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| Iraqi Governing Council meets as weapons row continues
BAGHDAD, July 21 (AFP) - Another US soldier and an Iraqi translator were killed Monday in an attack in northern Baghdad, as the transitory Governing Council met to discuss the appointment of ministers to key portfolios. Meanwhile in London, the British government and the BBC faced growing furore over their part in the death of a British arms expert at the heart of accusations that Downing Street inflated the case for war in Iraq. Adaptive intelligence for a serious advantage: business, investment and technology- BizVantage! The latest killings in Iraq in a morning attack in the Al-Sulaykh area of the city also did nothing to ease pressure on US President George W. Bush, under fire from opposition politicians over pre-war intelligence. "One armoured division soldier was killed along with an Iraqi interpreter," US military spokesman Specialist Brian Sharkey told AFP. The attacks follow the deaths of two US soldiers on Sunday in an ambush in northern Iraq by rocket-propelled grenade and small-arms fire west of Mosul. An Iraqi driver was also killed and an international aid worker injured when their UN convoy was attacked by gunmen north of Baghdad, UN and US military officials said. US troops stationed at Ibn Firnas airport, north of Baghdad, also came under a five-hour mortar attack overnight from a group of unidentified assailants, witnesses said Monday. Hours later the US-appointed council met behind closed doors at its headquarters in Baghdad to discuss the appointment of key ministers to Iraqi portfolios, spokesman Mohaned Abdul Jabbar said. The council is eager to fend off fierce criticism by both Shiite and Sunni Muslim groups which claim it is illegitimate and are calling for the formation of a directly elected body. The top US civil administrator for Iraq, Paul Bremer, said Sunday that elections could be held to form a sovereign Iraqi government within a year. The first step towards elections is for the Governing Council to appoint a committee to draw up a draft constitution. In London, events in Iraq have taken a back seat to the huge political damage suffered by British Prime Minister Tony Blair as a result of the apparent suicide of an expert witness caught up in the row over whether the government distorted evidence on Iraq, a poll revealed Monday. Blair, grappling with the biggest crisis of his career as he continues a trip to East Asia, has fended off calls for his resignation from within his own party. A poll for the right-wing Daily Telegraph newspaper found that almost as many voters -- 39 percent -- thought he should quit as thought he should stay on -- 41 percent. Apart from the blame levelled against the government for the death of David Kelly, the BBC has also come under fire over allegations of inaccurate reporting. Confirmation from the BBC that Kelly was the source of its report claiming the government had "sexed up" evidence to justify attacking Iraq, has taken some of the heat off Blair. The body of Kelly, a 59-year-old Ministry of Defence consultant on biological weapons, was found on Friday. His family said he had been under "intolerable pressure" after being grilled over suspicions that he was the anonymous source of the BBC news report in May -- hotly denied by Downing Street. Although Kelly denied being the main source in the BBC story, and was cleared by the parliamentary committee which questioned him, the public broadcaster has stood by the report by its correspondent Andrew Gilligan. The left-wing Daily Mirror newspaper said the BBC's defence of Gilligan's story and insistence that Kelly was its source meant the corporation was effectively accusing the dead weapons expert of lying. And in Washington opposition Democrats kept up their attacks on Bush, demanding he take "some responsibility" for dubious claims made in the lead-up to war on Iraq and questioning his honesty. "He should take some responsibility. I don't care how he takes it," said Senator Jay Rockefeller, vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, referring to the subsequently discredited claim Bush made in a key speech in January that Iraq had tried to purchase nuclear materials in Africa. "I have to believe that the president knew or should have known that this information had been classified as unreliable by the CIA," Senator Bob Graham, a presidential hopeful, told CBS. The key question is "whether administration officials made a conscious and a very troubling decision to create a false impression about the gravity and imminence of the threat that Iraq posed to America," said senior Senator Carl Levin. The Washington Post on Sunday reported that Bush had twice, in September 2002, used another assertion not approved by the CIA -- that Saddam Hussein could launch a biological or chemical attack in 45 minutes. Both this claim and the one about Iraq's purchase of uranium from Niger originally appeared in a British dossier on Iraqi weapons. The first has been discredited in London but Blair is standing by the second. bur-jm/mb Iraq-worldwrap
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