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Powell Calls For 'Patience'
Amid Rising US Iraq Death Toll

6-28-3

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US Secretary of State Colin Powell called on Americans to be patient in the face of mounting US casualties in Iraq, and amid growing concern over armed resistance against the US-led occupation force.

"I would say to the American people that we always recognized this would be a dangerous operation," Powell said in an interview on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" program on Friday.

"And even though major combat action is over... we always expected there would be this residual problem of Fedayeen, of the Baath Party members, of old Saddam cronies and others who are coming in to make mischief, and they would have to be dealt with," Powell said.

"I hope the American people will demonstrate the patience and the understanding of the situation," he added.

The comments came after a difficult week when US and British forces suffered almost daily fatalities.

A US soldier died and four others were wounded late Friday in an attack on their convoy in Baghdad, a US military spokesman said. Earlier in the day, a US soldier was killed in an ambush, and another was shot in the face.

US forces are also searching for two soldiers believed abducted along with their vehicle.

The latest death brings to 61 the number of US troops who have died since President George W. Bush declared the war in Iraq effectively over on May 1, including 40 deaths unrelated to combat and 21 as a result of hostile fire.

Six British military police were killed and eight other British soldiers were wounded in separate attacks in southern Iraq Tuesday in southern Iraq, the first known fatal incidents involving British troops since the end of the war.

Powell said he hoped the mounting casualty toll would not increase pressure to withdraw US troops from Iraq prematurely.

"I hope it does not. I hope it increases the pressure on us to get the security situation under control more quickly," he said.

"We're not going to be pushed out," he insisted. "We have the ability to get on top of the security situation."

To stabilize Iraq and get rid of the remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime, a large number of US troops must remain in Iraq "for months," Powell said.

"I can't be more precise than that because we don't know," he said.

A group of US policy experts left Washington on Friday to carry out a review of postwar Iraq amid growing fears over the toll on US forces and delays in the process leading to Iraqi self-rule.

The five-member group, led by John Hamre, a former deputy defense secretary in President Bill Clinton's administration and now president of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, will report to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the chief US administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, a Pentagon spokesman said.

"This team was not dispatched to go rescue Bremer because Bremer does not need rescuing. He is open to having assistance, and people are going to give him assistance if it is desired," said Larry Di Rita, acting assistant secretary of defense for public affairs.

Members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who returned from a tour of Iraq Wednesday said Bush should prepare the American people for a long engagement by US troops and the US government in Iraq.

Republican Senator Richard Lugar said there is still a "war" in Iraq while Democratic Senator Joe Biden said the the US government had grossly underestimated the time and financial resources needed to get postwar Iraq back on its feet.

"There's a gigantic gap between expectations and reality in terms of what the administration, in my view, anticipated," Biden said.

Charles Pena, director of defence studies at the Cato Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, said members of Congress were increasingly frustrated at the lack of information from the Defense Department about the length and cost of the US stay in Iraq.

Pena commented that there was a "cruel irony" about the US role in Iraq. "The longer the US stays, however well intentioned and noble the motive, the more Iraqis will come to resent a foreign occupier."

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