Naseer Al-Nahr, Arab News Staff

BAGHDAD, 23 December 2003 — A roadside bomb killed two US soldiers here yesterday, hours after troops captured a former general in Saddam Hussein’s once-feared security services on charges of recruiting ex-soldiers to attack Americans.

The blast that ripped through a military convoy in the late morning also killed an Iraqi interpreter and wounded two other soldiers, the US military said in a statement.

The military deaths, the first in five days, brought to 202 the number of US soldiers killed by hostile fire since the United States declared major combat over in Iraq on May 1.

Working on what Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers said on Sunday was information gleaned when Saddam was captured on Dec. 13, troops have rounded up suspected insurgents in swoops on mainly Sunni towns north and west of Baghdad.

The Sunni areas have been the scene of the fiercest armed resistance to US occupation and a bedrock of Saddam loyalists.

US officers said the captured man, Maj. Gen. Mumtaz Al-Taji of the former intelligence department, was detained overnight in searches in the central town of Baqubah, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad.

He is suspected of recruiting former Iraqi soldiers and directing attacks against US occupation forces in the area.

Witnesses and residents reported similar raids in a number of towns in the area. Dozens of suspected Saddam loyalists, supporters of his Baath Party and Islamists are believed to have been arrested.

In a piece of good news to the beleaguered country, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council said yesterday that Russia has offered to write off 65 percent of Iraq’s $8 billion debt after Baghdad signaled that Moscow was in a good position to revive prewar oil contracts.

Governing Council member Samir Sumaidy said Russia made the proposal at a meeting between President Vladimir Putin and the head of the Governing Council Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim at the Kremlin.

“Putin has made an offer of Russia exempting Iraq from 65 percent of their debts. That is a decision made by Russia to be confirmed within the Paris Club,” Sumaidy told reporters after attending a meeting at the Kremlin.

Poland’s President Aleksander Kwasniewski told Polish troops during a surprised visit to Iraq yesterday their mission would bring peace to the country and make the world safer.

The trip was kept secret until Kwasniewski’s arrival in Camp Babylon, the headquarters of the Polish-led multinational force in the southcentral zone — one of four “stabilization zones” in postwar Iraq.

“I am convinced that we will bring about stabilization in Iraq; that the Iraqi government will be formed to take over the responsibility for the country,” Kwasniewski told the troops, in an address broadcast by private news television channel TVN-24.

The US military said eight soldiers were wounded during raids in the mainly Sunni Al-Anbar province which netted 40 “enemy personnel”. It did not say how the soldiers were hurt but added that one was evacuated to a combat support hospital.