US to send fresh troops to Iraq

News, September 2003, www.aljazeerah.info

Jordan Times

Monday, September 29, 2003

BAGHDAD (AFP) — The Pentagon mobilised 15,000 fresh troops for duty in Iraq as the US military announced on Sunday it had found large caches of weapons, including missiles, near Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit.

Four US soldiers were meanwhile wounded in two separate bomb attacks, a military spokesman said.

Sergeant Mark Ingham said an attack with an "improvised explosive device" (IED) occurred about 11:00am in the town of Iskandariya, 45 kilometres south of the capital. Their conditions were not immediately known.

Ingham said another two soldiers were wounded at Taji, 10 kilometres north of Baghdad, by an IED explosion at 9:45am and were evacuated to the 28th Combat Support Hospital for treatment.

After long insisting no more US soldiers were required to secure Iraq, the Pentagon said Saturday that 10,000 troops were being mobilised in two national guard brigades for a force rotation and it put 5,000 more on standby as US calls for international troop contributions go unheeded.

The United States is trying to persuade other powers — notably war opponents France, Germany and Russia — to contribute to a stabilisation force in Iraq where US troops come under daily attack.

But at a summit Saturday with President George W. Bush, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow's contribution to policing and rebuilding Iraq could only be decided after a new UN resolution is passed, setting out the UN role in the war-stricken country run by a US-led coalition.

"The degree and extent and level of Russia's participation in the restoration of Iraq will be determined when we know the parameters of the new resolution on Iraq," Putin told reporters after the meeting at Camp David, Maryland.

French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin also said he wanted sovereignty to be handed over to the Iraqi people within months.

"We think the timescale should be short," said de Villepin.

"We consider that it is a question of months. We have been thinking that within six to eight months, the transfer of sovereignty should be complete," he told a French radio station.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell told ABC Television that the United States will have the new resolution ready for the UN Security Council within two days, but is not counting on getting large numbers of foreign troops.

The defence minister of Spain, one of the biggest supporters of the US-led invasion of Iraq, wound up a two-day visit here Sunday with a downbeat assessment of plans to rebuild the occupied country.

Federico Trillo defended the military campaign that chased Saddam Hussein from power in April, but said that none of the occupying armies had a model for reconstruction that was suitable for a country like Iraq.

Trillo made his remarks while on a tour to visit the 2,400 troops sent by Spain and four Latin American countries to Iraq.

In a significant rebuke of the US intelligence community, US lawmakers investigating intelligence on Iraq have reportedly determined that the White House relied on information ahead of the war that was "circumstantial," "fragmentary" and filled with "many uncertainties." The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which spent four months combing through 19 volumes of classified material used by Bush administration to make its case for war, found "significant deficiencies" in the intelligence community's ability to collect fresh intelligence on Iraq, The Washington Post reported.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) blasted the criticism as "absurd."

Time magazine also reported that Saddam may have been deceived by his own scientists, who opted not to tell him their work on weapons of mass destruction — which Washington gave as its reason for going to war — was not making great strides.

Citing interviews with former regime officials over the past three months, the magazine said they "all make essentially the same claim: that Iraq's once-massive unconventional weapons programme was destroyed or dismantled in the 1990s and never rebuilt."

But British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Sunday insisted he had no regrets at all about taking Britain into the war against Iraq, despite increasing public dissatisfaction over the conflict.

Speaking just before the opening of what is set to be a hugely difficult annual conference of his ruling Labour Party, Blair refused to give an inch to his critics, even amid the worst opinion ratings of his six-year premiership.

"No. I would have done exactly the same," Blair said when asked whether, with hindsight, he had any regrets about joining the US-led campaign to remove Saddam.

"I don't think we have anything to apologise for as a country," Blair said.

"I believe as powerfully as I did at the time that making sure that man is no longer in charge of Iraq is a good thing for his country, the region and the world," he told BBC television.

Back in Iraq, the US military hailed its 4th Infantry Division after a series of overnight raids north of Baghdad netted coalition forces massive weapons hauls.

Lieutenant Colonel George Krivo said four caches were seized after information was handed to the 4th ID from local Iraqi sources.

The largest, found on the outskirts of Tikrit, 175 kilometres north of Baghdad, included 23 Russian-made surface-to-air missiles (SAMs).

He said the dump also included more than 455 kilogrammes of C-4 explosives, 115 rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), about 430 hand grenades, 51 smoke pots, 1,300 blasting caps and 94 RPG motors.

RPG motors are often stripped down by forces loyal to Saddam and used to make IEDs.

In Baghdad, UN staff continued their exodus from Iraq to Jordan after a hotel housing US officials came under fire.

A third of the United Nations' 86 international staff remaining in Iraq are being pulled out on orders handed down Thursday by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

The United Nations kept about 650 international personnel in Iraq before an Aug. 19 bombing killed 22 people, including Annan's top envoy to Baghdad. A second bombing on Sept. 22 killed an Iraqi security guard.

Major UN aid agencies said their emergency operations would continue, but some admitted the exodus would hamper delivery of essential aid.

The moves come as a symbol of the US presence in Iraq came under attack.

Krivo said homemade rockets were used in the attack Saturday on the landmark Rashid hotel that houses many senior US officials here.

He told reporters that three rockets were fired in the assault on the 14-storey hotel in central Baghdad leaving no casualties and only minor damage.

In further developments on the ground, a US military convoy was struck by an explosion Sunday in the hotspot town of Fallujah, 50 kilometres west of Baghdad, a witness said. It was not known if anyone was wounded in the attack.

In Warsaw, a defence ministry spokesman said a Polish military patrol shot and killed an attacker in an exchange of fire at Al Hilla, 100 kilometres south of Baghdad.

He said the incident occurred late Saturday when a group of armed Iraqis refused to submit to a check by the Polish military personnel.

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

Opinions expressed in various sections are the sole responsibility of their authors and they may not represent Al-Jazeerah's.

editor@aljazeerah.info