Pak not to send troops to Iraq
BAGHDAD(AUG 5):Five US soldiers and an Iraqi translator were wounded in a pair of attacks in Iraq as Pakistan said it would not send fresh troops unless Iraqis wanted them.
The British government said it is examining a new UN resolution that would allow other countries to replace war-weary US and British troops.
Iraqi civilians were also struck down in the low-level war between US troops and Saddam loyalists as a military spokesman acknowledged four people were killed by US fire during a hunt for the fugitive strongman in Baghdad's posh Mansur neighbourhood last week.
In a bold move, insurgents wounded three soldiers and an Iraqi translator in an anti-tank rocket and bomb attack on Monday near the heavily fortified Baghdad police headquarters for the city of five million.
It was the second attack of the day, an ambush on the Baghdad airport road, where convoys regularly come under fire.
A US soldier and two Iraqi civilians were wounded in an attack near Baquba, 60 kilometres north of Baghdad.
On Monday, the coalition said it had captured another key fighter in the chain of localized resistance in Tikrit, the hub of the US operations to catch or kill Saddam and the rest of his supporters.
Witnesses also said that Iraqi police opened fire Monday on armed men who fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a US military vehicle and accompanying police in Khaldiya, 100 kilometres west of Baghdad, witnesses said.
Resident Ismael Turki said that US forces carried out house raids looking for the assailants, triggering protests from residents who attacked the town hall and a police post, which they set alight.
The US army called in helicopter-backed reinforcements and the situation became calm.
Meanwhile, Iraq's interim Governing Council was poised Monday to name lawyers and judges to a 15-member committee charged with drafting a new constitution, the launch pad to elections and an end to US stewardship of the war-battered country.
The council, which has established a nine-man monthly rotation of its presidency, is due to choose its cabinet ministers in the coming days, in another milestone for the young US-sponsored body as it seeks to win the confidence of Iraqis.
Pakistan on Monday said it would send troops only if Iraqis welcomed such a mission and the deployment was under a "legitimate" cover.
"There has to be a particular environment for sending the troops and the environment is defined by the legitimacy of the cover," foreign ministry spokesman Masood Khan said, referring to Pakistan's repeated demand for a UN or Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) green light.
"The other factor is whether or not the people of Iraq will be hospitable to this kind of mission."
It was the first time Pakistan acknowledged that it was not sure if the people of Iraq would welcome the presence of Pakistani troops.
Khan confirmed that Britain and the United States had requested two brigades of Pakistani troops to join peacekeeping forces in post-war Iraq.
Other countries the United States has approached for help, including India and Turkey, have also said they couldn't send troops without a new UN mandate.
Debate on a draft to replace Resolution 1483, which confines the UN role in Iraq to humanitarian and political assistance, is set for August 21.
However, as casualties mount, US and British governments are under increasing pressure to share the burden.
The British government is exploring the possibility of a new UN Security Council resolution setting up a multinational force in Iraq, Britain's special representative to Iraq said in an interview Monday.
Preliminary negotiations on such a resolution could start within weeks, the Financial Times daily said quoting John Sawers.
"We are exploring among ourselves - and we are exploring with the Americans - what the pros and cons (of a new UN resolution) might be," Sawers said.
Sawers, the top British official in the US-led occupation administration, added however that London and Washington were waiting to see what demands France and Russia would make as to the role the UN might play in Iraq.
"We are all conscious of tensions in the UN Security Council," he told the Financial Times.
"They have not gone away. But before we go down the road of seeking a new UN resolution we would want to be confident it was achievable in a way that would support the coalition's present efforts."
A mixed unit comprising mainly troops from Poland and Spain, Washington's main supporters in the war in Iraq after Britain and Australia, is arriving in Iraq, but most other states are still hanging back.
Arab countries for their part, many of them strong opponents of the US-led occupation, are to meet in Cairo Tuesday to discuss the possibility of contributing to the country's reconstruction after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime.
But Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher ruled out any dispatch of troops.
