WASHINGTON, Sept 26: US Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Sunday that the insurgency in Iraq "is getting worse" and that "we will have to increase our efforts to defeat it."

"They are determined to disrupt the election," Powell told ABC television of the insurgents. "Because it's getting worse, we will have to increase our efforts to defeat it," he said.

In another interview at the CNN, he acknowledged that organizing elections throughout Iraq in January could be difficult because of the unrest that has rocked the country.

"There will be polling stations that are shot at. There will be insurgents who will still be out there who will try to keep people from voting." Still, he said: "I think what we have to keep shooting for, and what is achievable, is to give everybody the opportunity to vote in the upcoming election, to make the election fully credible, and something that will stand the test of the international community's examination."

He told the Fox News Sunday television programme that the goal of the United States and the Iraqi government was to hold elections throughout Iraq. "It is premature to judge that we cannot have full, free elections throughout the country," he said.

"I think it has to be throughout the country. It doesn't mean that everybody's got to vote on that particular day," he said. "We don't need a 100 per cent turnout of every single citizen."

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a congressional committee on Thursday that unrest might prevent elections from being held in parts of Iraq. "Let's say you tried to have an election and you could have it in three-quarters or four-fifths of the country, but some places you couldn't, because the violence was too great," he said. -AFP