Iraq

Bush grieves, says violence will not force U.S. to flee

WASHINGTON - A day after the Iraq war's deadliest single incident, President Bush on Sunday mourned the Americans killed but said neither escalating violence, a changing political scene nor new threats will hasten the U.S. exit from Iraq.

The president dismissed as "the same old stuff" an audiotape in which ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein purportedly told Iraqis to step up their resistance to the U.S.-led occupation.

"We're going to stay tough and deal with the terrorists," he said upon returning to the White House from a weekend at Camp David.

Appearing before reporters at the White House, Bush said he spent part of Sunday praying for military personnel in Iraq, and lamented the deaths in the helicopter crash Saturday that killed 17 U.S. soldiers.

"It was a tough week, but we made progress toward a sovereign and free Iraq," he said. "It's a sad day when you lose life."

DEMOCRATS ATTACK: Democrats on Capitol Hill and running for Bush's job piled on with criticism of the administration for failing to make Iraq's reconstruction more of an international collaboration.

"I think it's fair to say that the situation continues to worsen," Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., said on Fox News Sunday. "I think they're putting too much emphasis on exit and not enough emphasis on success."

Other Democrats said a transformation of Iraq into a stable democracy is in doubt unless the Bush administration makes room for other nations to have a much more influential and direct role.

"This thing will never be successful so long as it has an American face on it," Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., who is seeking his party's presidential nomination, said on CNN's Late Edition.

The Iraqi scientist who headed Saddam Hussein's long-range missile program has fled to neighboring Iran, a country identified as a state sponsor of terrorism with a successful missile program and nuclear ambitions, the Associated Press reported, quoting unnamed U.S. officers it said are involved in the weapons hunt.

U.N. inspectors spoke with Dr. Modher Sadeq-Saba al-Tamimi in Baghdad a week before the U.S.-led war began on March 20. The AP quoted two unnamed U.S. weapons investigators as saying they believe he crossed the Iraq-Iran border on foot at least two months after U.S. forces took Baghdad.

PARIS - France's foreign minister says the U.S. plan to cede power in Iraq by June moves too slowly, and he urged occupation forces to have a provisional government in place this year.

In an interview to be published today in the daily Le Croix, Dominique de Villepin outlined what he sees as a plausible means of quickly moving forward. The interview was made available Sunday night.

He suggested that a body of Iraqis could quickly be put together to run their own country temporarily and satisfy concerns over the current occupation force.

WASHINGTON - A new study by an independent military and intelligence expert who toured Iraq recently found no evidence that Saddam Hussein tried to transfer weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.

Anthony Cordesman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, met with top U.S. officials in Iraq, including David Kay, the CIA representative leading the search for chemical, biological and other unconventional weapons.

The AP reported that two unnamed members of the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency involved in questioning scientists in custody said the Iraqis continue to deny the existence of illicit weapons programs in Iraq. Dozens of Iraqi scientists have been questioned and fewer than 30 remain in custody. All of them, including senior members of Hussein's regime, have been subjected to lie-detector tests, which have come up clean on weapons questioning, the DIA officers said.

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