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Iraq elections by mid-2004
31/07/2003 21:15 - (SA)
Baghdad - The United States aimed on Thursday for elections by mid-2004 in Iraq, but a new regional council set up in toppled dictator Saddam Hussein's heartland met with indifference locally, as two more US troops were killed in guerrilla attacks.
Meanwhile some 2 000 Polish troops prepared to boost the US-led coalition's forces in the country on a mission which President Aleksander Kwasniewski said was to help the Iraqi people rebuild their country and repay a "moral debt" to Western democracies for helping Poland when its communist regime collapsed.
But in a new political blow to the coalition, the US Central Intelligence Agency was expected to reveal that interviews with Iraqi scientists have failed to back Washington's case for war, saying there is no evidence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.
US troops inaugurated a 44-member regional council for Al-Anbar province, location of the flashpoint towns of Ramadi and Fallujah, as they seek to calm one of the main battlefields in the war with insurgents.
"Today is a very historic day for Al-Anbar," said Colonel David Teeples, commander of the Third Armoured Cavalry Regiment.
Mid-2004
But in an indication that US efforts to foster democratic participation in a free Iraq may be falling on deaf ears, people of the provincial capital Ramadi said they knew nothing about the first meeting of their civic representatives.
The chief administrator of the new Iraq, Paul Bremer, expressed confidence that nationwide elections could be held in less than a year, clearing the way for the coalition forces to withdraw.
"It is certainly not unrealistic to think that we could have elections by mid-year 2004," Bremer told reporters at the inauguration of a new foreign ministry in Baghdad.
"And when a sovereign government is installed, the coalition authority will cede authority to the government and my job here will be over," said the 61-year-old diplomat.
Following the July 13 unveiling of a 25-member interim Governing Council, the next step will be the drafting of a new Iraqi constitution to be approved by referendum followed by nationwide elections, Bremer said.
The pace of the rebuilding effort has come under fire in the United States as a deadly insurgency by Saddam loyalists has now cost the lives of 52 soldiers since major combat was declared over on May 1.
Although US troops have arrested more than 700 people in raids since Monday, in a bid to track down Saddam and his supporters, they appear unable to stop the deadly attacks.
A US soldier was shot dead and four more wounded in an ambush northeast of Baghdad late Wednesday, while a second soldier was killed and three wounded Thursday on the road to Baghdad airport, a frequent site for attacks.
In the second incident, the US military said an armoured personnel carrier hit a landmine, but witnesses said the weapon used was a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) fired in a brazen mid-day attack from a car which drove up alongside.
Historic troop deployment
A mission of Japanese lawmakers left Tokyo for Iraq to study the security situation and the nation's reconstruction needs ahead of an historic troop deployment expected this year.
In the debate over whether Saddam's Iraq posed a credible threat to the United States, the Washington Post reported that Iraqi scientists have failed to support the US and British justification for war.
Ahead of an appearance in Congress on Thursday by the CIA's David Kay, who returned from co-ordinating the hunt in Iraq for weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the Post said no information had so far been gleaned.
"All of the scientists interviewed have denied that Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear weapons program or developed and hidden chemical or biological weapons since United Nations inspectors left in 1998," the paper said.
On Wednesday, US President George W Bush told reporters on Iraq's yet unfound WMDs that he was "confident the truth will come out."
Oil pipeline to reopen
A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll published Thursday found that Bush's popularity may have slipped to 56 percent from 62% in May, but 69% of Americans still think he did right in Iraq.
On the economic front, Iraq's main pipeline from the oil centre of Kirkuk to the Turkish Mediterranean terminal of Ceyhan, wrecked in a post-war sabotage attack, will reopen the first week of August, a coalition official said.
"It will have a capacity between 200 000 and 300 000 barrels per day (bpd)," the official said.
In another boost, Iraq signed major contracts with 12 foreign companies for 650 000 bpd, an oil ministry official told AFP.
In Vienna, ministers of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed to leave the cartel's official output ceiling of 25.4 million barrels per day unchanged and review production again in September, an Opec official said.
More than three months after the fall of Baghdad, world markets are still waiting for the return of Iraqi oil exports in any significant quantity after looting and sabotage hampered efforts to rebuild the country's oil industry.
- AFP
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