U.S. Plan for Fallujah Hits Snag

Although violence here has ebbed significantly since the Marines withdrew from some of their positions and gave the general responsibility for security, insurgent strikes on U.S. forces continued unabated in other parts of the country. Eleven U.S. service members were killed in four separate attacks between Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon, the military reported. Six of them died in a mortar strike in western Iraq that also wounded 30 service personnel, a military spokesman said.

Thomas Hamill, an American contractor held hostage since April 9, was recovered Sunday by U.S. troops after apparently escaping from his captors, military officials said. Hamill, a truck driver for a Halliburton Co. subsidiary, approached U.S. soldiers operating near a pipeline in the northern city of Tikrit, where he apparently fled from a building.

In Fallujah, Jassim Mohammed Saleh, the former Iraqi major general entrusted by the Marines with forming a new security force in the violence-wracked city, said in an interview with Reuters news service that "there are no foreign fighters in Fallujah." He also insisted that onetime members of former President Saddam Hussein's Baath Party should be allowed to return to the government or the army, saying they are "capable of administering the country in times of crisis."

Saleh's comments contradict U.S. intelligence reports -- and his orders from Marine commanders. A senior U.S. military official said there are about 200 foreign fighters inside the city as of Friday. The top Marine commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, said at a news conference on Saturday that Saleh and his deputies "understand our view that these people must be killed or captured."

At the time, Conway said Saleh and his lieutenants "have not flinched."

Although a Marine spokesman said Saleh's force had expanded to 600 soldiers on Sunday -- double the size it was a day earlier -- it remained unclear exactly where they were. Several men who claimed to be participants told reporters who traveled into the city that they still were waiting for their uniforms and their orders. Until then, they said they planned to patrol their neighborhoods in civilian clothes.

As questions mounted about Saleh's performance and his background, Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the former general would not be given command of the new force, named the Fallujah Brigade. "He will not be their leader," Myers said on ABC's "This Week" program.

Saleh, who is originally from Fallujah but had been living in Baghdad, had served as the commanding general of the Iraqi army's 38th Infantry Division before the U.S. administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, dissolved the entire Iraqi army almost a year ago. Earlier in his military career, Saleh served in the Republican Guard, an elite branch of the army used at times to suppress internal dissent by Saddam Hussein. It was not immediately clear what rank Saleh held in the Republican Guard.

A senior U.S. military official in Baghdad said intelligence officers still had not finished a background check on Saleh but there were reports that "he doesn't play well with others." The senior official suggested that Saleh would eventually become a commander of one of the battalions within the Fallujah brigade and that former Maj. Gen. Latif Mahal Hamoud Sabawi would become commander of the brigade. Conway said Sabawi is "very well respected by the Iraqi general officers" and "demonstrates a level of leadership that tells me he could become that brigade commander."

But Myers, who appeared on three Sunday morning news shows, cautioned that neither of the generals had been approved by the Pentagon. "They have not been vetted. They have not been placed in command. They are not in charge," Myers said on "Fox News Sunday."

Myers said the leadership of the Fallujah Brigade also would have to be approved by the U.S. occupation authority in Baghdad and Iraq's interim defense ministry.

The decision to form the Fallujah Brigade and to put Saleh in charge, was made from "the bottom-up," the senior official said. "Now we have to have a policy to catch up with what is happening on the ground."

A Marine spokesman did not have any immediate reaction to Myers' comments and it was not clear whether Saleh would comply with a U.S. order to relinquish command of the new force.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60444-2004May2.html