographed at a traditionally private moment can be unnerving to some women.

“I thought it was a little stalkerish to know that this person was following you to get these great pictures,” said Briana King, of the secret photo session in December 2004 that Christopher Joralemon, now her husband, arranged with Gruber Photographers. A crew armed with telephoto lenses and dressed like tourists trailed the couple, who were on a stroll through Central Park — ostensibly to attend a holiday brunch — where they’d met at a dog run seven months earlier. “But the end product was good,” Ms. King said. “It was a little weird but definitely worth it.”

Jaime Padula eventually noticed a man sitting near her on a beach in Malibu, Calif., shooting away with his camera as P. J. Byrne asked her to marry him. But she had no idea why. Only later that day, when the photographer reappeared with the photos at a gathering of friends at a nearby hotel, did Ms. Padula realize the stranger in their midst — an out-of-town friend of Mr. Byrne’s — was not as strange as first thought.

The next day, the couple sent a celebratory e-mail message to their family and friends that included a link to the posted images.

“I loved it,” said Ms. Byrne, now married. “It’s very rare that you get a picture of that moment.”

For his part, Mr. Byrne said, “You can take pictures with the woman you love all this time, but the smile on her face in that moment is something you can’t recreate.”

Original Story - The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Sept. 19 — A proposal that Democrats put forward as their best chance of changing the course of the Iraq war died on the Senate floor on Wednesday, as Republicans stood firmly with President Bush.

The Reach of War

With other war initiatives seemingly headed for the same fate, Senate Democrats, who only two weeks ago proclaimed September to be the month for shifting course in Iraq, conceded that they had little chance of success.

They said their strategy would now focus on portraying Republicans as opposing any change and on trying to chip away support for the White House as the war continued.

The proposal that failed Wednesday fell 4 votes short of the 60 needed to prevent a filibuster and would have required that troops be given as much time at home as they had spent overseas before being redeployed.

There were 56 votes in favor, including 6 Republicans — one fewer than the 7 Republicans who joined the Democrats in July, when the measure, by Senator Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia, also fell 4 votes short.

Supporters of Mr. Bush’s war strategy declared victory, saying they had firmly beaten back legislative efforts to change course.

“It means that Congress will not intervene in the foreseeable future,” said Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, the Independent who has voted with the Republicans on war issues. “The fact that it didn’t get enough votes says that Congress doesn’t have the votes to stop this strategy of success from going forward.”

The Senate vote was a crucial test of the war plan that Mr. Bush put forward last week, calling for only gradual reductions in troop levels in Iraq from their current high, and leaving intact by next summer a main body of more than 130,000 troops, about the same number as last February.

The outcome showed that the strong opposition to the war plan by Democrats and a few Republicans remained insufficient to overcome a powerful Republican minority in the Senate that has succeeded all year in staving off challenges to the war policy.

For now, the failed Webb proposal is the closest Democrats have come to bipartisan legislation that would force Mr. Bush to change his strategy. And with Republicans solidly behind the plan outlined by Mr. Bush and Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander in Iraq, Democrats have retreated to a firm antiwar stance.

They are no longer entertaining the kind of compromise measures that some Democrats had proposed this month as an attempt to woo Republican defectors, and they said they would instead seek opportunities to hold votes that would more starkly contrast Republican support for the president with Democrats’ demands for withdrawal.

“The Republican leadership and the White House is getting them all to march in line,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, who ranks third in the party leadership. “But it is marching further and further away from where America is. We just keep at it. It’s all we can do.”

Democratic strategists and party officials said that Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, and his colleagues decided to stop trying to strike a deal with Republicans after they found little interest on the other side and could not settle on a plan that would appeal to Republicans but was tough enough to hold Democrats together.

Jim Manley, a spokesman for Mr. Reid, said the majority leader was rebuffed repeatedly in his efforts to find consensus with the Republicans.

“It became evident that Republicans were not willing to break with the president,” he said.

Democrats said Mr. Webb’s proposal, if approved, would have added time between deployments, forced the withdrawal of troops on a substantially swifter timeline and, they said, protect troops from serving protracted and debilitating deployments.

On Thursday and Friday, the Senate is expected to vote on several other war proposals by the Democrats, including one by Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, that would require most American troops to be pulled out of Iraq by next June and would then cut financing for continuing military operations.

Another proposal by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, would require a shift of American troops away from combat by next summer. Mr. Reid’s spokesman said the decision to stick with a hard deadline for withdrawal was endorsed by Mr. Levin, who earlier had signaled a willingness to soften his proposal to win Republican converts.

Neither the Feingold plan nor the Levin initiative has much chance of winning 60 votes.

The Senate will also vote on a plan by Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, that calls for a greater reliance on diplomacy to forge a political solution in Iraq and end the war.

But Democrats seemed resigned to having little chance of influencing the war strategy anytime soon.

After the vote, a dejected Mr. Webb said: “You are seeing, as of a week ago, the administration and some of the leading Republicans in here talking about, ‘Hey it’s O.K. that we’re going to be in Iraq for the next 50 years.’ I don’t think it is O.K.”

He continued: “And so we are going to have this debate. It is going to be a long and emotional debate, long meaning in months and perhaps years.”

Mr. Webb’s plan came under sharp attack by the Pentagon, which said it would interfere with complex troop deployment schedules, and late last week the administration put intense pressure on Republican lawmakers when it became clear that Mr. Webb was close to securing enough Republican votes to win.

And it was dealt a death blow when Senator John W. Warner, Mr. Webb’s fellow Virginian, and one of the most respected Republican voices on military affairs, announced dramatically on the Senate floor that he was withdrawing his support for the proposal based on information provided by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and other senior military officials.

“I endorsed it,” Mr. Warner said of Mr. Webb’s plan. “I intend now to cast a vote against it.”

In explaining his decision, Mr. Warner said he had been convinced, at a meeting earlier in the day with senior military officials, that the Webb plan would cause havoc for the armed forces, potentially lengthening tours in Iraq. He also met with Mr. Gates, a longtime friend, on Monday.

But Mr. Warner’s change in position echoed a wider unwillingness by Republicans to break ranks with the administration.

The two Republican senators running for president — John McCain of Arizona and Sam Brownback of Kansas — voted against the Webb proposal. Four Democratic candidates — Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Barack Obama of Illinois, Mr. Biden and Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut — voted for it.

The continuing partisan divide frustrated some moderate lawmakers in each party who are eager to help shape Iraq policy and signal to constituents that they are working to end the war.

Mr. Reid traveled on Monday to New York City to help raise money for antiwar groups, and while Democrats remain under substantial pressure from those groups, Mr. Manley and others said that event was scheduled weeks ago and had no bearing on the legislative change of tack.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who worked to defeat the Webb plan, said the Republican support for the war could have a political cost. “The Republicans own this war,” he said. “If it goes bad, the nation loses and the Republican Party loses disproportionately compared to the Democratic Party.”

Originally Published by the NYTimes

HONG KONG, Sept. 19 — Asian stock markets rose sharply today and European markets were off to a strong start this morning following a powerful rise in the American markets Tuesday after the Federal Reserve announced a surprisingly large half a percentage point cut in interest rates.

And U.S. stocks looked poised today to add to the previous session’s rally, the biggest in four years.Leading Asian share indexes were pushed to their highest levels in more than a month, with the Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong rising 4 per cent to a record close of 25,554.64.

In Europe, the FTSE 100 gained 2 per cent to 6,404.4 in morning trading, while the Xetra Dax rose 1.7 per cent to 7,705.34 and the CAC-40 added 1.9 per cent to 5,656.19. Commodity stocks also surged, thanks to higher metal and oil prices.

Particularly strong were banking shares, which were recently battered on worries about their exposure to a crisis in the U.S. subprime or risky mortgages market. Shares in British home builders rose sharply as well, with Persimmon up 5.7 percent and Barratt Developments gaining 5.4 percent.

In Asia, the rate cut is seen as particularly benefiting exporters of cars and electronic goods that rely heavily on the United States market. Toyota Motor Corporation had its biggest gain in more than three years on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, adding 4.9 percent.

In Seoul, Samsung Electronics and Hyundai Motor Company, both heavily reliant on the U.S. market were up 1.9 per cent and 4.6 percent respectively, leading a surge in the share prices for exporters.

But the enthusiasm to cash in the American rate cut was tempered by a discomforting message implicit in the decision to drop the benchmark interest rate to 4.75 percent.

“I don’t think anyone can feel comfortable that all is well,” said Edmund Harriss, the investment director with Guinness Atkinson Investment Managers, which has $370 million in assets in three Asia-focused funds. On one hand, the move signifies that the Fed is “prepared to act as needed,” Mr. Harriss said, but on the other, the United States economy may be “looking weaker than we thought.”

Whether the old adage about the U.S. economy sneezing and the rest of the world catching a cold holds true is a question on the minds of many economists and business executives in Asia as they watch the fallout from the crisis in the U.S. over defaults on home loans to poor grade borrowers, the so-called sub-prime mortgage problem.

The aggressive rate cut by the Federal Reserve has signaled to many economists the depth of concern over a U.S. recession brought on by a credit squeeze and declining consumer consumption.

But what impact will that have on Asia? Just two days before the Federal Reserve’s announcement, the Manila-based Asian Development Bank issued its annual economic outlook report for Asia, forecasting average growth in the region of 8.3 percent for 2007. This upgraded its earlier estimate of 7.6 percent. Growth for 2008 was forecast to be 8.2 percent.

One of the bank’s key messages was that Asia is well placed to manage any U.S. slowdown, although the comment came with the caveat that the outlook for the region in 2008 is “hazy” because of uncertainty in global financial markets and the health of the world’s biggest economy.

“Developing Asia’s defenses against external shocks are solid and it can weather a slowdown in the United States,” the bank said. “The region’s growth prospects will continue to depend on how well the countries address their internal challenges.”

At a conference in Manila today, Haruhiko Kuroda, the president of the bank, said the U.S . rate cut would help stabilize financial markets and give a timely boost to the U.S. economy.

“It would definitely improve the prospect of sustained strong economic growth in the United States, which could be also very beneficial particularly for emerging economies in Asia,” Kuroda said. “So, I would say that the decision would be greatly appreciated by many economies, financial sectors in the region.”

The bank’s outlook report pointed to research by the International Monetary Fund that growth in countries of developing Asia declined by 0.28 percent for every percentage point fall in U.S. growth in the five U.S. recessions from 1974 to 2001.

Even oil priced at about $82 a barrel is yet to shake confidence in the region’s ability to maintain the fastest growth rates in the world, although it will increase the budget cost of direct and indirect subsidies for consumers.

Published originally by the NY Times

BAGHDAD, Sept. 18 — The Iraqi government said today that it would review the status of all foreign and local security companies working in Iraq after a shooting that left eight Iraqis dead.

Ahmad al-Rubaye/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Blackwater contractors in Baghdad in 2005. Reports of the number of its employees in Iraq ranged from 1,000 to 1,500.

The Reach of War

Blackwater USA, an American contractor that provides security to some of the top American officials in Iraq, was banned from working in the country by the Ministry of Interior following the shooting on Sunday, which involved an American diplomatic convoy.

A spokesman for the Iraqi government, Ali al-Dabbag, said that the cabinet met today and supported the decision to cancel Blackwater’s license and begin an immediate investigation. The ministry has said that it would prosecute the participants in the shooting, but a law issued by the American occupation authority prior to the return of sovereignty to Iraq in 2004 grants immunity to American contractors, along with American military personnel, from Iraqi prosecution.

Mr. Dabbag said the investigation should “compel the company to respect the Iraqi laws, citizens’ dignity and the results and consequences the investigation would come up with.”

The statement by the Iraqi government today seemed to blame Blackwater employees directly for the deaths, calling it a “vicious assault which was carried out by the employees of the American security company” against Iraqi citizens.

But American officials have stopped short of saying whether the Blackwater guards in the diplomatic motorcade had caused any of the deaths.

Details of the shooting Sunday are still unclear. Bombs were going off in the area at the time, and shots were fired at the convoy, American officials said.

“There was a firefight,” said Sean McCormack, the principal State Department spokesman. “We believe some innocent life was lost. Nobody wants to see that. But I can’t tell you who was responsible for that.”

In separate violence today, a series of car bombs around Baghdad killed at least eight people. In the largest attack, a car bomb exploded close to the Health Ministry, near the central morgue, killing five civilians and injuring 20 others, the Ministry of Interior said. Another car bomb, which exploded in the Ur district near a popular market, killed one civilian.

The deaths on Sunday linked to the American security firm have struck a nerve with Iraqis, who say that private security companies are often quick to shoot and are rarely held responsible for their actions.

A security expert based in Baghdad said Monday night that the law granting contractors immunity, Order No. 17, had never been overturned. Like others, he spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter remains under official inquiry.

Senior officials, including Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, expressed outrage on Monday.

“This is a big crime that we can’t stay silent in front of,” said Jawad al-Bolani, the interior minister, in remarks on Al Arabiya television. “Anyone who wants to have good relations with Iraq has to respect Iraqis. We apply the law and are committed to it.”

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Mr. Maliki on Monday afternoon to express her regret “over the death of innocent civilians that occurred during the attack on an embassy convoy,” said Tom Casey, another State Department spokesman.

Mr. Maliki’s office said Ms. Rice had pledged to “take immediate steps to show the United States’ willingness to prevent such actions.”

Because Blackwater guards are so central to the American operation here, having provided protection for numerous American ambassadors, it is still not clear whether the United States would agree to end a relationship with a trusted protector so quickly. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker praised private security companies in a speech on Sept. 11, referring to Blackwater by name.

“This incident will be the true test of diplomacy between the State Department and the government of Iraq,” said one American official in Baghdad.

Blackwater has defended its actions, saying it had come under attack from armed militants.

“The ‘civilians’ reportedly fired upon by Blackwater professionals were in fact armed enemies, and Blackwater personnel returned defensive fire,” said Anne Tyrrell, a company spokeswoman, in an e-mail message. “Blackwater professionals heroically defended American lives in a war zone.”

The American official said he believed that the contract had been pulled, although Ms. Tyrrell said that there had been no official action by the Ministry of Interior “regarding plans to revoke licensing.” Mr. McCormack said the State Department had not been informed about any cancellation.