by Christophe de Roquefeuil
BAGHDAD, July 30 (AFP) - US Secretary of State Colin Powell vowed on Friday that Washington would battle on in Iraq, bogged down in a worsening foreign hostage crisis and persistent clashes between US troops and insurgents.
"(US) President (George W. Bush) Bush and his administration and other coalition leaders remain firmly committed to the task ahead: help the Iraqi government defeat this insurgency," Powell told a Baghdad news conference.
He is the most senior US official to visit the strife-torn country since the formal winding up of the US-led occupation late last month, which still sees thousands of US-led troops remaining in Iraq.
Faced with a bitter 15-month-old insurgency that has seen no let up, Powell said Iraq was on track to hold elections as scheduled by January 2005.
"I have seen nothing to suggest that that date cannot be met," he said, one day after Iraqi officials postponed until August a national conference, on UN advice to better prepare for the meeting.
Referring to a Riyadh proposal to send troops from Muslim countries to Iraq, Powell was more circumspect.
"We support the concept, but whether the conditions can be met and whether it actually produces contributions of troops remains to be seen," he said.
Radical Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr, joined by other religious elders, preached against the idea on Friday. He said the force would be seen as "collaborators of the occupation".
Paying tribute to the Iraqi government, Powell warned arch US foe Iran against seeking undue influence in Iraq. "Any actions taken by Iran which seek to gain influence in Iraq we would look at with disfavor," he said.
For his part, Iraqi President Sheikh Ghazi al-Yawar stressed that Baghdad and Washington were partners, denying that US ambassador John Negroponte was manipulating the government.
Iraq's caretaker administration has struggled to win popular support, with many Iraqis seeing it as the product of the occupation.
"Ambassador Negroponte is working 100 percent as a diplomat, an ambassador of a superpower like any other US ambassador anywhere in the world," he said.
Just two days after a massive suicide bombing and a wave of attacks across the country in which more than 120 people died, Yawar claimed the insurgents were "getting more helpless and hopeless".
At least four explosions boomed across central Baghdad during Powell's meetings. One was a mortar round hitting a house. There were no casualties.
The US military said 20 insurgents were killed overnight when US troops battled fighters in the flashpoint city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad. Hospital sources and police put the death toll at 13.
The US military has conducted at least seven air strikes over the past month on what it says are suspected hideouts of loyalists of alleged Al-Qaeda operative Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, most of them in southern Fallujah, killing dozens of people.
The militant's faction has claimed the kidnappings and killings of numerous foreigners as the number of believed victims in the country's perilous hostage crisis rose to at least 25.
In the latest reported abductions, two Syrian truck drivers were grabbed near the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, west of Baghdad on Friday, one of their fellow drivers was quoted as saying.
Shortly after a deadline set by insurgents to kill an Indian hostage expired at 1500 GMT, his kidnappers extended the deadline by 24 hours after which they would start executing their seven truck driver captives, according to a statement obtained by AFP.
"We have decided to give a last chance to the Kuwaiti company and the relevant countries to save their employees and their nationals," it said.
The Islamic militants holding the three Indians, three Kenyans and an Egyptian have demanded that their Kuwaiti employers quit Iraq.
NATO countries reached an agreement late Friday swiftly to send a team of officers to Iraq to begin training Iraqi security forces, its chief, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said.
Meanwhile, it emerged that deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has been diagnosed with a chronic prostate infection.
"He is being treated with antibiotics for a chronic infection of the prostate, and initial examinations have not shown cancer," Iraqi Human Rights Minister Bakhtiar Amin told AFP by telephone.
"To be 100 percent sure (that he does not have cancer), a biopsy will be needed," said Amin, who visited the 67-year-old Saddam last week.