Iraq lawmaker and two US soldiers killed

BAGHDAD - Suicide bombers have killed a prominent Iraqi parliamentarian and two US soldiers but President George W Bush planned a keynote speech to tell Americans it was vital to fight on to stabilise Iraq.

The White House billed the speech as a major effort by Bush to make his case on Iraq at a critical time, with Democrats and some members of his Republican Party in the US Congress pressuring him to show results or withdraw US troops.

"The stakes are high," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan, adding that Bush would describe the Iraqi insurgency as a "dangerous enemy that seeks to weaken our resolve".

Bush was expected to mark a year since Washington formally handed over sovereignty to Iraqis by calling on Americans to stay the course in his speech to the nation surrounded by troops at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

Hours before Bush was to speak, two US soldiers were killed in separate suicide car bomb attacks on patrols.

Their deaths brought to 885 the number of US troops killed in Iraq in the year since sovereignty was granted, more than the 856 who died in the 15 months of the US-led invasion and formal occupation that preceded it.

US Marines pressed an offensive against Sunni Arab insurgents by sending 1000 US troops and 100 Iraqis on a major anti-guerrilla mission in the western Euphrates valley. Sunni Arabs, a minority in Iraq, held sway under Saddam Hussein.

In Baghdad, a suicide car bomber struck a convoy and killed lawmaker Dhari Ali al-Fayadh along with his son and three bodyguards, making him the second member of Iraq's parliament assassinated since a new government took power in April.

He was the oldest member of parliament and had served as its speaker on the first day it gathered after elections in January.

"An attack on a man of his age means an attack on all the Iraqi people and national values," Hussein al-Sadr, a Shi'ite cleric and member of parliament, told the chamber.

The Iraqi wing of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda group claimed responsibility on a website for the attack.

Worsening violence over the last two months has put new pressure on Bush after a period when Iraq's January elections and a lull in attacks were presented as signs of success.

A year ago on June 28, Bush scribbled "Let Freedom Reign" on a note handed to him by Condoleezza Rice during a Nato meeting, when his then national security adviser informed him a handover ceremony had formally ended the US occupation of Iraq.

In following months, Washington's 140,000 troops helped appointed interim leaders hold the vote that produced Iraq's first elected government in 50 years.

However, the insurgency waged by Sunni Arabs -- both Iraqis and some foreigners -- has become far more deadly since the Shi'ite- and Kurdish-led government took power in April. Suicide bombings now kill or wound hundreds of Iraqis every week.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll found most Americans did not believe administration statements that gains were being made, although a majority said US troops should stay on.

Rice, now secretary of state, said Bush would not waver.

"This president has always lived by his convictions and his values, not by what he sees in the polls. He is going to go to the American people who elected him just six months ago and tell them again why it is important that we finish the job in Iraq," she told ABC's Good Morning America show.

US statements on Iraq have given mixed messages over the past weeks. At the end of May, Vice President Dick Cheney said the insurgency was in its "last throes". However, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Sunday it may last a decade or more.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said on Tuesday violence was "serious" in Iraq. "It is worse than we anticipated," he told reporters.

Other attacks on Tuesday hit Iraqis. A suicide bomber dressed as a policeman blew himself up in a hospital in Musayyib, south of Baghdad, killing three and wounding 13.

A car bomb killed two bodyguards in a failed assassination bid on the chief of traffic police in the ethnically divided northern oil city of Kirkuk and police opened fire on a crowd of demonstrators in the southern city of Samawa wounding seven.

The anniversary of the handover of sovereignty was little noted in Iraq, although President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, received US and British diplomats who offered congratulations.

Ordinary Iraqis said they had little to celebrate.

"What changed since the transfer of sovereignty? Terrorism, killings and bombings became widespread," said civil servant Luai Hadi, 34. "There is no water, services and no power."

- REUTERS