US toll mounts in Iraq

Another American soldier died in Iraq yesterday after a series of attacks at the weekend, as UN security experts assessed whether the country is safe enough for its staff to return to help transfer power to Iraqis.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is expected to announce today or tomorrow that he will send a team to Iraq to study the feasibility of holding early elections. Two experts are already in Iraq to assess security.

Since the invasion, 513 US soldiers have died in Iraq, at least 355 in combat. The latest died yesterday from wounds sustained in a rocket-propelled grenade attack on his armoured vehicle near Baiji, north of Baghdad, late on Saturday.

On Saturday three bomb attacks in the "Sunni triangle" north and west of Baghdad killed five US soldiers and four Iraqis.

Yesterday a US helicopter crashed in the northern city of Mosul after hitting a power line, Iraqi police and US soldiers at the scene said. It was not immediately known whether the helicopter had come under fire or if there were casualties.

The top US commander in Iraq said bomb attacks on foreign troops helping US forces occupy Iraq suggested the involvement of the al Qaeda Islamist network.

"Those are typically tactics al Qaeda has been using. That causes us to look with a little bit more focus, trying to establish what their operating capability is in the country," Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez told Reuters.

"We believe that those links may be growing." As the attacks underscored Iraq's fragile security, the United States said it envisaged a significant role for the United Nations in a planned handover of power to Iraqis.

Shi'ite leaders boosted pressure on Washington to hold elections before a June 30 deadline to hand power to Iraqis.

Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, who represents the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) on the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, said having less-than-perfect elections was better than ignoring popular demand for a vote.

"It can be done, if we want it and make the effort. I believe they can be run," Mr Hakim told Reuters in an interview. Washington, which had previously ruled out any major UN political role in Iraq, now wants the world body involved.

"What we are interested in is having (the United Nations) be an adviser, help oversee this process of setting up the transitional government for the Iraqis (and) be an interlocutor for the (Shi'ites), for example," said a senior US official in Switzerland on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum.