World

Pressure To Secure Iraq

January 6, 2004 / 7:49 AM EST / CBS/AP

A day after Britain's prime minister said occupation forces in Iraq must "get on top of the security situation" soon, a bomb exploded near a U.S. military convoy west of Baghdad, injuring three soldiers, and another American soldier was shot and wounded when a foot patrol was ambushed northwest of the capital.

A top British official said Monday that British forces are likely to remain in Iraq for several more years, a day after Prime Minister Tony Blair made a surprise visit to troops headquartered in Basra.

Overnight, two mortar shells exploded in the vicinity of the coalition headquarters in the southern city of Nasiriyah, causing no damage or injuries.

Witnesses reported that gunmen wounded coalition-appointed lawyer Mohammed al-Jawadi and his son in the northern city of Mosul on Monday morning. Sources at the local hospital said al-Jawadi, the general prosecutor of a newly established court to fight corruption, was in critical condition, but his son's life was not in danger.

In other developments:

The New York Times is reporting that that Bush administration has decided to let an autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq retain its separate system when the U.S. turns over power to Iraqis this summer. Turkey and Iraqis oppose the autonomy, but U.S. officials tell the paper there is no time to deal with the thorny issue now.

A speaker who was purportedly Osama bin Laden said on an audiotape that the U.S.-led war in Iraq was the beginning of the "occupation" of Gulf states for their oil and called on Muslims to keep fighting a holy war in the Middle East. The CIA was checking the authenticity of the tape, which referred to the recent capture of Saddam Hussein.

The U.S. Army discharged three soldiers for abusing prisoners at a detention center in Iraq, a U.S. military spokesman said Monday. An investigation found that one of the soldiers knocked a prisoner to the ground, "repeatedly kicking him in the groin, abdomen, and head, and encourage(ed) her subordinate soldiers to do the same." The others joined in.

Britain's Independent newspaper says military and medical records show British troops assaulted eight young Iraqis, one of whom died in custody.

A Norwegian court ruled that Mullah Krekar, the spiritual leader of the Islamic militant group Ansar al-Islam, cannot be detained for a month while prosecutors investigate his role in the attempted murders of his political rivals in northern Iraq between 2000-2001.

Since the start of war in Iraq in March, 54 British troops have been killed. The latest were two British soldiers who died after a New Year's Day traffic accident in Baghdad, the Ministry of Defense announced Monday. There was no evidence of hostile fire in the accident early Thursday.

In London, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said he could not be precise about when British troops might withdrawal after the planned transfer of power this summer from the coalition to an Iraqi authority.

"I can't give you an exact time scale," Straw said. "It's not going to be months for sure. I can't say whether it's going to be 2006, 2007."

Straw, in an interview with British Broadcasting Corp. radio, also said he had no reason to believe power would not be transferred by July 1, as agreed by the occupation authority and the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council.

But he added that considerable numbers of British troops would likely remain in Iraq long beyond that date, despite the ongoing anti-coalition insurgency.

Blair's top envoy in Iraq, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, warned Sunday that rebels likely will stage bigger and more sophisticated attacks.

"The opposition is getting more sophisticated, using bigger bombs and more sophisticated controls. We will go on seeing bigger bangs," Greenstock told reporters after meeting with Blair.

Blair said: "The important thing is to realize we are about to enter into a very critical six months. We have got to get on top of the security situation properly and we have got to manage the transition. Both of those things are going to be difficult."

On New Year's Eve, a car bomb killed eight people celebrating in an upscale restaurant in Baghdad. On Dec. 27, coordinated strikes including four car bombs struck the southern city of Karbala, killing 19 people, including seven coalition troops, and wounding some 170.

Greenstock said he thought 75-80 percent of attacks were being carried out by loyalists of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam and the rest by foreign terrorist groups that were putting in place "cell structure."

Blair, a staunch ally of the United States whose popularity plummeted amid allegations his government overstated the threat from Saddam Hussein, used his visit Sunday to reiterate charges that preceded the U.S.-led invasion.

Saddam's Iraq, he said, embodied the dual threats facing the world from the "incredibly dangerous" terrorism that is "a perversion of the true faith of Islam" and brutal and repressive regimes that use weapons of mass destruction.