Posted on 06/10/2003 2:47:56 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Wednesday June 11, 00:36 AM
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned that coalition forces in Iraq will need many more months to eliminate armed resistance from fighters loyal to former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, as hostile fire wounded four more US soldiers.
The dangerous disorder still prevailing over two months after the fall of Saddam's regime was further highlighted when three Iraqis were killed in a munitions explosion.
Speaking in Lisbon at the start of a four-day tour of Europe, Rumsfeld blamed the attacks that have claimed mounting US casualties on former Iraqi security forces, including the paramilitary Fedayeen Saddam.
"I would say the remnants of the Iraqi regime -- the Fedayeen Saddam and Baathists and very likely the special Republican Guard -- are still there. They are the ones that are periodically attacking coalition forces, sometimes successfully," Rumsfeld said.
"Do I think that's going to disappear in the next month or two or three? No. Will it disappear when two or three divisions of coalition forces arrive in the country? No," said Rumsfeld, who later headed to the Albanian capital Tirana.
"It will take time to root out the remnants of the Saddam Hussein regime and we intend to do it," he added.
Twenty-nine US soldiers have been killed in attacks since President George W. Bush declared major combat over in Iraq on May 1, as well as other casualties in accidents.
Rumsfeld, who was due to visit Germany later in the week, had said earlier that the failure to capture or account for Saddam himself may be fostering the guerrilla-style attacks on US forces in Iraq.
He said the mix of US forces in Iraq is now being altered to create a more visible military presence on the ground in the face of the attacks, but denied that his visit to Europe was an effort to drum up more international troops for Iraq.
One day after a trick ambush attack claimed the life of one US soldier, the continuing dangers to US forces in Iraq were once again underlined when four of its troops were wounded by hostile fire in the east of the country.
The US military said that the soldiers' units had been involved in massive search operations to identify armed resistance and hunt down the perpetrators of the attacks.
Some 370 people were detained in the search operations, 30 had turned out to be members of the deposed Baath party.
In another stark reminder of the dangers posed by unexploded ordnance left over by the old regime, three Iraqis were killed when munitions exploded at a depot in the southern city of Diwaniyah.
A series of explosions also ripped through another ammunitions depot in the central Shiite Muslim pilgrimage city of Karbala. No casualties were reported but US forces established a buffer zone around the dump to protect residents.
US commanders have repeatedly warned of the dangers posed by huge arsenals of military material that Saddam's forces stashed in clandestine dumps in towns and cities across Iraq.
In late April, at least six people were killed after an explosion at a collection point for Iraqi munitions established by US troops in a residential area of south Baghdad sent rockets raining down on nearby homes.
Amid fears over the flagging morale of US troops in the face of the attacks, the US army launched a glossy patriotic magazine with a circulation of 5,000 -- called "Liberator" -- to rally its Third Infantry Division.
In an embarrasing climbdown, the US-led administration in Iraq admitted it had been forced to print hundreds of thousands of new Iraqi banknotes bearing the portrait of Saddam -- in defiance of its own ban on the public display of his image.
The top US official in Iraq, Paul Bremer, said his administration had come under enormous pressure from Iraqis to remedy the shortage of 250 dinar notes.
"Since I issued the instrument telling people to do away with images of Saddam Hussein, I guess you could say it's not a joy anyway," Bremer acknowledged.
In Doha, the president of OPEC said the oil cartel would consider cutting crude output to offset the expected resumption of international oil exports from Iraq in the next weeks.
"Now is the right time for OPEC to study how to accommodate Iraq, how to make room for Iraq, by, you know, cutting production from others," said Abdullah al-Attiyah, who is Qatar's oil minister.
Meanwhile, Al-Shareef Ali bin al-Hussein, a pretender to the Iraqi throne, returned to Baghdad 45 years after fleeing the country with his family following the coup that toppled the monarchy.
Does the Treasury Dept not have the skill to create new dinar plates? This is strange if true. And why are we not blanketing the Iraqi airwaves with our messages?
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