IRAQ: Iraq's new US-backed Governing Council has agreed to set up a war crimes tribunal which would try Saddam Hussein and his top associates, a spokesman for a key party in the council said yesterday.
Meanwhile, the US administrator, Mr Paul Bremer, said that Washington and London would pull their forces out of Iraq once the coalition's mission was accomplished. "We have no desire to stay a day longer than necessary," he told reporters in Baghdad.
As the number of American combat deaths neared the 1991 Gulf War total, the US military announced a new crackdown to eliminate armed Iraqi resistance and said that its forces had killed five Iraqi fighters.
Washington blames attacks on its forces on supporters of Saddam, who disappeared during the US-led invasion.
Thirty-four people on a US list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis are either dead or in the hands of US and British forces.
"The United States has not declared until now what it's going to do with the 55. The Governing Council will take it upon itself to try them and to punish them according to law," said Mr Entifadh Qanbar, spokesman for the Iraqi National Congress, which is led by Mr Ahmed Chalabi, a member of the Governing Council.
He added: "That includes Saddam Hussein, the biggest criminal." He did not say whether Saddam would be tried in absentia.
Mr Qanbar said that the council had formed a commission to lay down laws to enable it to put suspected war criminals on trial, including for mass killings, executions and chemical attacks against Kurds in the 1980s.
He said that the 25-member council, which was formed on Sunday, had also decided to create a commission to look into ways to "uproot" Saddam's once all-powerful Ba'ath party from Iraqi society. The US-led administration has banned the party and launched a "de-Ba'athification process", sacking all senior party members from government jobs.
US forces are also trying to thwart growing armed resistance and the military said that troops had conducted 53 raids across Iraq, detaining 316 people and confiscating arms, ammunition and explosives.
US forces killed five Iraqis and captured another after they were ambushed while driving out of an ammunition depot, the commander of the unit involved said. There were no US casualties in the ambush, which took place between the cities of Ramadi and Habbaniyah, about 60 miles west of Baghdad, in particularly hostile territory for US troops.
In an abrupt about-turn, the US military said on Monday that thousands of troops from its 3rd Infantry Division would stay in Iraq until further notice instead of returning home by September in line with an announcement made only last week.
Yesterday, the US Defence Department said that it expected the division to go home sometime this autumn, but it was unable to provide a specific timetable. However, the US Central Command said in a statement that it remained committed to the division's return home by September.
Thirty-two US soldiers have been killed in Iraq since President George W. Bush declared major combat over on May 1st.