US tanks fight Iraq militia, president talks stall

KUFA, Iraq - Two US soldiers and more than a dozen Iraqi militiamen were killed in sharp skirmishing overnight around the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf, the fourth day of clashes since militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr offered a truce.

Iraqi leaders sharply criticised US officials for blocking their choice of a president to succeed Saddam Hussein when the US occupation authority is wound up in a month's time.

The gulf between US and Iraqi preferences was so wide that US officials asked to postpone talks by a day until Tuesday.

With the top post of prime minister filled by Iyad Allawi on Friday and key ministerial jobs also broadly agreed on, deadlock set in when the US-appointed Governing Council rallied behind Ghazi Yawar for the largely ceremonial post of president against Adnan Pachachi, who is favoured by Washington and the UN

Both are Sunni Muslim Council members. Yawar is a tribal chief and civil engineer from northern Iraq and enjoys support from Kurds and majority Shi'ites. Pachachi is an 81-year-old former foreign minister from a Baghdad political dynasty.

"There's quite a lot of interference. They should let the Iraqis decide for themselves. This is an Iraqi affair," Mahmoud Othman, a Kurd on the 22-member Council, told Reuters.

Many Iraqis question whether the Council truly represents public opinion. Washington asked United Nations envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to consult broadly among Iraqis and nominate an interim government to oversee elections in the new year.

However, the Governing Council caught Brahimi off-guard on Friday by announcing the choice of Allawi, a secular Shi'ite who worked with the CIA from exile to overthrow Saddam. It appears set on having its way again. US and UN officials were not available for comment and their objections to Yawar were not clear.

The current head of the Council, he left Iraq in 1990 and ran a telecoms company in Saudi Arabia. He has criticised the US-drafted UN resolution that sets out the handover plan, complaining it gives Iraqis too little control of the 150,000 mainly American foreign soldiers remaining in the country.

Violence poses the biggest threat to the US handover plan, which envisages Iraq's first free elections in the new year.

US military spokesmen said two soldiers were killed by Shi'ite militia at Kufa, just outside Najaf, late on Sunday and that US troops killed close to 20 guerrillas in response.

A car blew up on a busy Baghdad street, killing two Iraqis and wounding 13. The cause of the blast was unclear.

A bomb blew up in a van as a Dutch patrol approached it in Samawa on Monday but there were no casualties, Dutch troops at the scene said. Japanese forces are also in the area.

In the northern Kurdish city of Arbil, the offices of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan political party was hit by mortar rounds. Police said two people inside were slightly wounded.

The British Foreign Office contradicted accounts of an ambush in Baghdad on Sunday where witnesses said Westerners had been abducted and others killed. It said in a statement that an Iraqi driver was killed but four Britons and another Iraqi got away by flagging down another car after their convoy was hit.

In Najaf, militant young cleric Moqtada al-Sadr declared a ceasefire on Thursday, after pressure from the Shi'ite religious and political establishment who are exasperated by two months of bloodshed between US forces and Sadr's Mehdi Army.

US commanders welcomed Sadr's offer to pull his forces off the streets but maintained their demands that he turn himself in on a murder charge and fully disband his militia.

The US military said one 1st Armored Division was killed in an ambush and another when a grenade struck his tank.

A spokesman said the truce did not seem to apply in Kufa, although at least one local Mehdi Army squad commander told Reuters it did and accused US forces of provoking his men.

"If his militia comes out after us, we are going to respond appropriately," the US official said.

Another soldier was killed in the region on Sunday, bringing the total US combat death toll in Iraq to 591.

US tanks advanced into Kufa towards the main mosque and skirmished with Sadr's Mehdi Army fighters based around it for about two hours around midnight (0800 NZT), residents said.

US commanders have said, however, they would be willing to wait several days to assess whether the ceasefire was holding.

Shi'ite leaders who had negotiated with Sadr said in Kufa on Sunday they were still optimistic. "There is a momentum for peace," said Shi'ite Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq