Iraqi PM blames US-led coalition for "great negligence"
Pakistan Times Wire Service

BAGHDAD (Iraq): Iraq's interim prime minister blamed the U.S.-led coalition for "great negligence" in the ambush that killed about 50 soldiers heading home after graduation from a U.S.-run training course, and warned of an escalation of terrorist attacks.

Underscoring the warning, insurgents yesterday made a new threat of nationwide attacks against U.S. and Iraqi forces with weapons and military tactics they have not experienced before if American forces try to storm the militant stronghold of Fallujah.

Video posted on a militant Islamic Web site in the name of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group also showed what it claimed was a Japanese captive and threatened to behead him within 48 hours unless Japan pulls its troops from Iraq.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi rejected the demand. "I won't withdraw troops," he was quoted as saying by Japan's Kyodo news agency after receiving news of the hostage threat.

Prime Minister Ayad Allawi told the Iraqi National Council, a government oversight body, that coalition forces' negligent handling of security was responsible for Saturday's deadly ambush along a remote highway near the Iranian border.

"It was a heinous crime where a group of National Guardsmen were targeted," Allawi said. "There was great negligence on the part of some coalition forces." He said the Defense Ministry began an investigation into whether insurgents had infiltrated military ranks to obtain information about troop movements.

Rumsfeld implicitly admits lack of planning

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has implicitly admitted the Pentagon had no specific plans for handling a widespread insurgency in the aftermath of the US-led invasion of Iraq, but still insisted US pre-war planning was "good."

The remarks, made on Tuesday in an interview with Cincinnati, Ohio, radio station, came amid a barrage of charges from Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and his aides that the White House had failed to adequately plan for the possibility of a guerrilla war in Iraq.

"The postwar plan ... was designed to see that they were not able to destroy their oil wells, that they were not able to blow up their bridges, that they did not have massive humanitarian crisis with internally displaced people and refugees and food crisis, and that the war was conducted in a speedy way so that it would not run the risk of destabilizing neighboring countries," Rumsfeld said when asked to comment on the accusations. ●