WASHINGTON, Aug 18: The United States pulled its punch in Iraq again on Tuesday as Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced US forces arrayed in Najaf were "unlikely" to storm the town's holy places to deal the militia a fatal blow.

The announcement, made in a lengthy interview with PBS's "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" programme, followed days of growing protests by Shias throughout the Middle East against a feared attack on the Imam Ali Mosque.

"It's unlikely that the US forces would be the ones that would deal with the holy places," Mr Rumsfeld said. "That's just not something that we are likely to do." He said he believed soldiers from Iraq's fledgling national army "would be the ones that would deal with that because it's such a significant thing to the religion".

The development appeared to mirror the events of last April in Fallujah, where US marines halted a full-fledged assault on the city in order to avoid fomenting more anti-American attacks across the country.

It was not immediately clear if the Iraqi army and a multitude of other security forces created in the wake of the occupation would be capable of independently dealing with Sadr's Mehdi Army that draws its recruits from impoverished young Shias.

Mr Rumsfeld insisted the forces available to the interim Iraqi government now counted about 200,000 men, of which 110,000 "probably are well-trained and well equipped". But Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Lugar, warned on Sunday that if the Iraqi government decided to take on Moqtada Sadr on its own, it would be "a close contest".

"It's touch-and-go whether they are trained enough - that is, the Iraqi police - to take on Sadr now in Najaf," Mr Lugar told Fox News. A recent US congressional investigation has found Iraqi security forces are "unready" to fight guerillas because their units remain inadequately trained, under equipped and suffer from a high desertion rate.

As many as 82 per cent of personnel deserted Iraqi Civil Defence Corps units deployed around Fallujah last April, when anti-American guerillas launched a spate of deadly strikes against occupation forces. -AFP

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