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'Core fighters'
ELFIraqi Intelligence chief Gen Muhammad Abdullah Shahwani told AFP news agency "the resistance is bigger than the US military in Iraq". He estimated that 40,000 of the 200,000 were core fighters, while the remainder were volunteers and part-timers. Meanwhile, Iraqi Defence Minister Hazem al-Shaalan has said Iraq's elections could be delayed if the Sunni Muslim community in Iraq agreed to take part, the AFP news agency reported. "We have asked our Arab brothers, particularly in Egypt and Gulf countries, to get Iraqi Sunnis to participate in the elections and if such participation requires a delay to the election date, they could be delayed," he told AFP. Iraq's main Sunni political grouping, the Iraqi Islamic Party, has already called for a boycott of the election, and Sunni militant groups have threatened to attack voters. Significant participation in the election by Iraq's Sunni minority is widely seen as essential to the credibility of the vote. On Sunday, at least 23 Iraqi soldiers were killed when a car bomb struck the bus they were travelling in Balad, a town in central Iraq's restive Sunni Muslim heartland. Posted by: tipper 2005-01-03 |
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