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Four Americans slain in ambush

BAGHDAD - Ambushes claimed the lives of four members of the U.S. military and five Iraqi contractors Monday, but U.S. officials said violence had not disrupted plans to hand over limited authority to an interim Iraqi government next week.

A patrol of four U.S. service members in Ramadi, a hotbed of Sunni Muslim resistance to the U.S. occupation, failed to report to commanders at a designated time Monday morning. A quick-reaction force sent to the city, 60 miles west of Baghdad, found the bodies of the Americans, who had been shot repeatedly in the head.

A videotape of the scene, broadcast on Arabic-language satellite channels, showed the victims lying in what appeared to be the courtyard of a compound without standard-issue body armor, helmets or rifles. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, declined to offer details pending notification of the Americans' families.

About 30 miles south of Mosul in northern Iraq, a roadside bomb exploded near a convoy carrying Iraqi contractors. Five Iraqis, who military officials said worked for a foreign company, were killed and two were wounded.

The deaths came as U.S. occupation officials emphasized that the gradual transfer of political authority to an interim Iraqi government, under way for weeks, had not been deterred by the months-long wave of violence. U.S. officials have blamed the near-daily car bombings, kidnappings and ambushes on a diffuse insurgency intent on destabilizing the country before an interim administration officially assumes political authority on June 30.

U.S. military officials said Monday that, given the inability of fledgling Iraqi security forces to subdue the insurgency, there would be little difference in the scope of U.S.-led military operations after the transfer date.

WASHINGTON - The Senate refused Monday to change a Pentagon policy that bans media coverage of America's war dead as their remains arrive in flag-draped caskets.

"It's an outrage," said Sen. Frank Lautenberg, whose amendment would have restored coverage of homecoming ceremonies at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

The New Jersey Democrat said the Pentagon directive that requires strict censorship, "issued just as the Iraq war began . . . prevents the American people from seeing the truth about what's happening."

Sen. John Warner, Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, argued the ban should continue to "to preserve the most important priority, and that's the privacy of the families."

Florida's senators, Democrats Bob Graham and Bill Nelson, voted in favor of Lautenberg's amendment. The vote against was 54-39.

SEOUL, South Korea - As South Korean television broadcast desperate pleas from a Korean translator taken hostage in Iraq, government officials said Monday that they would go ahead with plans to send 3,000 troops to Iraq.

Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah seized 33-year-old Kim Sun Il hours after South Korea's ruling Uri Party voted Thursday to deploy in the forces in Iraq.

In an Arabic-language tape first broadcast on Sunday, the kidnappers gave South Korea 24 hours to meet their demand of abandoning the troop deployment, or "we will send to you the head of this Korean."

President Roh Moo Hyun issued a statement deploring the abduction and instructing his government to do all it can to win the release of the hostage.

Government security officials convened an emergency meeting on Monday.

"There is no change in the government's spirit and position that it will send troops to Iraq to help establish peace and rebuild Iraq," Deputy Foreign Minister Choi Young Jin said afterward.

BAGHDAD - Iraq has resumed oil exports of about 1-million barrels a day through its southern Basra terminal after completing repairs to pipelines sabotaged by insurgents, an official from a U.S.-based shipping company said Monday.

Mohammed Hadi, head of operations for Norton Lilly International's Baghdad operations, said pumping resumed Sunday morning.

"Crude oil is being loaded onto one tanker at the rate of 42,000 barrels an hour, or about 1,008,000 barrels a day," Hadi said. "Two other tankers are waiting for loading, and another two are in the anchorage area."

Iraq rushed to repair a second, larger pipeline also damaged in the attacks. Iraqi oil officials said repairs were unlikely to be completed before June 25.

BAGHDAD - Iraq's interim president played down talk of martial law Monday after the nation's prime minister suggested such a move was under consideration in some areas after the June 30 transfer of sovereignty.

President Ghazi al-Yawer said during a meeting with a U.S. congressional delegation that comments Sunday at a press conference by interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi were in response to a "hypothetical question asked to a member of the government."

Al-Yawer said the government would be within its rights to impose martial law but it was not inevitable.

"But it's an option that we are not ruling out," he said. "If we need to do so in order to preserve our security we will do so in a way that will not pose problems to the Iraqi public."