November 12, 2003	Wednesday	Ramazan 16, 1424

CAIRO, Nov 11: Washington hopes to get Iraq’s Sunnis involved in the country’s new political and economic system as part of a plan to reduce attacks on US troops, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said in remarks published on Tuesday.

“A part of (the plan) is military force against those who are conducting these activities,” Mr Armitage said in an interview with an Egyptian television network that was published on the US embassy website on Tuesday.

“But that in itself would not be sufficient,” he added.

“We also need to find a way to bring in to an appropriate level, in the political process and the economic life in the new Iraq, those primarily Sunnis who are now disenfranchised,” he said.

“So the elements of the plan are both military on the one hand, sort of the sharp edge of the spear, and diplomatic, political, and economic on the other,” he said.

Most of the attacks against US forces have been occurring in the so-called Sunni triangle, which includes Baghdad and the areas north and west of the capital, such as Tikrit, the home town of former president Saddam Hussein, himself a Sunni.

Mr Armitage said there were three different kinds of resistance when asked to explain who was attacking US forces.

“The first is what we refer to as former (Saddam) regime loyalists,” he said.

“The second would be some foreign terrorist elements and Ansar al Islam,” the group Washington has linked to the Al Qaeda network that has been operating in the northern Kurdish regions, he said.

“And third would actually be some, and this is a smaller element, criminal elements who find that the activities of the coalition forces are interfering with their ability to conduct criminal activities,” he said.

Mr Armitage said he agreed with his boss, Secretary of State Colin Powell, that there is no evidence to suggest Saddam Hussein was orchestrating attacks on US troops.

He added that “Saddam Hussein is spending most of his time running from one hiding-hole to another”.—AFP