BAGHDAD, 9 September 2003 — Britain yesterday announced a reinforcement of some 1,200 soldiers to Iraq as US President George W. Bush warned of a long fight ahead on the “central front” of the terror war.
Following a US plea for more non-American troops to counter violence and share the cost of occupying postwar Iraq, London said it would send two more battalions to bring its contingent controlling the south to more than 12,000.
The United States wants to see another 15,000 soldiers from other nations in Iraq to back its 130,000-strong force.
Underlining the dangers involved, two US soldiers were wounded yesterday when their convoy struck an explosive device on a Baghdad bridge and saboteurs blew up an oil pipeline.
As Bush was addressing Americans in the early hours of Monday Iraqi time, US troops rammed gates, jumped walls and stomped through bedrooms in a raid netting four guerrilla suspects in Saddam Hussein’s hometown Tikrit.
Bush said in his speech that further time and sacrifice were needed in Iraq to beat the “enemies of freedom.” He asked Congress for $87 billion for military operations and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Saboteurs hit a critical oil pipeline in the north of Iraq, in the fifth such attack on the oil delivery system in less than a month. The attacks have shut the export pipeline to Turkey and are costing the country an estimated $7 million a day.
Adel Al-Qazzaz, the director general of the Northern Oil Co., said the line hit yesterday had been carrying 35,000 barrels a day from the Jabour oilfield 30 km (18 miles) southeast of Kirkuk to the main pipeline that originates in the northeastern Iraqi city.
The US-backed governor of Najaf said that promising talks were under way to avert a showdown between coalition forces bent on disarming Iraqi militias and an anti-US militant vowing to resist.
Haidar Mehdi Mattar Al-Mayali said he was optimistic his mediation could find a solution to the brewing row between US Marines around Najaf and the forces of Moqtada Sadr.
With talks starting on a US-drafted resolution on Iraq, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called a foreign ministers meeting of the five big powers on the UN Security Council in Geneva on Saturday to work on a compromise.
“I am still hoping to have a meeting with the foreign ministers in Geneva on Saturday. There is one more phone call that I have to make later today to put everything on track,” he told a news conference.
He apparently was referring to Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan, who has the furthest to travel. US Secretary of State Colin Powell and Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov of Russia, Jack Straw of Britain and France’s Dominique de Villepin are expected to attend, diplomats said.
