Death, Sabotage and Menace Greet Iraq Economic Plan By Nadim Ladki
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - More killings, reports of rising sabotage and a CIA (news - web sites) assessment that Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) may be lurking in the shadows greeted an economic reconstruction plan from Iraq (news - web sites)'s U.S. civilian administrator Paul Bremer on Monday.
Two U.S. soldiers were killed and four wounded overnight in a spate of guerrilla attacks which also left at least two Iraqis dead and one wounded, the U.S. military and witnesses said.
The continuing attacks, CIA confirmation that ousted leader Saddam Hussein had probably spoken out on a tape and a plea to help stop rising sabotage have heightened the sense that U.S. and British occupation forces are facing organized resistance in Sunni Muslim central Iraq, once the cradle of Saddam's support.
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites) said it believed the ousted Iraqi leader's voice was most likely on an audiotape broadcast last week which warned of more bloodshed and urged Iraqis to fight U.S. forces. CIA spokesman Bill Harlow said the tape's quality was too poor to be certain it was Saddam.
"But the CIA's assessment, after a technical analysis of the tape, is that it is most likely his voice," he said, adding that the date of the recording could not be determined.
An official of the U.S.-led reconstruction effort said sabotage against oil and electric power grids is increasing and appealed to Iraqi citizens to turn in saboteurs.
Hours after the U.S. soldiers were killed in the troubled capital Bremer hailed the first session of the Baghdad city council as a major step toward democracy in Iraq.
The civilian administrator told Iraqis in his weekly televised address that a new Iraqi dinar would replace the "Saddam dinar" bearing Saddam's face and declared a nine trillion Iraqi dinar budget for second half 2003 to finance infrastructure reconstruction programs.
At street rates in Baghdad of about 1,400 dinars to the dollar nine trillion dinars is worth about $6.5 billion.
But he conceded that his main concern remained security.
"My number one priority remains, as always, security, providing the security which Iraq needs in order to rebuild."
DEADLY ATTACKS
Bremer said the meeting was perhaps the most important event since U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam on April 9. "Today marks the resumption of a democratic system for Baghdad," he said.
The 37-member council can only offer suggestions to U.S.-controlled bodies running the chaotic city of five million people. But Bremer pledged their ideas would be taken seriously.
The death of the U.S. soldiers brought to 29 the number killed in action in Iraq since President Bush (news - web sites) declared major combat over on May 1.
A U.S. military spokesman said one of the soldiers killed was on a patrol pursuing Iraqi gunmen in the Azamiyah district of Baghdad late on Sunday. An Iraqi gunman was killed and another wounded in that clash.
The second U.S. soldier was killed early on Monday when a rocket-propelled grenade hit his vehicle in the district of Kadhimiya.
In the volatile town of Ramadi, about 100 km (60 miles) west of Baghdad, at least one Iraqi man was shot dead and four U.S. soldiers were wounded during attacks. On Saturday seven recruits to a new U.S.-backed police force were killed.
Ramadi is part of a mainly Sunni Muslim area to the north and west of Baghdad where U.S. forces have faced much of the most violent resistance to their occupation of Iraq.
The chief of Turkey's armed forces said on Monday the weekend arrest of Turkish troops by U.S. forces in Iraq had caused a crisis in relations between the two NATO (news - web sites) armed forces.
The 11 Turkish soldiers were released on Sunday evening and returned on Monday to their offices in northern Iraq.
(Additional reporting by Michael Georgy and Andrew Gray)