Death, sabotage and menace greet Iraq economic plan

12.00pm

BAGHDAD - More killings, reports of rising sabotage and a CIA assessment that Saddam Hussein may be lurking in the shadows greeted an economic reconstruction plan from Iraq's US civilian administrator Paul Bremer.

Two US soldiers were killed and four wounded overnight in a spate of guerrilla attacks which also left at least two Iraqis dead and one wounded, the US military and witnesses said.

The continuing attacks, CIA confirmation that ousted leader Saddam Hussein had probably spoken out on a tape and a plea to help stop rising sabotage have heightened the sense that US and British occupation forces are facing organised resistance in Sunni Muslim central Iraq, once the cradle of Saddam's support.

The US Central Intelligence Agency said it believed the ousted Iraqi leader's voice was most likely on an audiotape broadcast last week which warned of more bloodshed and urged Iraqis to fight US forces and those who help them.

An official of the US-led reconstruction effort said sabotage against oil and electric power grids is increasing and appealed to Iraqi citizens to turn in saboteurs.

Hours after the US soldiers were killed in the troubled capital Bremer hailed the first session of the Baghdad city council as a major step towards democracy in Iraq.

The civilian administrator told Iraqis in his weekly televised address that a new Iraqi dinar would replace the "Saddam dinar" bearing Saddam's face and declared a nine trillion Iraqi dinar ($51,003 billion) budget for second half 2003 to finance infrastructure reconstruction programmes.

But he conceded that his main concern remained security.

"My number one priority remains, as always, security, providing the security which Iraq needs in order to rebuild."

Bremer said the meeting was perhaps the most important event since US-led forces toppled Saddam on April 9. "Today marks the resumption of a democratic system for Baghdad," he said.

The 37-member council can only offer suggestions to US-controlled bodies running the chaotic city of five million people. But Bremer pledged their ideas would be taken seriously.

The death of the US soldiers brought to 29 the number killed in action in Iraq since President George W. Bush declared major combat over on May 1.

A US military spokesman said one of the soldiers killed was on a patrol pursuing Iraqi gunmen in the Azamiyah district of Baghdad late on Sunday. An Iraqi gunman was killed and another wounded in that clash.

The second US soldier was killed early on Monday when a rocket-propelled grenade hit his vehicle in the district of Kadhimiya.

In the volatile town of Ramadi, about 100km west of Baghdad, at least one Iraqi man was shot dead and four US soldiers were wounded during attacks. On Saturday seven recruits to a new US-backed police force were killed.

Ramadi is part of a mainly Sunni Muslim area to the north and west of Baghdad where US forces have faced much of the most violent resistance to their occupation of Iraq.

The chief of Turkey's armed forces said on Monday the weekend arrest of Turkish troops by US forces in Iraq had caused a crisis in relations between the two Nato armed forces.

"It turned into a major crisis of trust between the Turkish and US armed forces and became a crisis," Chief of General Staff Hilmi Ozkok told reporters in Ankara.

The 11 Turkish soldiers were released on Sunday evening and returned on Monday to their offices in the northern Iraqi city of Sulaimaniya.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq