Rumsfeld Urges Iraqis to Work with Coalition

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Rumsfeld Urges Iraqis to Work with Coalition

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Iraqis Saturday to further cooperate with the US-led coalition forces as he wrapped up an previously unannounced visit to the war-ravaged country.

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US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Iraqis Saturday to further cooperate with the US-led coalition forces as he wrapped up an previously unannounced visit to the war-ravaged country.

One of the reasons of his visit, according to himself, was to let the 130,000 US forces "understand how important what they are doing is to the Iraqi people, to the region, to the United States,... to the world."

Rumsfeld said the second reason he was in Iraq is that he needed to get a first-hand look at the things going on in Iraq since he last visited here four months ago.

After visiting the mass graves of Iraqis executed under the rule of Saddam, Rumsfeld Saturday boasted that the environment in Iraq was "much better than five months ago," but soon conceded that "the situation still needs to be improved."

"The problem that General Sanchez and the 50,000 Iraqis who are engaged in security and coalition forces are facing ...is a mixture" of remnants of Baathist regime, criminals released by Saddam and foreign terrorists coming over the borders, he said at a press conference before he went on to Afghanistan.

He rejected the accusation that the US-led coalition forces should shoulder the security duties as the international law stipulates, but said the country's fate lies in the hands of Iraqis.

"It's the Iraqi people who will provide the security to this country... instead of pointing fingers that seems to me at the security forces of the coalition..."

"You can't defend every place at every time against every conceivable attack," complained Rumsfeld, calling on Iraqis to provide more information to the coalition forces.

Although he claimed that the Iraqis should not wait for foreign countries to keep peace, Rumsfeld described the idea of rallying abroader UN-mandated multinational force under US command "a good thing" to help reconstruct Iraq.

The secretary declined to give any concrete result on the search of alleged weapons of mass destruction, the pretext of the US-launched war to topple the Saddam regime.

Rumsfeld flew in Baghdad on Thursday. After a lengthy meeting with his top aides in Iraq, Paul Bremer, US administrator in Iraq, and Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of American ground forces, Rumsfeld said the situation here was getting better.

He argued that it was the detailed analysis of the situation that made things seem "unfortunate."

Four car bombings have rocked Iraq in less than one month, claiming 122 lives and wounding hundreds of others, while anti-American assaults have killed 67 US soldiers across the country since US President George W. Bush declared major combat over on May 1.

The US defense chief Friday toured Saddam's hometown of Tikrit and was offered a bird's eye view at the site where Saddam's two sons, Uday and Qusay, were killed in Mosul.

He tried to boost the morale of the US soldiers stationed in central-northern Iraq, where the troops were constantly targeted by unknown fighters as they continued the hunt for Saddam and his henchmen.

Rumsfeld Saturday flew to the ruins of Babylon to express his thanks to the Polish-led multinational troops, who had just taken over the responsibility of a vast land in southern Iraq from the US Marines.

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