US troops seize Palestinian diplomat in Baghdad

US troops detained a Palestinian diplomat in Baghdad yesterday in a move sure to anger Arab opinion, and a new council in the volatile northern oil city of Kirkuk elected a Kurdish mayor.

Soldiers handcuffed chargé d'affaires Najah Abdul Rahman and four other men outside what ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's government recognised as the Palestine embassy.

The troops said the men had illegal weapons, but it was not clear what had prompted them to disarm a Palestinian diplomat in a city awash with arms seven weeks after Saddam's overthrow.

As a military truck took him away, Abdul Rahman denied he had been carrying a gun. "They searched the embassy... They are targeting the embassy," he shouted to reporters.

Many foreign institutions and rich Iraqis have hired armed guards since law and order collapsed after Saddam's fall on April 9. US officials trying to restore security have set a June 14 deadline for Iraqis to surrender automatic and heavy guns.

No immediate comment was available from US or Palestinian officials on Abdul Rahman's detention.

In the north, the election of a Kurdish mayor for Kirkuk, which many Iraqi Kurds regard as their capital, drew concern from local Arab and Turkmen leaders worried about Kurdish domination of the city's interim administration.

US forces hailed the vote as a step towards democracy and the new mayor, Abdurahman Mustafa, appealed for unity among the city's uneasy mix of Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen and Assyrians.

"We have a shared history and together we can overcome the problems caused by troublemakers who don't represent any ethnic group," Mustafa, a lawyer, told Reuters.

More than 10 people were killed in clashes between Kurds and Arabs this month in a resurgence of ethnic violence which first flared when Kurdish fighters and US forces took over Kirkuk from fleeing Iraqi troops.

The ethnic tension is mainly a legacy of Saddam's "Arabisation" policy under which thousands of Kurds and Turkmen were expelled from Kirkuk and replaced by Arabs.

A Kurdish assistant mayor is to oversee "resettlement and compensation", likely to be the thorniest issue facing the 30-member council created under US auspices.

"For the first time in over 30 years you have the freedom to decide the future of Kirkuk," Major General Raymond Odierno, US commander in the northeast, told the council.

The US and Britain say they have liberated Iraq from Saddam's brutal rule, though they have failed to find the weapons of mass destruction they cited to justify the war.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair set off yesterday for Kuwait on a tour also due to include a brief trip to Iraq, the first visit to the country by a Western leader since the conflict.

Mr Blair, who gambled his political career on the Iraq war, was believed to be planning a trip to the southern city of Basra where British troops are stationed. The visit will take place less than a month after US President George W. Bush declared major combat over on May 1. It also follows an Iraqi ambush that killed two US soldiers and wounded nine in a city near Baghdad on Tuesday. Mr Blair will also travel to Poland, due to lead a 7,500-strong multinational peacekeeping force for Iraq.

The US has asked Poland, a staunch backer of the Iraq war, to take control of a zone between Baghdad and Basra.

"The deployment will take place in July... and it will be fully operational in August," said Polish Defence Minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski, adding that Poland would contribute more than 2,000 troops and a similar number could come from Ukraine.