BAGHDAD, 8 December 2003 — The top US general in Iraq warned yesterday of an upsurge in attacks in the months before Washington hands over sovereignty in June, as insurgents killed an American soldier in a roadside bomb attack in the north.
Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez also urged Iraqis to help find fugitive former dictator Saddam Hussein — whom he called a needle in a haystack — and said US forces would keep up their offensive against insurgents using any weapon at their disposal.
“We expect to see an increase in violence as we move forward toward sovereignty at the end of June. We’re going to have some periods where there will be an increase in violence in the coming months,” Sanchez told a news conference.
In the latest fatal attack on US forces, guerrillas blew apart a Humvee with a roadside bomb in the northern Iraq city of Mosul, killing one American soldier and wounding two.
They staged the ambush a day after US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld visited and said operations were on the right path. “We heard an explosion and ran toward it. I saw four US soldiers lying on the ground, with their Humvee destroyed,” Mosul policeman Hamid Saleh said.
Sanchez said insurgents would seek to derail the handover of power, partly by attacking the political process itself. Under an accelerated plan unveiled last month, the United States will hand over sovereignty to a transitional Iraqi government at the end of June. That government will be chosen by Iraqis selected in May via a series of nationwide caucuses. “Their focus will be...conducting some kind of operations against the economic and political sectors primarily, while maintaining pressure on the military if they are to derail the process. We’re prepared for that,” Sanchez said.
Asked about the elusive former Iraqi president, on the run with a $25-million bounty on his head, Sanchez appealed for Iraqis to help find him. He said the assumption was that Saddam was in Iraq.
“In terms of the search for Saddam — the needle in the haystack — clearly we have not found the right haystack,” Sanchez said with a smile.“We’re all focused on trying to find this needle out there, and by God it’s a hard problem, and you all have to help me, and the Iraqi people have to help us try to get Saddam.”
Sunni Clerics Warn Militia Forces May Ignite Civil War
Meanwhile, US plans to deploy Iraqi militia forces from Kurdish or Shiite units who fought Saddam’s regime could spark a civil war and force the break-up of Iraq, Sunni religious leaders warned.
Using militiamen to help restore security to Iraq would be “to ignore a large section of Muslims and push them into the ranks of the opposition,” said a statement issued by the Committee of Muslim Ulemas in Iraq.
It would be “an attempt to break up Iraq,” the statement said, recalling the Lebanese civil war between 1975 and 1990 when rival militias battled for control. The committee, set up after Saddam’s overthrow in April, represents the Sunni minority in the country that had held power over the Shiite majority.
