Rumsfeld under fire from Iraq-bound troops, Powell reaches out to Europe

BAGHDAD, Dec 8 (AFP) - US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld came under fire from American troops Wednesday over their safety in Iraq, as Secretary of State Colin Powell urged Europe to look beyond differences over last year's invasion.
In the British parliament, Prime Minister Tony Blair rejected a call for an independent inquiry into civilian deaths in Iraq, saying "terrorists and insurgents" were to blame for fatalities in the run-up to January 30 elections.
American troops waiting in the Kuwaiti desert to enter Iraq challenged Rumsfeld about their safety.
About 1,800 of the 10,000 troops at Camp Buehring, near the Iraqi border, gathered to hear the US defence chief say Iraqis will have to take over their own security to allow foreign troops to leave after the elections.
But one soldier was loudly cheered as he told Rumsfeld soldiers were "digging through landfills" to find scrap metal to reinforce the hundreds of US trucks and other military vehicles that pour into Iraq each day.
"Our vehicles are not armoured. We are digging up pieces of rusting scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass that has already been shot up, dropped, busted, picking the best for our vehicles to take into combat," he complained.
After a brief lull following last month's US-led assault to defeat insurgents in the city of Fallujah, violence has continued with the number of US military personnel killed in action since the invasion now about 1,000.
On the diplomatic front, ahead of meetings at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Powell said Washington and Europe had to come together to respond to new threats and challenges.
"I know that some of (President George W. Bush's) key decisions these last four years have been controversial in Europe, especially decisions that were made about Iraq," he said in a speech.
"Whatever our differences about the past, about Iraq, we are now looking forward," Powell said. "We are reaching out to Europe and we hope that Europe will reach out to us."
Iraq's interim President Ghazi al-Yawar, in an interview with the Washington Post published Wednesday, accused Iran of meddling in the election process.
Iran was coaching candidates sympathetic to Tehran and pouring "huge amounts of money" into the Iraqi election campaign in the hope of producing a loyal Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad, said Yawar.
"Iran has very obvious interference in our business -- a lot of money, a lot of intelligence activities and almost interfering daily ... especially in the southeast side of Iraq," said Yawar.
Two days before registration for the candicacies closes, four Sunni political movements have registered for the vote, although close to 70 Sunni organisations have threatened a boycott.
In Britain, 46 influential figures, including a number of former British ambassadors, urged Blair in a letter made public Wednesday to agree to an inquiry into civilian deaths.
Their appeal was prompted by a study published in British medical journal The Lancet which estimated the death toll in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion at around 100,000.
During weekly question time in parliament, Blair rejected the need for an independent probe, indicating that he put his faith in data from the Iraqi health ministry.
British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon, meanwhile, was visiting British forces in the southern city of Basra, just days after a battle group returned from a controversial deployment near Baghdad.
Hoon was meeting members of the Scottish Black Watch regiment whose 850-member battle group returned to base Saturday after a controversial month-long deployment which left five of their members dead.
He said it was "reasonable to expect an increase (in militant attacks) ahead of elections" but that there was "no reason for elections not to take place" on time.
He also refused to rule out further British troop deployments to Iraq.
Britain has about 8,500 troops in relatively calm southern Iraq, around Basra, compared to 138,000 US troops in the centre and north. The ministry of defence indicated that Hoon's visit would last several days.
Another high-profile visitor on Wednesday was South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun who briefly met some of Seoul's contingent in the northern Kurdish town of Arbil.
Bulgaria, another member of the US-led multinational force in Iraq, will decide in January whether to keep its troops in the war-wracked country, Defense Minister Nikolai Svinarov told AFP in an interview.
Bulgaria's former communist Socialists, the main opposition party to the centre-right government, have called for Sofia to withdraw its 450 troops from Iraq after the elections.
Violence continued to simmer on the ground with at least one policeman killed in an attack by armed men against a police station in Samarra, north of Baghdad, and three people wounded in a bomb blast in the Iraqi capital.
Police said gunmen killed an Iraqi truck driver transporting goods for US troops in the northern village of Al-Ouja, the birthplace of ousted president Saddam Hussein.
The Al-Qaeda linked militant group Ansar Al-Sunna, meanwhile, threatened in an Internet video that it would soon kill a Turkish hostage it said was working for a company under contract to US forces.

12/08/2004 19:18 GMT - AFP