Naseer Al-Nahr, Arab News Staff

BAGHDAD, 13 January 2004 — Eight Iraqis and a US soldier were killed in fresh violence in Iraq, the US military said yesterday, as Britain and the United States brushed aside charges President George W. Bush had always been intent on getting rid of Saddam Hussein.

On the domestic political front, Iraq’s US boss Paul Bremer urged the US-appointed interim leadership to press ahead with plans for a transfer of power by the end of June despite a call for elections by the top Shiite leader.

Bremer also held talks with Foreign Minister Ana Palacio of war ally Spain about Iraq’s reconstruction, while her French counterpart Dominique de Villepin — a leading opponent of the invasion — kicked off a Gulf tour with calls for an international conference on the country’s future.

The US Army said seven Iraqis believed to have been stealing fuel from a pipeline were shot dead in a gunfight with US troops on Sunday near the town of Samarra, north of Baghdad.

The death toll among US troops also rose, when a soldier was blown up and two more wounded by a roadside bomb in central Baghdad, bringing the overall number of deaths to almost 500 since US-led forces invaded Iraq last March.

An Iraqi bystander was fatally shot and another six wounded after being caught in cross-fire between US forces and insurgents in the rebel town of Ramadi, west of Baghdad, an Iraqi police officer said.

And more than 200 people gathered to protest in the southern city of Ammara after a weekend of unrest in which six Iraqis died when British troops and Iraqi police opened fire on protesters over high unemployment.

A US weapons team arrived in southern Iraq yesterday to begin probing a cache of buried mortar shells leaking a substance that early tests indicate could be a harmful chemical agent.

With less than six months to go before sovereignty is returned to Iraqis, Bremer urged the Governing Council to press on with handover plans as set out in a November agreement despite calls for early elections by the top Shiite authority, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani.

“We have said it is important to implement the Nov. 15 agreement which was agreed by the Governing Council and has been submitted to the United Nations as the best way forward for the return of sovereignty to the Iraqi people,” Bremer told reporters.

Council spokesman Hamid Al-Kifai said Iraq’s war-shattered infrastructure was in no shape to hold elections and there was no time to draw up a reliable register of electors. “It is not possible to conduct a proper census ... with the country functioning as it is at the moment. We need to improve a lot of other functions in the country before we can do this,” Kifai said.

Meanwhile, Palacio inspected Spain’s 1,300-strong contingent in Iraq and held talks with Bremer and Iraqi officials including interim Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari on the role of the United Nations in postwar reconstruction.