The United States has lifted most remaining sanctions against war-torn Iraq in a bid to spur the country’s economy, while warning it will not tolerate an Iranian-style Islamist regime there.
The US administration in Iraq was also poised to announce on Wednesday that no import duties will be imposed for several months to help generate business and give Iraqis more buying power.
In New York, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld took aim at Iran’s ruling Shi’ite clerics, saying the United States will not permit interference in Iraq by its neighbours or their proxies.
”Indeed, Iran should be on notice: Efforts to try to remake Iraq in Iran’s image will be aggressively put down,” he said.
The sanctions decision, announced by Treasury Secretary John Snow, aims to build on the United Nations (UN) Security Council vote last week ending trade sanctions imposed on Baghdad after it invaded Kuwait in 1990.
”Today’s action represents President Bush’s commitment to return the Iraqi people to the family of trading nations as soon as possible,” Snow said in a statement.
”The US has acted immediately to permit trade between the United States and a newly liberated Iraq, and we call on other nations to do the same.”
US officials also sought to downplay the perception that a flare-up in guerrilla activity in Iraq undercuts the US-led administration’s claim that it is getting a hold on security nearly seven weeks after Saddam Hussein’s overthrow.
Two soldiers were killed on Tuesday and nine others wounded in an ambush in the flashpoint town of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, US Central Command said. It added that two of the attackers were also killed and six captured.
The middle-east-online.com website posted a statement from the ”General Command of the Iraqi Armed Resistance and Liberation Forces” claiming responsibility for the attack.
It also published what was said to be a letter from Saddam, in which he claimed to be ”fighting the Americans” and appealed for resistance.
The letter, whose authenticity could not be established, called on Iraqis to ”make every American and Briton feel that he will live on Arab land in fear and terror so long as they do not withdraw from Iraq and change their position on the criminal Zionist occupation of Arab Palestine”.
Lieutenant Colonel Scott Rutter of the 3rd Infantry Division sought to downplay the Tuesday incident, preceded a day earlier by two other attacks in which two soldiers also died.
”Order in Baghdad is present. Any time you have a large group of civilians there’s going to be some bad guys.”
US administrator Paul Bremer also counselled patience.
”We will find days that we take multiple casualties, as we did. But that doesn’t by itself indicate things are getting worse,” he said.
That view was echoed by a group of US congressmen, who returned to Washington after a five-day visit to Iraq.
Duncan Hunter, chairperson of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, said the ”watchword for reconstruction has to be patience”.
He argued that US officials ”face tough and diverse challenges… in restoring basic services to an acceptable standard that, in many instances, did not exist prior to the conflict. That said, I am optimistic that a free and prosperous Iraq is achievable”.
More measured in tone was John McHugh, chairperson of the strategic forces subcommittee.
”My concern is that the Iraqi people’s worst fears will be realised unless we stay until the job is done.
”I only hope that the Congress and the American people will not lose interest and support for the necessary continued operations in the region.”
At the UN, Sergio Vieira de Mello, the newly appointed special representative, said he intended to ”hit the ground running on Monday morning at the latest with a relatively small team.
”Priority number one will be to establish contacts with representative Iraqis — Iraqi leaders, representatives of the media and civil society,” he said.
Giving a boost to coalition efforts to root out Iraq’s once all-pervasive Ba’ath party, Central Commmand said it had captured two more of its leaders, both on its list of the 55 most-wanted members of Saddam’s ousted regime.
Sayf al-Din al-Mashhadani, chairperson for the southern al-Muthanna province, and Saad Abdul Majid al-Faisal, chairperson for Salahaddin province north of Baghdad, were captured on Saturday.
Meanwhile, the US-led coalition said it would pay a reward for any information that helped to locate mobile laboratories that could be used to make banned chemical and biological weapons.
Bush had pinned his case for war on charges that Saddam had amassed an arsenal of such weapons, but coalition forces have yet to unearth clear evidence of this.
In Vienna, the UN’s nuclear watchdog agency said it planned to send an inspection team to Iraq on Friday or Saturday, to investigate a site south of Baghdad where nuclear material disappeared after looting.
Agency chief Mohamed El Baradei has warned of a potential humanitarian disaster if nuclear material were to fall into the wrong hands. ‒ Sapa-AFP