WASHINGTON, Sept 26 (AFP) - US Secretary of State Colin Powell warned Sunday that the insurgency in Iraq was "getting worse" and could hinder the organization of Iraqi elections planned for January.
"Yes, it's getting worse," Powell told ABC television.
"And the reason it's getting worse is that they are determined to disrupt the election. They do not want the Iraqi people to vote for their own leaders in a free, democratic elections."
"Right now our goal is, and I think it's an achievable goal, is to have full, free and fair elections across the whole country."
The top US military commander in the region, General John Abizaid also cautioned that "we will fight our way through elections" in Iraq, and that he could not predict that the entire country would be able to vote.
Their remarks stood in sharp contrast to the optimistic scenario painted by US President George W. Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, who both vowed last week that elections would go ahead and insisted the rebuilding of Iraq was on track.
Powell told CNN that: "There will be polling stations that are shot at. There will be insurgents who will still be out there who will try to keep people from voting.
"I think what we have to keep shooting for, and what is achievable, is to give everybody the opportunity to vote in the upcoming election, to make the election fully credible, and something that will stand the test of the international community's examination," he said.
His remarks came after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Thursday told a congressional committee "so be it," if unrest prevents polls opening in parts of Iraq.
"You have an election that's not quite perfect. Is it better than not having an election? You bet," Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Abizaid said Sunday that he believed "elections will occur in the vast majority of the country."
"I can't predict 100 percent that all areas will be available for free, fair and peaceful elections," he said on NBC television's "Meet the Press" program.
"I assume that there will be certain areas of the country that will have to be fought over in order to have the elections take place."
In an editorial, The New York Times said the mounting insurgency left Washington and Allawi in a Catch-22 situation: "The only hope of quelling the insurgency depends on progress toward democratic government and the only hope of meaningful elections depends on greater progress in quelling the insurgency."
"With the original rationales for the Iraq war now discredited and with a spreading insurgency killing scores of American soldiers and hundreds of Iraqi civilians every month, the prospect of holding democratically legitimate elections in January is about the only thing the Bush administration could hope for as a sign of eventual success," the newspaper said.
Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy slammed Allawi's "rosy assessment" of the situation in his country, telling CBS television: "Every time we have these misstatements, every time we have these lies, we sink further and further into the quagmire."
Powell said that an international conference on Iraq could take place in late October or early November in a city in the region, possibly Amman or Cairo, to build support for the strife-torn country.
Participants could include Iraq's neighbors as well as several industrialized nations, he said.
"It will be a conference in the region ... so that all of Iraq's neighbors can sit with Prime Minister Allawi and his cabinet and discuss why it is in the interest of the whole neighborhood for there to be a stable Iraq with an elected government," Powell said.
Aside from the conference, Powell said talks were underway on securing the Iraqi-Syrian border, bringing together the United States and the two neighbors.
"It's a very porous border. It's not an easy border to control," Powell said.
"But with additional technical equipment put in place and with cooperation between the sides, we can do a better job," he said.