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Iraq resistance grows more lethal Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.msnbc.com/news/870749.asp?vts=100220030847http://www.msnbc.com/news/870749.asp?vts=100220030847
Iraq resistance grows ‘more lethal’
Commander: U.S. forces
attacked 15-20 times a day
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 2 — Guerrilla attacks in Iraq have become more lethal, the top U.S. general in the country said on Thursday after three soldiers died in one day, adding urgency to American efforts to garner help stabilizing the country.“The enemy has evolved. It is a little bit more lethal, little bit more complex, little bit more sophisticated and in some cases a little bit more tenacious,” said Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, commander of ground forces in Iraq.
“AS LONG AS we are here the coalition need to be prepared to take casualties,” he told a news conference. “We should not be surprised if one of these days we wake up to find there’s been a major firefight or a major terrorist attack.”
Since President Bush declared major combat over on May 1, at least 84 U.S. soldiers have been killed in action.
On Wednesday, a 4th Infantry Division soldier was killed in a rocket-propelled grenade attack near the town of Samarra, a female soldier from the same division died in a remote-control bomb attack near Tikrit, and in Baghdad a soldier was shot and killed while patrolling the Mansur neighborhood.
The violence continued on Thursday in the town of Falluja, a center of resistance to U.S. forces. Police said U.S. gunfire killed an Iraqi man and wounded a woman and a six-year-old girl after an American patrol was shot at on Thursday. Two police officers were also wounded.
Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who led the campaign to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein over his alleged weapons of mass destruction, face mounting political pressure over the failure to find any.
David Kay, the CIA official directing the weapons search in Iraq, was scheduled to brief the House and Senate intelligence committees on Thursday. Officials suggest Kay will say no conclusive evidence has been found of banned weapons.
Efforts in New York to agree a wider role for the United Nations are in stark contrast to events on the ground in Baghdad, where many international U.N. staff have been pulled out following two suicide bomb attacks on their headquarters.
Critics, who question whether the case for war was exaggerated, also ask whether it was worth the cost.
U.N. STUDYING PROPOSAL
Washington is seeking a new resolution giving the United Nations a broader mandate in Iraq and encouraging reluctant allies to provide more troops and cash to police and rebuild the country.
A revised U.S. draft of a Security Council resolution gives the United Nations a list of duties, similar to earlier versions. But it falls short of demands by France, Russia and Germany that the world body play a pivotal, independent role in overseeing Iraq’s transition to self-government.
“We are studying it. We will have to determine whether it is a radical change from the past,” U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in New York. “Obviously it is not going in the direction I had recommended but I will still have to study it further.”
Key to a transition in Iraq is a new constitution. Secretary of State Colin Powell said last week he wanted to see a constitution written in six months, though officials have stressed that was not an official deadline.
It is down to Iraq’s Governing Council to decide how to draw up the constitution. On Thursday, U.S. administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer said he thought six months was feasible, once the council decides how to convene the constitutional conference that will do the drafting.
“I think it’s a reasonable timeframe. But I think the question is when will they get the conference started...that’s the question,” Bremer said.
Washington hopes a new U.N. resolution can be adopted before a crucial donors conference in Madrid on October 23-24.
U.N. sources said some $35 billion would be needed to rebuild Iraq over the next four years in contributions from governments and Iraq’s own resources.
The European Parliament’s budget committee said the EU should more than double the amount of aid it plans to send to Iraq over the next 15 months, to 500 million euros ($586 million).
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