India: India has said it will not send peacekeeping troops to Iraq without a UN mandate, rejecting a request from Washington for help in the war-torn nation.
"Were there to be an explicit UN mandate for the purpose, the government of India could consider the deployment of our troops in Iraq," Foreign Minister Mr Yashwant Sinha said after a two-hour meeting of the cabinet's security committee.
Yesterday's decision came after Prime Minister Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee's Hindu nationalist coalition government failed to build domestic consensus in support of sending troops to Iraq, an old friend of India. India had opposed the US-led war against Iraq.
Political parties, including some in the ruling coalition, had said any Indian troops sent to Iraq would become part of an "occupation force" if they were not covered by a UN mandate.
India has the world's fourth-largest military, including an army of more than one million, which has taken part in UN peacekeeping operations in countries such as Angola, Cambodia and Somalia.
The US had asked India for a division - 15,000-20,000 soldiers - to command a sector of northern Iraq around the city of Mosul.
The announcement came as the US lost its 32nd soldier in post-war combat in Iraq, underscoring the hardships a US-backed governing council faced in quashing Iraqi resentment.
The US military is braced for a surge in attacks this week to coincide with anniversaries linked to Saddam, his Baath Party and Iraqi nationalism.
In the latest incident, assailants targeted a convoy of military vehicles in the central al-Mansour area of Baghdad, a military spokesman said.
Witnesses said one vehicle was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade and another by machine-gun fire. Blood stains on an armoured Humvee vehicle and the crumpled cab of an army truck bore testament to the attack.
The new 25-member governing council of Iraqi leaders, which the US hopes will reduce resentment to its occupation, held its first session on Sunday and met again yesterday to decide on its leadership structure. The council can nominate ministers, review laws and approve budgets but Iraq's US-led administration remains the ultimate authority. To be followed later by a new constitution and free elections, the body is seen as a first step towards democracy.
A group which said it was an Iraqi branch of the al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for attacks on US soldiers in an audio tape broadcast on Sunday. However its rhetoric was more reminiscent of former president Saddam Hussein's Baath Party than Osama bin Laden's group. - (Reuters)