Four US troops killed; Iraqis spar on constitution

By Alastair Macdonald

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi insurgents savaged a U.S. patrol
overnight, killing four soldiers and wounding six after Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld urged Iraq’s leaders to end arguments
over a constitution to help undermine the revolt.

A sparse U.S. military statement on Wednesday gave no
details of the attack shortly before midnight near Baiji, an
oil refining town 180 km (115 miles) north of Baghdad.

But a large crater on the highway and an account from Iraqi
police suggested U.S. vehicles had been struck by one of what
appears to be a new breed of roadside bomb or land mine, more
powerful than those that have killed hundreds of troops over
the past two years and capable of penetrating American armor.

“Clearly, improvised explosive devices … some with newer
technologies these days, are going to change our tactics,”
General Richard Myers told a news briefing at the Pentagon less
than two hours before the Baiji attack.

Washington’s most senior general was responding to a land
mine explosion that killed 14 Marines in an armored amphibious
vehicle near Haditha, northwest of Baghdad, on Aug 3 and to
half a dozen other heavy losses in the past two months.

In Baiji, children played around the crater with scraps of
U.S. military equipment, including camouflage clothing bearing
a soldier’s nametag. Local police said they had seen two
wrecked Humvee patrol vehicles and a heavy armored vehicle, all
burned.

In other violence, six people, including two policemen,
were killed and 14 wounded in Baghdad when a suicide bomber
drove a car at a police patrol in the west of the capital.

Rumsfeld told the same Pentagon briefing that bloodshed
could rise ahead of a referendum on the constitution, scheduled
for Oct 15., and a general election due two months later.

“Violence could again increase for a time, as it did during
the last elections,” he said.

CONSTITUTION DEADLINE

Rumsfeld, who flew to Baghdad two weeks ago and told Iraqi
leaders drafting a constitution that it was “time to get on
with it,” said pushing on with that process, due to produce a
text by Monday, would help undermine support for the Sunni Arab
rebels.

“It’s important that they stick with their timetable.”

Iraq’s U.S.-backed government believes advancing a
political process which began with elections in January will
defuse the insurgency, a loose alliance of foreign Sunni Muslim
militants and Saddam Hussein loyalists that shows no signs of
weakening.

President Jalal Talabani is hosting a series of meetings
this week aimed at breaking deadlock among leaders of Iraq’s
many communities, including the Shi’ite Muslim majority, ethnic
Kurds and Arab Sunnis.

They are under intense U.S. pressure to meet the deadline
and the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, has been
prominent on the sidelines of the talks.

Talabani’s spokesman, Kamran Qaradaghi, said in a statement
on Wednesday that meetings since Sunday had demonstrated a
common resolve to agree a draft constitution by a self-imposed
Aug. 15 deadline. Among key issues was the extent of autonomy
granted to federal regions, especially Kurdistan, he said.

Dividing up oil revenues was also a subject of discussion,
as was the fate of the northern oil city of Kirkuk, which the
Kurds want to annex as capital of their northern region.

The role of Islam in the new state is also a bone of
contention between religious and secular groups.

Even if the charter is drafted on time, many Iraqis are
preoccupied with instability and poor services which their new
leaders promised to end when they came to power.

Editorialists in Baghdad’s newspapers expressed frustration
at the debate among senior leaders and accused them of being
out of touch with the concerns of ordinary people.

“People in Iraq are waiting with bated breath for an
agreement that brings political stability to this country,”
wrote Abdelatif al-Moussawi in Azzaman. “But Iraqis today are
suffering more than ever from divisions among their leaders.”

The editorial in al-Sabah al-Jadeed said: “The time has
come for all Iraqis to realize that they are all in this
together and that the language of threats and imposing
realities will only widen divisions and create civil strife.”

(Additional reporting by Amer Amery in Baiji and Hiba
Moussa, Mussab Al-Khairalla and Andrew Hammond in Baghdad)