The US-led coalition in Iraq was reviewing the pay scale for the New Iraqi
Army Saturday after some 300 soldiers walked out on the fighting force's first
battalion, as the violence on the ground continued.
Meabwhile US President George W. Bush touted Saddam Hussein's ouster as part
of a "year of accomplishment," but made no mention of the unfound weapons of
mass destruction on which the war was predicated.
The US military commander in Iraq, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, told
reporters that the Iraqi troops' mass walkout was caused by unhappiness among
married soldiers who said they could not support their families on a monthly
wage of 60 dollars.
Sanchez also said that despite a string of recent fatalities, attacks on
coalition soldiers had fallen to "around 20" per day.
"We have achieved a significant decrease in attacks," he said.
In November, which proved to be the deadliest month for US soldiers in Iraq,
the number of daily attacks surpassed 35 and hit 55 on one occasion.
"We've been able to make effective headway against these terrorist and
anti-coalition elements," he said, stressing that troops were taking a step back
from dramatic raids.
He said more "cordon-and-knock" style operations, where US forces seal off an
area where they believe the enemy might be hiding and then approach the target,
spared civilians and prevented troops from alienating Iraqis.
A senior US officer was relieved of his command and fined 5,000 dollars after
being found guilty of assaulting and threatening an Iraqi detainee, but will not
face a full court martial, the 4th Infantry Division said.
On Friday, one US soldier died and another two were wounded after their
convoy was hit by a roadside bomb in the town of Ramadi, a military spokesman
said Saturday.
The Ramadi attack, 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of Baghdad, came just a day
after a suicide bomber blew up a furniture delivery truck outside the US
military base there killing one US soldier and wounding 14.
The latest deaths brought to 197 the number of US soldiers who have died in
combat in Iraq since Bush declared major combat over on May 1.
Meanwhile relatives of Iraqis detained by US forces in the prison at Abu
Gharib, infamous in Saddam Hussein's times as a centre of torture and death,
were demanding visiting rights.
Amid the dogged unrest, Georgia is to send 500 soldiers to Iraq by next
summer US ambassador to Tbilisi, Richard Miles, said Saturday.
They will join 70 elite troops, doctors and mine-clearing experts who were
sent to Baghdad in August.
Two hundred soldiers will fly out shortly, and by summer 2004 some 500 will
have joined the first contingent, Miles said during a graduation ceremony for a
Georgian battallion trained by US instructors.
But UN chief Kofi Annan has ruled out sending UN peacekeepers to Iraq, while
saying the war-torn country would need military aid for years to come, in an
interview with Germany's weekly news magazine Der Spiegel to be published
Monday.
He lashed out again at the US strategy of pre-emptive action which led to the
launch of the war in March and warned that if others followed suit the "law of
the jungle" would prevail.
In London, British Prime Minister Tony Blair's special envoy to Iraq said
NATO forces should take a more prominent security role in the country from the
middle of next year, newspapers reported Saturday.
Bush has also been forced to deal with Pentagon allegations that Vice
President Dick Cheney (news - web sites)'s old company, Halliburton, overcharged
for work it did in Iraq, saying he expects the firm to refund the money.
The Pentagon says a subsidiary of Cheney's old company, Halliburton, charged
61 million dollars more than it should have for gasoline supplied to coalition
forces in Iraq.
The subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown and Root, denies wrongdoing.
The conglomerate denies the allegation, but Bush said Friday: "If there is an
overcharge, like we think there is, we expect that money to be repaid."
US Defense Department officials earlier said an audit unearthed evidence of
irregularities in contracts held by Kellogg, Brown and Root.
The flap over Halliburton, which Cheney ran until he joined Bush on the 2000
Republican ticket, has embarrassed the United States as it faces criticism for
excluding opponents of the war from competing for US-funded contracts worth some
18.6 billion dollars.
Former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright went on the attack Saturday,
criticising Washington for its contracts' decision and lack of a proper post-war
roadmap for Iraq.
By invading Iraq and by its post-war actions, the United States was damaging
its reputation and losing political capital, said Albright in New Delhi.
"Democracy cannot be imposed from above. That is a contradiction in terms,"
she said.
The present chaos in Iraq was acting like a "magnet," attracting people
opposed to the United States to operate from there, she said.
