World

Several Attacks On GIs In Iraq

February 20, 2004 / 8:57 PM EST / CBS/AP

Insurgents killed two American soldiers Thursday in a roadside bombing west of Baghdad as the United States was reportedly ready to make major changes in its blueprint for handing over power to a new Iraqi government.

The bombing occurred near Khaldiyah, 50 miles west of the capital, according to the U.S. command. Two soldiers from Task Force All-American were killed, along with at least one Iraqi, the command said. One U.S. soldier was wounded.

Insurgents also fired a rocket-propelled grenade Thursday at an American convoy in Khaldiyah but the projectile missed, witnesses said.

Those deaths brought to 545 the number of American service members who have died since President Bush launched the Iraq war on March 20. Most of the deaths have occurred after Mr. Bush declared an end to active combat May 1.

In other developments:

U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer said that the formula for establishing a new Iraqi government could be changed but the date for the U.S.-led coalition to hand over power remains firm. Bremer also said the Iraq's new basic law must be based on secular democratic principles; he has resisted calls for the laws to have an Islamic character.

The top U.S. military officer, Gen. Richard Myers, said he could not estimate with confidence how long American forces will have to stay in Iraq. For planning purposes, the Army is assuming it will have to keep roughly 100,000 troops in Iraq for at least another two years, other officials have said.

The Pentagon is preparing a report on the 22 suicides among U.S. troops in Iraq last year, where soldiers took their lives at a 20 percent higher rate than average. That number does not include cases under investigation or at least two suicides by troops who've returned home, The Washington Post.

Richard Perle, an architect of the Iraq war, called for the heads of the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency to step down over faulty prewar reporting, the Toronto Star reports. He claims administration officials did not skew the intelligence they received.

British police were not justified in detaining dozens of protesters headed to a demonstration against the Iraq war at a base used by U.S. B-52 bombers last year, two High Court judges ruled.

India says it will help in the reconstruction of Iraq only after political control is returned to Iraqis.

A group of Iraqi landowners in a dispute over rent for land where the Japanese are building a military base called off a protest and agreed to continue negotiations. According to the group of landowners, they were offered $100 per year for each acre. They had demanded five times that amount.

Britain said it will give 65 million pounds ($122.8 million) of previously earmarked reconstruction money for Iraq to an international fund managed by the World Bank and the United Nations.

With casualties mounting in an election year, the Bush administration would like to transfer political power to the Iraqis by the end of June and shift more security responsibility to the U.S.-trained Iraqi force.

However, the formula for establishing a new government remains in dispute. U.S. and Iraqi officials were awaiting an announcement later Thursday by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the feasibility of holding legislative elections here before June 30, as demanded by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani and others in the influential Shiite clergy.

The Bush administration hopes Annan will say that elections are impossible by June 30 and endorse the idea of extending and expanding the U.S.-picked Iraqi Governing Council so it can take interim control of the country on July 1.

"There seems to be a consensus emerging that elections are essential and everyone would want elections," Annan said in an interview with the Japanese national daily Yomiuri.

"But at the same time, there seems to be a general acceptance of the fact that it is not going to be possible to arrange an election between now and the end of June."

U.N. diplomats said the U.N. envoy to Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi, will not recommend what kind of transitional body should run Iraq once the U.S.-led coalition transfers sovereignty.

Elsewhere, a roadside bomb exploded Thursday in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, missing U.S. vehicles but wounding an Iraqi policeman, witnesses said. On Wednesday, U.S. troops arrested seven people in Baqouba suspected of links to al Qaeda but gave no further details.

The attacks followed a mortar barrage Wednesday evening against the U.S. base at Abu Ghraib prison on the western edge of Baghdad. The U.S. command said attackers fired 33 mortars and five rockets between 6:30 p.m. and 6:50 p.m., but only one soldier was slightly injured.

The latest incidents followed a deadly suicide attack against a Polish-run base south of Baghdad on Wednesday that killed 10 Iraqis and wounded more than 100 people, more than half of them coalition soldiers.