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US admits to crisis in Iraq
12/04/2004 12:03 - (SA)
Washington - President George W Bush on Sunday acknowledged US difficulties in Iraq, while the US administrator Paul Bremer said there was a crisis and called the mounting unrest a "poison" which US forces must purge.
"It was a tough week last week," Bush said on a visit to a major US military base in Texas, as American forces and their allies struggled to contain Sunni and Shiite Muslim insurgents in Iraq.
Bush said new troops could be sent if needed. However lieutenant general Ricardo Sanchez, the head of US forces in Iraq, told US television that reinforcements for the 129 000 US troops in Iraq would not be needed.
The US president and his family went to an Easter Sunday church service at Fort Hood in Texas, which had been the base for dozens of troops who have died in Iraq over the past year.
According to US media at least eight soldiers from the base have died in Iraq in the surge in unrest over the past week.
"I pray every day for less casualties but what we're doing is right," Bush said..
"Our troops are tough," Bush added. "Our troops are taking care of business."
Bremer told US TV the US was now facing a "crisis" in Iraq, although he said a truce between US forces and insurgents in the troubled Sunni town of Fallujah was holding.
"We just have to work our way through this crisis," Bremer said.
More than 40 troops were killed last week in Fallujah and other other flashpoint cities, taking the US military death toll since the invasion in March 2003 to about 650.
Bremer said that the US would stick firm to a June 30 handover date to return sovereignty to Iraq.
"It's a date which was requested very strongly by the Iraqis back in November when it was agreed to," he said.
"It has now got a real view of the majority of the Iraqis that that is the day on which the occupation will end, and I think if we don't keep our promise there, we'll find it actually puts more Americans' lives at risk."
"We will have a representative government in place here well before June 30 is my guess," Bremer said.
- AFP
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