US says Iraq insurgency undiminished in past year

WASHINGTON - Iraq's insurgency remains undiminished in its capabilities in the past year despite US-led efforts to crush the rebels, the top American general said.

"I think their capacity stays about the same," Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said of Iraq's insurgents during a Pentagon briefing. "And where they are right now is where they were almost a year ago."

Asked during the briefing "are we winning" the war, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld did not directly respond.

"The United States and the coalition forces, in my personal view, will not be the thing that will defeat the insurgency," Rumsfeld said.

"So, therefore, winning or losing is not the issue for 'we,' in my view, in the traditional, conventional context of using the word 'winning' and 'losing' in a war. The people that are going to defeat that insurgency are going to be the Iraqis."

After Rumsfeld finished, Myers interjected, "I'm going to say this: I think we are winning, OK? I think we're definitely winning. I think we've been winning for some time."

Twenty-five months after the invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, the United States has 138,000 troops in Iraq battling a relentless insurgency and training Iraqi security forces.

The Pentagon said there have been 1572 US military deaths in the war, and another 12,174 US troops have been wounded in combat.

In the weeks after the historic Jan. 30 parliamentary elections, the rate of American casualties dropped sharply, and the March US military death toll of 36 was the lowest in 13 months. But Myers and Rumsfeld noted a recent rise in violence that has coincided with a political impasse over naming a new government.

Myers said rebels are staging 50 or 60 attacks a day in Iraq after the number had dipped to about 40 daily. He said the number of daily attacks is about the same as a year ago.

But Myers said the current level is "nowhere near" the number of attacks during the heaviest violence, such as the run-up to the January elections and November's Marine-led offensive in Falluja.

"They have the ability to surge, and whether we're seeing a surge now or not, I don't know," he said.

Myers and Rumsfeld argued that political progress was the key to crushing the insurgency that followed Saddam's ouster.

"The political process must go forward," Myers said. "We must have a cabinet appointed here very quickly. The ministries must continue to work. People must focus on two things: developing a constitution and developing their ministries into functioning ministries that continue to help."

A new Iraqi constitution is scheduled to be drawn up by Aug. 15.

Rumsfeld said political progress was vital to give ordinary Iraqis a sense that they have a stake in their own country and that they will be "protected by a piece of paper called a constitution for the first time in their lives."

A new constitution, Rumsfeld said, will help convince Iraqis "to stay together as a single country" rather than breaking apart along ethnic and religious lines.

"The Iraqis will prevail in the insurgency also because over time it'll become clearer and clearer that the insurgents have no plan, they have nothing other than killing people, they have no philosophy other than power and turning that country back to the Dark Ages," he said.

- REUTERS