Iraq governor in White House as US ponders policy rethink

BAGHDAD - With attacks on American forces intensifying, Iraq's United States governor held White House consultations after returning abruptly to Washington amid signs of a policy rethink.

Top US officials held a hastily convened meeting with Paul Bremer yesterday to discuss ways to accelerate a shift to Iraqi control.

In Baghdad, attackers fired three rockets into the area housing the US-led Administration.

The US military said no casualties had been reported, but at least four people were killed and 10 hurt in bombings earlier in the day in Baghdad and Basra.

Bremer's return coincided with growing frustration in Washington with the Iraqi Governing Council and what some officials say is increasing friction with Bremer over the pace of the transfer of authority to Iraqis.

President George W. Bush, under fire for what critics say is a failure to address rising casualties in Iraq, used Veterans' Day to say soldiers who died in Iraq and in Afghanistan served a "good and just cause".

So far, 267 US soldiers have been killed by hostile fire in Iraq since the invasion on March 20 that toppled Saddam Hussein - at least 153 of them since Bush declared major combat over on May 1.

With resistance to the occupation showing no signs of abating, the US commander in Iraq, Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, vowed to unleash any weapon in his arsenal against guerrillas attacking his forces.

"The most important message is that we're going to get pretty tough," said Sanchez, whose forces have unleashed air bombing for the first time since May 1.

Bush said that democratic government in Iraq could be a model for the Middle East.

Some guerrillas wanted to set up a Taleban-like government, he said.

According to a report released yesterday, between 21,000 and 55,000 people died as a direct result of the Iraq war, most of them Iraqi soldiers and civilians.

Medact, a group of health professionals, said it worked out the toll by adding numbers from news reports and a website that estimates Iraqi civilian casualties by tracking all deaths reported in the media.

The group cited the Iraqi Body Count website's estimate that between 7757 and 9565 civilians had been killed between the war's start in March and October 20, the date the report went to press.

It added to that the Guardian newspaper's estimate that between 13,500 and 45,000 Iraqi soldiers died.

Also included in the total were 394 US and British soldiers reported dead by October 20.

- AGENCIES

Herald Feature: Iraq