Iraqi Leader

WASHINGTON - President Bush joined Iraq's interim prime minister yesterday in vowing that national elections would be held in Iraq no later than January despite a recent surge in violence, and said he would consider an increase in U.S. troop strength if commanders asked for it. Calling Iraqi elections the "most important step in our plan," Bush reaffirmed the timetable even though Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi acknowledged in a speech to a joint session...

Even as Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi attempts to assert his nation's newly restored sovereignty, he travels through his own turbulent land and around the Middle East with a protection detail supplied by the U.S. military. Allawi's accompaniment by gun-toting Americans - in plainclothes but with U.S. flags on their vests - has been noted with dismay by some critics in Iraq and the Arab world as a visible symbol of his dependence on the United States, experts on the region say. But with a price placed on Allawi's head in a recent posting on a jihadist Web site, and other government officials already killed by insurgents, Allawi has evidently calculated that the increased security provided by the Americans is worth any possible damage to his credibility.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The United States has confronted many surprises in its efforts to forge a democratic government in Iraq, but few have been more unexpected than the transformation of Ahmad Chalabi from patrician exile to deft populist. But Chalabi is a survivor. Snubbed by the Bush administration neoconservatives who once embraced him and excluded from the interim government, he is building a grass-roots coalition of Shiite Muslim groups who lack a voice in the new Iraq. At the same time, he's reaching out to Iraq's most prominent anti-American Shiite cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, whose followers come mainly from Baghdad's urban underclass and the impoverished south of the country.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Struggling against an increasingly sophisticated kidnapping campaign, interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi made a stark plea to an anxious international community yesterday: Don't abandon Iraq to militants. "It is time for us to close ranks to fight terrorism," Allawi told reporters in Damascus on the Syrian leg of his get-acquainted swing through Arab capitals. "There is no way to budge to terrorists and give them what they want." Pressure to disengage from Iraq - or stay away in the first place - is mounting.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's interim prime minister sanctioned yesterday the reopening of a radical cleric's newspaper, which had been closed by American officials in March because they said it was inciting attacks on U.S.-led forces and their Iraqi allies. The decision by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi approving the paper's plans to start up again appeared to be a reminder of Iraq's independence from previous U.S. policy as well as an effort to reach out to Shiite Muslims who support the paper's controversial backer, Muqtada al-Sadr.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Prime Minister Iyad Allawi signed into law yesterday broad martial powers that allow him to impose curfews anywhere in the country, ban groups he considers seditious and order the detentions of people suspected of being security risks. Putting a law in place that permits him to establish emergency powers is one of the first official actions Allawi has taken against a tenacious insurgency and lays the groundwork for a forceful response to unrest. His hard-line approach also emerged in his office's announcement yesterday that Iraqi forces provided the U.S. military with intelligence for an airstrike on what was described as a rebel safe house in Fallujah, in which at least 10 people were killed Monday evening.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A day after coordinated attacks left more than 100 people dead, ministers from Iraq's interim government declared that they were prepared to confront the insurgency, while the U.S. military battled gunmen in Fallujah and launched an airstrike against a suspected militant safehouse. "The time has come for a showdown," Hazem Shaalan, Iraq's interim defense minister, told reporters. "We will go and attack the enemy before it attacks us. We have plans in that regard and will carry out raid operations."

He has been out of sight since his capture by U.S. forces six months ago, but Saddam Hussein has emerged as one of the most visible symbols of the delicate and complex task of transferring power by month's end to the new Iraqi government. International and military law require that the former Iraqi leader - now held by Americans as a prisoner of war, in an undisclosed location - must either be charged with a crime or freed when the U.S. occupation ends June 30. But the Iraqi tribunal that is expected to bring a war crimes case against Hussein still is far from operational, and President Bush said this week that he would transfer custody of the former dictator from U.S. to Iraqi control only when it was clear Hussein would be securely imprisoned and stand trial.

SAVANNAH, Ga. - President Bush said yesterday that he backs a French proposal to let Iraq's new government decide how the NATO military alliance should expand its security role in Iraq - if at all. His comments seemed to underscore how Bush, in recent weeks and at a summit near here this week, has accepted that there is scant support for a larger peacekeeping force in Iraq under the control of the United States and its NATO allies. "I don't expect more troops from NATO to be offered up - that's an unrealistic expectation," Bush said at a news conference here as he finished playing host to the G8 summit of industrialized nations.

SAVANNAH, Ga. - Eager to hand President Bush a diplomatic victory during an international summit near here, U.S. officials seemed on the verge yesterday of rounding up unanimous Security Council support for a United Nations resolution giving international legitimacy to a U.S.-led force to secure Iraq in collaboration with Iraqi leaders. After a trip to Europe, Bush arrived Sunday night on Sea Island, Ga., site of the three-day summit. Aides traveling with him sounded buoyed by the prospect that Bush would be meeting beginning today with foreign leaders - including Iraq's new president - just as the United Nations is putting an international stamp of approval on his vision for Iraq.