Bush to unveil new Iraq plan as violence continues

George Bush

BAGHDAD - Masked men shot dead nine Iraqis near Baghdad yesterday, underscoring the country's dire security situation two weeks before elections and as President George W. Bush was due to unveil a comprehensive new strategy.

In a speech to be delivered at the US Naval Academy, Bush was to lay out plans for boosting the funding and training of Iraqi security forces, putting them in charge of fighting insurgents and allowing US forces to slowly withdraw.

Amid intense and mounting criticism at home over how the war in Iraq is going, Bush is scheduled to make a series of speeches in the run up to Iraqi elections on December 15 in an effort to show US forces are on top and that victory is possible.

On the ground in Iraq, however, security remains precarious and US military commanders have said they expect an increase in insurgent violence in the build up to the polls, as was seen in the run-up to elections held in January.

In the past two weeks, more than 200 Iraqis, most of them civilians, have been killed in a spate of suicide attacks and car bombings, many of them targeting the Shi'ite Muslim majority in an apparent attempt to push the country closer to civil war.

There has also been a renewed series of kidnappings in the past three days, mostly targeting foreigners, reminiscent of the hostage-taking crisis last year, when around 200 foreigners were seized and many subsequently killed, some by beheading. Five foreign hostages have been snatched since Friday.

On Wednesday, a group of 10 masked men opened fire on a minibus near the town of Baquba, north of Baghdad, killing nine people and wounding two, police said, the latest in a series of brazen gun attacks on travellers in the area.

It was not clear what the motive was, but Baquba, a mixed Sunni and Shi'ite city and a base for former military officers, is on the front line of Iraq's growing sectarian conflict.

Sunni Arab guerrillas are waging an intensified campaign of violence in a bid to destabilise the Shi'ite- and Kurdish- dominated government, which is backed by Washington.

At the same time, Shi'ite militias linked to the government are being accused of arresting, torturing and killing Sunni Arabs in a form of reprisal against the insurgency. The government has denied the existence of such "death squads".

"VICTORY STRATEGY"

Bush's speech comes a day after Iraq's national security adviser, who sits on a US-Iraqi committee studying a framework for troop withdrawal, told Reuters that up to 30,000 US troops could pull out of Iraq early next year.

Washington currently has about 155,000 troops in the country, a number bolstered from 135,000 over the past several months to provide increased security ahead of the elections.

Bush has repeatedly said that once Iraqi forces are able to take over security, US forces can leave, just as the three-year anniversary of the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein is approaching.

More than 2,100 US troops have died and 16,000 others have been wounded since US-led forces invaded in March 2003. There has also been little diminishment in the rate of deaths, with this October being one of the deadliest months of the war.

Along with Bush's speech, the White House plans to release a document on the national strategy for victory, which officials say will mainly reiterate policies already in place.

The White House offensive comes as one of its closest war allies - Britain - and two of the original Iraq war opponents - Germany and Canada - are under pressure at home following the kidnapping of some of their citizens in Iraq.

Two Canadians, a Briton and an American, all working for a Christian humanitarian aid group, were snatched in Baghdad on Saturday. A video of them being held hostage by a group calling itself the "Swords of Truth" was shown on Arab TV on Tuesday.

The group accused the men of being "spies working for the occupying forces" under the guise of Christian aid work. Al Jazeera did not say if their lives were threatened.

A separate video was shown on German TV of a German archaeologist and her driver who went missing in Iraq on Friday.

In that video, the group threatened to kill Susanne Osthoff and her driver unless Berlin stops all cooperation with the U.S.-backed Iraqi government.

The kidnapping is the first crisis faced by Germany's new chancellor, Angela Merkel, who has vowed to improve ties with the United States, soured by disagreement over the Iraq war.

- REUTERS