At least 46 people died in violence in Iraq on the second anniversary of the United States-led invasion of the country as a diplomatic row erupted between Baghdad and Amman.
Iraq was plunged into diplomatic crisis with neighbouring Jordan, with both countries recalling their envoys following accusations of a Jordanian being involved in a devastating suicide bombing.
Insurgents struck around Iraq, hitting the fledgling security forces hard at a time when the US government is channelling maximum resources into training and equipping them to pave the way for the exit of US-led troops.
Attacks also claimed the lives of two US soldiers, one in the northern city of Kirkuk in a roadside bombing that wounded three others, and another in the restive Al-Anbar province, west of the capital, according to the US military.
The military also said 24 Iraqi insurgents were killed and six coalition soldiers wounded in a firefight on the outskirts of Baghdad without providing any further details.
In the main northern city of Mosul, a suicide bomber with a fake badge slipped on Sunday into a building housing the provincial anti-corruption department and blew himself up inside the office of its chief, General Walid Kachmoula, killing him and two of his guards.
Attackers struck again hours later, opening fire on Kachmoula’s funeral procession as it made its way to the cemetery, killing two people and wounding 14, hospital sources said.
The city has become a new front for the insurgency since November.
In another flashpoint town, gunmen attacked a police station in Baquba, killing four police and wounding two as a truck bomb rammed into the entrance of an Iraqi army barrack nearby, wounding 17 people, a police official said. Four insurgents were killed in an ensuing firefight.
Iraqi soldiers, meanwhile, arrested 10 people suspected of being behind a massive truck bombing in Baghdad on March 9 against a Western hotel next to the agriculture ministry that killed four people and wounded 40, most of them US contractors.
Despite the continuing high casualty toll from insurgent violence two years after the US invasion, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld insisted major progress has nonetheless been achieved.
”It’s a wonderful thing to see 25-million Iraqis liberated, to see their economy improve as it has been, to see their political process move toward democracy,” Rumsfeld told Fox News.
About 11 000 American troops have been wounded and 1 511 US soldiers have died in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion.
UN reform proposals
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on Sunday asked nations to rethink the rules of going to war.
He unveiled a sweeping set of UN reform proposals, including a long-elusive definition of terrorism, and asked the Security Council to fix guidelines on when it could authorise the use of military force.
The secretary general’s report was largely driven by the invasion, led by the United States without the backing of the council or the support of most of the international community.
The UN secretary general called on nations to define terrorism as any action to kill or harm civilians and non-combatants whose purpose is to ”intimidate a population or to compel a government or an international organisation to do or to abstain from doing any act”.
”No cause or grievance, no matter how legitimate, justifies the targeting and deliberate killing of civilians and non-combatants,” he wrote in his report, due to be formally presented to UN member nations on Monday.
Relations with Jordan
Relations between Iraq and its pro-Western neighbour Jordan were meanwhile in crisis as both governments withdrew their envoys following a wave of protests over the alleged involvement of a Jordanian in a deadly suicide bombing in the central city of Hilla that killed about 120 people and wounded scores, most of them Shi’ites.
The first move was made by Jordan, whose Foreign Minister Hani Mulki announced the kingdom was recalling its top diplomat from Baghdad. Iraq’s interim government swiftly retaliated, announcing that it, too, was recalling its ambassador from Amman.
”Relations between the two countries are in crisis mode,” said an Iraqi official.
Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the election-winning Shi’ite United Iraqi Alliance, has had the harshest words for Jordan over the past week.
He was in the holy city of Najaf on Sunday to meet Shi’ite spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani.
”The sayed [honorific] was sorry for the delay in forming the Iraqi government because this will adversely affect people’s lives and called for it to be formed soon,” Hakim told reporters after meeting Sistani.
”There is progress in negotiations and I think all points should be finalised by Thursday. If not, the unveiling of the new government will be a few days after that.”
Talks between the Shi’ites and Kurds are now down to sharing leadership and Cabinet posts in a coalition government and ways to include the election-boycotting Sunnis and outgoing Premier Iyad Allawi. — Sapa-AFP