World

Violence Dogs Plans For Iraq

February 13, 2004 / 7:07 AM EST / CBS/AP

Iraq's top Shiite cleric insisted Thursday that the country hold national elections, said a U.N. envoy trying to work out differences over the transfer of power in Iraq.

Hours after the latest suicide attack, two American soldiers were killed and another wounded by a roadside bomb in Baghdad, the U.S. military said Thursday.

The blast hit a patrol by troops from the 1st Armored Division in a western neighborhood of the capital Wednesday evening.

The deaths bring to 374 the number of Americans who have been killed in hostile action since the beginning of military operations in Iraq. A total of at least 537 Americans have died, including non-combat deaths.

Alos Thursday, Gen. John Abizaid, commander of all U.S. forces in the Middle East, escaped injury in a gun-battle at a local headquarters of a U.S.-sponsored Iraqi security force. No U.S. soldiers and no one in Abizaid's traveling party were injured.

In other developments:

Two mortar shells exploded Thursday near a police station and a hotel housing journalists in Samawah, where Japanese troops have deployed. The blast caused no injuries.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard said he would gauge public reaction to a parliamentary inquiry into prewar intelligence on Iraq before deciding whether to mount another independent probe, as the United States and Britain have.

The ongoing war in Iraq cost about $4 billion in September, spiked to $7 billion in October and hit just under $3 billion in November, the Pentagon said.

The Pentagon says it doesn't expect the White House to ask for more Iraq funding until next year, and military chiefs are worried they'll run out of cash. But Dov Zakheim, the Pentagon's top financial official, says the military can make ends meet by borrowing from other accounts, and denied the timing had anything to do with the election.

Secretary of State Colin Powell said he was surprised U.N. and American inspectors did not find storehouses of hidden weapons in Iraq, but insisted, "we presented what we believed the truth to be at the time."

Amid the violence, Iraq's U.S. administrators have been looking for a way to soothe opposition to their plans for creating a new provisional government in time for the June 30 target date.

Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, has rattled those plans with his insistence that national elections be held to create a new legislature.

He has criticized the U.S. plan to delay a ballot and instead let regional "caucuses" pick the legislatures as undemocratic. The call for elections prompted demonstrations by tens of thousands of his supporters last month — forcing Washington to request the U.N. mission in hopes of assuaging the cleric.

The U.N. team, led by envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, has been examining whether elections are feasible ahead of the June 30 deadline. U.S. administrators say that is not enough time to organize a proper vote, though they have said they're open to changes in the caucus system.

The U.N. experts met with al-Sistani for two hours Thursday at his home in the holy Shiite city of Najaf, 90 miles south of Baghdad.

"Al-Sistani is still insisting on the elections," Brahimi told journalists afterward. He said the U.N. team and the cleric agreed that an election should be "well-prepared so that it will meet the desires of al-Sistani, the Iraqis and the United Nations."

The Times of London reports the U.N. team has all but given up the U.S. plan for regional caucuses and is looking toward creating a "caretaker" government to run the country until direct elections.

The handover of power to an Iraqi government is also threatened by accelerated attacks by anti-U.S. insurgents who killed 100 Iraqis in back-to-back suicide bombings this week.

On Wednesday in Baghdad, a car bomb killed 47 Iraqis waiting outside an army recruitment center. A day earlier, a truck blew up outside a police station in the mostly Shiite town, Iskandariyah, south of the capital, killing 53 Iraqis.

Since Jan. 1, at least 261 Iraqi civilians have been killed in major suicide attacks or car bombings, according to an AP tally based on reports issued by the U.S. military or Iraqi police.

The attack on Abizaid's convoy came as it pulled inside the cinderblock walls at the headquarters of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps in Fallujah.

An explosion rang out. Seconds later, two more explosions were heard near the rear of the compound, and U.S. soldiers responded with a barrage of rifle and machinegun fire.

Several attackers fired three rocket-propelled grenades, and another pelted the party with small arms fire from a nearby mosque. The gun battle lasted about six minutes. It was not immediately clear whether the attackers were killed in the exchange.

After the gun battle, Abizaid canceled plans to walk into the city and instead returned to a U.S. military base near here.

U.S. military commanders in Baghdad said this week's rare consecutive suicide bombings may be connected to an intercepted letter to al Qaeda leaders.

The letter was thought to have been sent by a Jordanian militant in Iraq saying that insurgents are in a "race against time" to stop the June 30 power transfer, when Iraqi security forces will take a more prominent role.

The author of the letter lays out plans for a campaign of attacks on Iraqi "collaborators," Kurds and on Shiite Muslims, aimed at sparking a civil war between Shiites and Sunnis.

The coalition announced a $10 million bounty for the Jordanian militant, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

An al Qaeda presence in Iraq — a key justification for the war along with the weapons of mass destruction that have not been found — is becoming increasingly apparent, U.S. officials say.

What isn't clear, though, is whether this backs the Bush administration's prewar claims that Saddam Hussein had a long relationship with al Qaeda.

Critics say it may instead show that the postwar chaos in Iraq actually gave al Qaeda terrorists an opening to enter the country to strike at Americans and their allies.