by Jim Mannion
WASHINGTON, Sept 10 (AFP) - US coalition allies and Iraqi political candidates are likely to come under increased attack in Iraq as insurgents seek out "weak spots" to derail general elections in January, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned Friday.
Predicting a surge of violence between now and the end of the year, Rumsfeld said the government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi was determined to hold the elections for a national assembly on schedule.
But, he said, "There`s no question but between now and the end of the year the terrorists are determined to try to prevent the elections from taking place and from taking place on time. And they will, without a doubt in my mind, increase the level of violence between now and then."
"And they`ll attempt to attack coalition countries to see if they can get other coalition countries to pull out," he said in a talk here at the National Press Club.
Rumsfeld said some coalition partners themselves faced elections and were going through a "tug of war" over whether they should have sent troops to Iraq and whether they should stay.
"And the terrorists know that. They`re not stupid. They`re smart. And they`ve got brains. And they think. And they watch. And they saw what Spain did. And they thought, `My goodness, if we can effect that, maybe we can do something.`"
"So they`re going to be going after coalition countries. They`re going to be looking for weak spots. They`re going to be going after people who are running for office, Iraqi people who are engaged in that process. And they`re going to do their best to try to stop it," he said.
Rumsfeld was referring to Spain`s withdrawal of its troops from Iraq after the bombings that struck Madrid commuter trains March 11, killing 191 people just before national elections. Outrage over the government`s response to the attacks helped sweep to office Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who promptly withdrew the troops.
Italy, which has 3,000 troops in Iraq, already has come under pressure with the assassination of an Italian journalist August 26 and the kidnapping this week of two female Italian aid workers. The government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has vowed not to yield to blackmail.
Other countries such as Poland, with 2,500 troops in Iraq, are under domestic political pressure to withdraw from Iraq. Poland has said it plans to reduce the size of its force after the January elections.
Attacks on US forces also have intensified, pushing the US death toll over the 1,000 mark this week.
Asked how long before US forces retake insurgent strongholds like Fallujah, Rumsfeld said the Allawi government and the coalition understood that they cannot allow portions of the country to be used as bases from which to launch attacks.
"We know what will take place in Fallujah," he said. "It will be restored as something under the control of the Iraqi government eventually. What we don`t know is whether it will be done peacefully or by force. But one way or another, it will happen."
But he said the Allawi government was attempting varied approaches to pacifying insurgent-controlled areas, citing as an example the bloody, weeks long confrontation in the southern city of Najaf.
"They could have gone in and taken over the town, had the military power to do it; let there be no doubt," he said. "Indeed, they were very close to having to do that, to believing they had to do that."
But he said radical cleric Moqtada Sadr`s Mehdi army withdrew when they saw they would be overrun. "And, as a result, Najaf has been taken back peacefully," he said.
Rumsfeld, who spoke on the eve of the third anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, said he did not know how long US forces would be in Iraq.
Asked about a newspaper editorial that argued that a protracted war in Iraq was unwinnable and was only creating more terrorists and enemies of the west, Rumsfeld responded that the questioner "ought to get a life."
"It is worth it. And those who suggest to the contrary are not only wrong, but they will be proved wrong," he said.
US forces will find a way out of Iraq by training Iraqi security forces to replace them, he said, adding that 95,000 Iraqi security forces are now fully trained and equipped and the number should climb to 145,000 by the end of the year.