Iraqi minister says Iran is source of 'terrorism'

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Iraq's Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan accused Iran of orchestrating terrorist attacks in Iraq, saying its neighbor country was the "most dangerous enemy of Iraq".

"Iran is the most dangerous enemy of Iraq and all Arabs," Shaalan said. "The source of terrorism in Iraq is Iran."

The two countries fought a brutal eight-year war from 1980 under then leader Saddam Hussein, and lingering tensions remain, with many Iraqis still convinced that Iran is trying to undermine their country.

"Terrorism is Iraq is orchestrated by Iranian intelligence, Syrian intelligence and Saddam loyalists. The financing and training of the terrorists comes from Syria and Iran," he said.

His comments came as campaigning opened for Iraq's landmark national elections, and a day after Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said Saddam Hussein's top henchmen would go to trial next week for crimes against humanity.

Wednesday also marks the end of voter registration across the violence-wracked country, and the deadline for parties to present their lists of candidates for the January 30 vote.

Allawi is widely expected to be among the candidates running from his Iraqi National Accord party, and his announcement of trials for former regime members has been seen as a bid to give him a political boost ahead of the polls.

"The trial will begin next week of the symbols of the former regime who will appear in succession to ensure that justice is done in Iraq," Allawi said Tuesday.

Saddam, seized by US forces along with 11 of his top Baathist lieutenants, is being held at Camp Cropper, a vast US base near Baghdad's international airport, Human Rights Minister Bakhtiar Amin confirmed.

All 12 appeared in court in July for the first time since their capture to hear preliminary charges of crimes against humanity leveled against them.

In Amman, Saddam's defense team immediately disputed the planned trials, which Amin said would start by end-March rather than next week.

"The interrogation (of detainees) in the absence of their lawyers is invalid and the accusations made against them are also invalid according to legal rules," said the spokesman for the Jordan-based team, Ziad Khassawhen.

A justice ministry spokesman said Wednesday he only heard of the upcoming trials from media reports.

"I had no idea this was going to happen," he said.

Government officials had said Saddam, who could face the death penalty, would go on trial after the January 30 elections, billed as the first free Iraqi vote in half a century but threatened by the ongoing violence in Iraq.

Saddam's capture on December 13, 2003, has done nothing to stop the deadly insurgency in which thousands of people have been killed.

Four Iraqi policemen were killed and another 13 are missing after an attack on their convoy in a notoriously dangerous area south of Baghdad on Tuesday, police said Wednesday.

Twenty policemen were also injured in the attack.

A 10-vehicle police convoy with 85 recruits on board was travelling from the southern city of Basra to take over from a police unit in Baghdad when it came under attack close to an area known as the "triangle of death," a police source said.

"When the convoy arrived in Basmaya, about 15 kilometres (nine miles) south of Baghdad, it came under attack by unknown gunmen using an assortment of weapons," the source said.

Also Tuesday as a deadly car bomb exploded near the Green Zone in Baghdad, visiting US military chief General Richard Myers insisted the elections would not be derailed by attacks, despite acknowledging a probable spike in violence.

"We said all along that violence will increase as we move towards the elections... They (insurgents) will stop at nothing to try to keep Iraq from becoming a free country," Myers said.

But Allawi said unrest was only likely to increase after the polls.

"Terrorist strikes and attacks will not stop after the elections. On the contrary they will increase because this is a fight between good and evil," he told parliament.

Allawi, however, announced that the insurgency had been dealt a blow by the killing of an aide to Iraq's most wanted man, Jordanian Islamist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, blamed for a string of deadly attacks and the killing of hostages.

"I have been told that an individual by the name of Hassan Ibrahim Farhan Zyda from Zarqawi's group has been killed and that two of his deputies have been arrested," he said.

In the latest violence, at least eight Iraqis were killed in two suicide car bomb attacks in as many days near the fortress-like Green Zone, which houses the interim Iraqi government and foreign embassies.

A national guard was killed and 12 other people wounded in Tuesday's bombing, which occurred at an Iraqi national guard recruiting center outside a Green Zone entrance where seven people were killed the previous day.

Another US marine was killed Tuesday, the military said, bringing to 12 the number of US troops to die in fighting since Friday in Baghdad and the restive Al-Anbar province, which hosts the former rebel stronghold of Fallujah.

Myers said "there was still work to be done, still pockets of people that have to be dealt with" in Fallujah.

But Allawi insisted that last month's massive US-led assault against the Sunni Muslim stronghold had "cleared the town of terrorists" and that the authorities were working to allow residents to return within days