US: The US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, said yesterday that Washington would speed up aid to create more jobs in Iraq and would not let guerrillas drag the country back into the past.
Mr Powell arrived in Baghdad a day after the delay of a major national conference to chart Iraq's political future and as a kidnappers' deadline passed without word on their threat to kill one of seven foreign truck-drivers they seized last week.
He told reporters that Washington would quicken disbursement of some $18 billion in aid to help increase employment in Iraq, where official figures put the jobless rate at about 28 per cent, making the country a fertile recruiting ground for guerrillas.
"Reconstruction and security are two sides of the same coin," said Mr Powell, the most senior US official to visit Iraq since sovereignty was handed to the interim government of the Prime Minister, Mr Iyad Allawi, on June 28th.
"Those who are setting off these bombs, those who are conducting these kidnappings are doing it for the purpose of returning to the past, returning to the days of a Saddam Hussein-like regime," he said.
"I don't think the Iraqi people want to go back to the past and the United States and its coalition partners will stand firm with the new government, the sovereign government of Iraq and its leaders."
To strengthen the interim government, the US is helping train Iraq's fledgling security forces to allow the 160,000 foreign troops to eventually leave.
In a move that spreads the burden, NATO yesterday clinched a deal to start training Iraqi forces next month after a clash between Washington and Paris over whether trainers should come under US-led coalition command was shelved.
"There's a deal," a NATO spokesman in Brussels said after envoys from the 26 allied nations had met for the sixth time in three days on a stand-off that highlighted lingering tension between the US and France over last year's war.
A senior NATO diplomat said an advance mission would be sent to Baghdad in August and the command arrangements would be settled after it reports back in September.
In fresh fighting, at least 13 Iraqis were killed in Falluja, west of Baghdad, in clashes between gunmen and US forces that broke out late on Thursday.
Kidnappers holding the seven truckers - three Indians, three Kenyans and an Egyptian - said in a videotape they would kill one of the hostages by 1500 GMT on Friday if their demands were not met, and showed a gunman aiming a rifle at an Indian.
But there were mixed messages on whether the deadline had been extended. An Iraqi tribal sheikh trying to free the truckers said he would meet a representative from their Kuwaiti employer today and expected a "positive outcome". - (Reuters)