Iraq Notebook
Central Command seeks 25,000 more U.S. troops

JOHN MOORE / AP A detainee in an outdoor solitary-confinement cell talks with a military policeman at the Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad yesterday. American soldiers said that the man had repeatedly gotten into fights with other inmates in the prison.

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Some officers said any increase may well be lower, perhaps involving 10,000 troops that would be a mix of active duty and National Guard units.

It is uncertain whether a formal request for more troops has been made by Gen. John Abizaid, the top general at Central Command.

Even with another 22,000 troops from other nations, primarily Britain, joining the American force, the U.S.-led coalition does not control the nation's borders, has taken substantial casualties along roads and highways and avoids key cities such as Fallujah, the former stronghold of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein.

Until now, Pentagon planners expected to maintain the current level of 138,000 American troops through 2005 and an overall force of 160,000, including the troops deployed by coalition partners. Adding five brigades would increase the coalition force to 185,000, far more than originally envisioned.

Pentagon planners had once hoped to reduce the number of U.S. troops in Iraq to 105,000 by this summer.

University lecturer, husband murdered

MOSUL, Iraq — Suspected assassins killed a university lecturer and her husband in the latest attacks on prominent Iraqis in the northern city of Mosul, police said yesterday.

Relatives said Layla Abdullah Saad, the dean of the college of law at Mosul University, had received threats but had refused to hire security guards to protect her house where she was shot and stabbed to death on her doorstep. Her husband, Moneer al-Khero, lay in a bedroom in the house in southern Mosul.

The dean of the political-science department at Mosul University, Abdul Jabbar Mustafa, was killed in January.

Audio message threatens Allawi
 
CAIRO, Egypt — An audio recording purportedly made by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and found online today threatened to assassinate Iraq's interim prime minister.

"As for you (Iyad) Allawi ... you didn't know that you have survived already traps we made for you, but we promise you that we will continue the game until the end," the online recording said.

It was not possible to immediately authenticate the recording, but the voice sounded like al-Zarqawi's.

Aussies lean toward leaving troops

CANBERRA, Australia — More Australians want their troops to stay on in Iraq until the job is done than support an opposition policy to bring them home, a new poll showed today.

The future of Australia's troops in Iraq has created a sharp political divide ahead of an election likely within months, with Prime Minister John Howard wanting the troops to stay but opposition Labor's Mark Latham vowing to bring them home. Some 850 Australian troops are on duty in and around Iraq.

A Newspoll survey, published in The Australian newspaper, found 48 percent of 1,200 respondents were against bringing back the troops, up from 45 percent in a similar survey seven weeks ago, while 45 percent wanted to bring the troops home by Christmas, down from 47 percent in the earlier survey.

Red Cross presses U.S. for Saddam letters

AMMAN, Jordan — The international Red Cross is pressing U.S. authorities to release three letters sent by Saddam Hussein in detention to his family.

Nada Doumani, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, told The Associated Press yesterday the letters were given to U.S. authorities for inspection, as the Geneva Conventions provide. She said that "there has been a lot of delay" in releasing the letters, but she did not have the dates they were written.

Death blamed on heart attack

BAGHDAD, Iraq — U.S. officials investigating the death of an Iraqi inmate at Abu Ghraib prison this month have determined the detainee died of a heart attack, the military said yesterday.

The findings were based on an autopsy carried out after the man died June 10, the U.S. command said in a statement.

"At the time of his death, the 52-year-old male was being treated for heart-related problems," the statement said. "He had been held as a security internee since October for offering a reward to anybody who would kill a U.S. soldier."

Sloppy management of oil money alleged

UNITED NATIONS — The U.S.-led occupation is sloppily managing billions of dollars of Iraqi oil money and moving at a glacial pace to guard against corruption, an international watchdog agency charged yesterday. The Coalition Provisional Authority has yet to award contracts for equipment to meter Iraq's oil production, leaving a door open to smuggling, despite earlier saying it had awarded the contracts, the International Advisory and Monitoring Board said.

The U.S.-led administration also has delayed completing audits of the State Oil Marketing Organization, the state-owned firm that markets Iraqi oil, the U.N.-mandated agency said.

The U.N. Security Council set up the monitoring board in May 2003 to ensure the U.S.-led civil administration was not engaged in dubious practices in marketing Iraqi oil and was using the money for reconstruction.

Also ...

Italy's Cabinet yesterday approved a decree extending the mission of Italian soldiers in Iraq until the end of the year. Italy supported the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and later sent some 2,700 troops there.

Eight British military servicemen detained Monday along with three vessels by Iran will be freed soon, an Iranian Foreign Ministry source said today.

The Dutch Parliament yesterday overwhelmingly backed government plans to keep some 1,300 troops in Iraq until March 2005 as part of a multinational force, Dutch media reported.

Hungary will keep its troops in Iraq despite violence there targeting allies of the United States, Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy said yesterday, after a meeting in the Oval Office with President Bush.