BAGHDAD - The U.S. military announced thousands of key soldiers would be staying in Iraq indefinitely even as the number of American combat deaths neared the 1991 Gulf War total.

Faced with mounting security threats in Iraq and a political storm at home over the war, President Bush defended the quality of CIA intelligence used to justify the decision to disarm former leader Saddam Hussein by force.

An injured Iraqi man looks at a damaged car following a Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG) attack in Baghdad. A US soldier was killed in the attack -- the 32nd to be killed by hostile fire in Iraq, since May 1.(AFP/Marwan Naamani)

But two former U.N. weapons inspectors kept up the pressure, with one accusing Bush of going to war based on "a lie."

In an abrupt about-face, the U.S. military said Monday thousands of troops from the 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized) would stay in Iraq until further notice instead of returning by September in line with an announcement only last week.

The division has already had a protracted stay in Iraq since it was the first American unit to enter Baghdad during the war.

A U.S. soldier was killed in a Baghdad ambush Monday, bringing the death toll of U.S. troops killed in hostile action since U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq on March 20 to 146, one less than the 1991 war over Kuwait.

Thirty-two U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Bush declared major combat over on May 1.

The growing death toll has intensified pressure on the Bush administration to defend itself against charges that it misled the public by using dubious intelligence to justify the war.

Democrats and even some Republicans in the United States are raising questions about Bush's statement in his State of the Union speech last winter that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa in its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.

But in Washington Monday, Bush defended the quality of CIA intelligence as he tried to calm the growing storm.

"I think the intelligence I get is darn good intelligence. And the speeches I have given were backed by good intelligence," he said.

An Israeli diplomatic source, speaking during a visit to London by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, leapt to Bush's defense, saying Israel and Britain had reached the conclusion Iraq had weapons of mass destruction separately from Washington.

"These three countries independently reached the same understanding of the potential dangers....It is hard to believe all those forces reached the same conclusion (without it being true)," the source said.

Former U.N. arms inspectors Scott Ritter and Hans Blix, meanwhile, continued to dispute Bush's version of events.

"The entire case the Bush administration made against Iraq is a lie," Ritter told reporters at U.N. headquarters, while Blix told Denmark's Politiken daily Washington, London and their allies had ignored his advice on Iraq's banned weapons.

NEW THREATS

Underlining the security threats in postwar Iraq, two previously unknown Iraqi groups Tuesday warned countries against sending troops to the occupied country.

"We strongly reject and will resist with weapons any military intervention under the umbrella of the United Nations, the Security Council, NATO, or Islamic and Arab countries," a group calling itself the Iraq Liberation Army said in a statement shown on the Dubai-based al-Arabiya television.

Al Jazeera television also showed a statement from another Iraqi group -- the "Iraqi National Islamic Resistance: 1920 Revolution Brigades," in reference to Iraq's history of fighting British colonial rule -- warning against further foreign intervention.

The statement said anti-U.S. attacks had forced Washington to seek help from multinational forces and speed up the creation of a Governing Council, which was launched Sunday.

Troops from Spain, Poland, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, the Baltic states and possibly from the Philippines, Thailand, Mongolia and Fiji are likely to be part of the peacekeeping forces in Iraq.

A group claiming to be an Iraqi branch of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network claimed responsibility for attacks on U.S. soldiers in an audio tape broadcast on al-Arabiya Sunday but its rhetoric sounded more typical of Saddam supporters than Islamic militants.

The U.S. military is braced for a surge in attacks this week to coincide with anniversaries linked to Saddam, his Baath Party and Iraqi nationalism.

The U.S. and Turkish military Tuesday expressed regret at a bitter row between the NATO allies over the arrest of Turkish commandos by U.S. troops in Iraq and pledged to work closer together in future.

A statement following a joint investigation avoided any explicit recrimination over the incident that tested relations already soured by Turkey's refusal in March to allow U.S. troops to use Turkish soil for an attack on Iraq.

U.S. troops arrested 11 commandos in northern Iraq on July 4. Diplomats said the Turks were suspected of planning an assassination attempt on a Kurdish governor -- a charge Ankara denied. The men were released two days later.

Copyright 2003 Reuters Limited

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