Rumsfeld visits Iraq to warn new leaders to avoid delays
BAGHDAD -- The leaders of Iraq's emerging new government must not allow ''turbulence or incompetence or corruption" to slow progress toward building democracy and defeating the insurgency, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said today.
Rumsfeld arrived at the Iraqi capital before sunrise aboard an Air Force C-17 cargo plane for his second visit in three months. The visit reflected a desire to push the political and military momentum that he believes has been growing since the Jan. 30 elections for a National Assembly. Rumsfeld was to meet later today with interim President Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish former rebel leader, and Ibrahim Jaafari, the Shi'ite Muslim who was designated interim prime minister last week.
En route from Washington, Rumsfeld told reporters he would press the new Iraqi leadership to avoid delays on either the political or security front at a time when US troops are still being killed and wounded, and billions of US taxpayer dollars are being invested in rebuilding the country.
He would not discuss how soon the 140,000 US troops in Iraq could begin leaving.
In developments yesterday:
A US contractor was kidnapped in the Baghdad area, the latest in a string of abductions that has forced many foreigners to work there under armed guard. A US Embassy spokesman said the contractor, who was working on a reconstruction project, had been abducted around noon. He was not identified.
A pickup truck exploded near a US convoy as it patrolled a crowded market in the city of Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, killing at least three people and injuring more than 20 others. The blast occurred in a crowded market shortly before the nightly 8 p.m. curfew for cars. At least three people died and more than 20 were injured, mainly women and children, a hospital official said.
Three suicide bombers attacked a Marine outpost in western Iraq, wounding three Marines and three civilians in an attack claimed by Al Qaeda in Iraq, one of the country's most feared terror groups. The bombers tried to crash two cars and a firetruck into Camp Gannon in the western desert, but ''the drivers of the vehicles were stopped short of the camp by forces manning the checkpoints," a US military statement said.
About 500 members of Iraq's police and army swept through buildings in the central Rashid neighborhood of Baghdad, along with some 200 American soldiers, the US Army's Third Infantry Division said. Sixty-five suspected militants were detained. One Iraqi soldier was wounded, but no American casualties were reported in the largest joint US-Iraqi operation in Iraq's capital since the Third Infantry assumed responsibility for the city Feb. 27.
Al Qaeda in Iraq, which previously said 10 of its fighters were killed attacking Abu Ghraib, also claimed to have carried out yesterday's suicide bomb assault on Camp Gannon, which is in the Qaim, near the Syrian border.
The two cars and the firetruck used in the attack exploded, wounding the three Marines and three civilians and causing slight damage to the concrete barriers and a nearby mosque, US officials said. Insurgents also fired at the camp, and a US attack helicopter destroyed a car carrying a gunman, officials said. It was unclear how many insurgents and suicide bombers were killed in the assault.
The attack came nine days after dozens of heavily armed insurgents tried unsuccessfully to break into Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. That battle wounded more than 40 US soldiers and a dozen prisoners at a facility synonymous with the US military's prison abuse scandal.
In a small victory against a spate of kidnappings targeting foreigners, a Defense Ministry official said yesterday that Iraqi security forces arrested a man who claimed responsibility for last year's kidnapping of two French journalists. The hostages, Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, were released in December after four months in captivity.
Iraqi Army soldiers captured Amer Hussein Sheikhan in the Mahmoudiya area on April 4, the official said on condition of anonymity. No other details were available.
The office of President Traian Basescu of Romania also said three Romanian journalists kidnapped along with their guide nearly two weeks ago in Iraq were believed to be alive and authorities were optimistic they would return home. Spokeswoman Adriana Saftoiu offered no other information.
Also, a group claiming to have kidnapped a Pakistani official in Iraq has demanded money for his release, a senior Pakistani government official said, without giving an amount. Malik Mohammed Javed, a deputy counselor at the Pakistani mission in Baghdad, went missing late Saturday after leaving home for prayers at a nearby mosque. 