Senate rejects Iraq troop withdrawal

By Ross Colvin

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Republican senators backed President
George W. Bush’s Iraq policies on Thursday, rejecting
Democratic plans to start pulling out troops after a debate
that forced Iraq to the heart of campaigning for November
elections.

Five U.S. troops were killed in the previous two days, the
military said — four Marines in two attacks in western Iraq
and a soldier in a roadside bombing south of Baghdad, bringing
the number of Americans to die in three years in Iraq to 2,511.

Some of Bush’s fellow Republicans fear low poll ratings
over the war could hurt them in legislative elections. But
senators rallied to accuse Democrats of “cutting and running”
while their opponents said Republicans were uniting on failed
policies.

The votes came as the U.S. commander in Iraq, General
George Casey, met Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for talks
on future force levels. The Pentagon is considering a reduction
of a few thousand troops from the present 127,000 in the coming
months.

Iraqi police and other officials said a roadside bomb
wounded the governor of the province where al Qaeda leader Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. airstrike two weeks ago,
although some Iraqi and U.S. officials called it a car
accident.

Police sources said the car in which Diyala province
governor Raad al-Mowla’s driver and a bodyguard were killed was
struck by shrapnel in the explosion. They dismissed a statement
by the U.S. military that a tire blow-out caused the crash.
Mowla was stable in a U.S. military hospital, the military
said.

The U.S. military said Saddam had gone on hunger strike
following Wednesday’s killing of a third member of his defense
team, missing his midday meal on Thursday. A U.S. military
spokesman said he joined a group of former aides who have
missed three meals since Wednesday.

“Despite their refusal to eat their meals, they are in good
health and receiving appropriate medical care,” he said.

Saddam’s chief lawyer, Khalil al-Dulaimi, said on Wednesday
night Saddam had started a hunger strike. The former Iraqi
leader has refused food in the past, according to his lawyers.

MASS KIDNAPPING

Confusion surrounded the abduction of dozens of factory
workers by gunmen north of Baghdad as they traveled home on
Wednesday, with government officials offering flatly
contradictory accounts which changed throughout the day.

Iraq’s Interior Ministry said 80 or more workers were
abducted by gunmen near Taji, a violent town north of Baghdad.
About 40, all Shi’ites or women, were later freed. The fate of
the remaining Sunni workers was not immediately known.

But Iraq’s industry minister, whose ministry oversees the
factory, said 64 were taken and 30 released. Iraqi soldiers
said they had found several bodies in the area that might have
been related to the abduction. There were unconfirmed reports
from one Iraqi security office that troops had freed some
hostages.

Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has pledged to heal
tensions that have pushed the country toward civil war between
majority Shi’ites and Saddam’s once dominant Sunnis.

President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, said a committee had
approved Maliki’s “national reconciliation” project, which
would be presented to parliament on Sunday. It is likely to
spell out how some Sunni insurgents can be brought into
negotiations.

As part of a reconciliation drive, Maliki has announced the
release of 2,500 mostly Sunni prisoners from U.S. jails in
June. The U.S. military said it would free 500 on Friday.

Iraq’s trade minister threatened to reconsider trade deals
with wheat supplier Australia a day after Australian troops
killed one of his bodyguards in a mishap in the capital.

The Australian government is trying to negotiate new wheat
deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars with Iraq, whose
state rations body is one of the world’s biggest wheat buyers.

(Additional reporting by Mussab Al-Khairalla, Alastair
Macdonald, Michael Georgy, Ibon Villelabeitia and Omar al-Ibadi
in Baghdad, Paul Tait and Michael Byrnes in Sydney and Vicki
Allen and Will Dunham in Washington)