ARAB-US RELATIONS - Sept. 18 - Rise In Iraqi Hostility.

New intelligence assessments are warning that the most formidable foe in Iraq in the months ahead may be the resentment of ordinary Iraqis increasingly hostile to US military occupation. (This picture, shared with US military commanders in Iraq, is very different from the public view currently being presented by senior Bush administration officials, including Defence Secretary Rumsfeld, who again on Sept. 16 listed only "dead-enders, foreign terrorists and criminal gangs" as opponents of US occupation. Pentagon officials are concerned about retribution for straying from the official line. They say it is a mistake for the US to discount the role of ordinary Iraqis who have little in common with the groups Rumsfeld cited, but whose anger over the US presence appears to be kindling some sympathy for those killing US forces. Some of the concerns have been prompted by recent polling in Iraq by the State Department's intelligence branch. The findings, which remain classified, include significant levels of hostility to the US presence. Indications of that hostility extended well beyond the Sunni heartland of Iraq, which has been the main setting for attacks on US forces, to include the Shiite-dominated south, whose citizens have been more supportive of the American military presence but have also protested loudly about raids and other US actions. As reasons for Iraqi hostility, defence officials cite not just disaffection over lack of electricity and other basic services in the months since the war, but cultural factors that magnify anger about the foreign presence. A Pentagon official is quoted as saying: "To a lot of Iraqis, we're no longer the guys who threw out Saddam, but the ones who are busting down doors and barging in on their wives and daughters". But Ms Rice took issue with the assertion of Iraqi dissatisfaction with the presence of US troops, saying the US was making headway in places like Baghdad and Tikrit, where much of the resistance is centred". There is, even in that part of the country, progress", she said in an interview. People finished their university exams; the Iraqi symphony orchestra performed and took a tour up to the north. Kids went to school". Some officials say the intelligence assessments underscored that opposition to US forces in Iraq was most likely to get worse before it got better. Others caution that it is risky to make such forecasts, and some cite indicators of recent improvements in the security situation. But while Bush and other senior officials have described the conflict in Iraq primarily as a battleground in the war on terrorism, recent intelligence assessments tend to cast it mainly as an insurgency in which the key variable will be the role played by ordinary Iraqis. One official says: "As time goes on, if the infrastructure doesn't improve, and American troops are still out there front and centre, it's hard to see the public mood getting any better". But bounties being offered in Iraq for attacks on Americans has increased to as much as $5,000 - an indication that those opposed to the US-led occupation are having a harder time enlisting support. The number of intelligence tips and other useful information provided to US forces in Iraq is generally on the increase, which is a sign of increasing co-operation by large segments of the Iraqi public. To help blunt the anger directed at the US-led force, Rumsfeld said on Sept. 16 the US hoped to accelerate the hand-over of security responsibilities to the Iraqi police, border guards, civil defence forces and soldiers trained by the US. Nearly 60,000 Iraqis are now in uniform, he told reporters at a Pentagon briefing, and the administration hopes to increase that number to about 70,000 soon, to include more than 10,000 former Iraqi soldiers who are being trained to join in the new civil defence force. But the Sept. 15 assassination of a high-ranking Iraqi police official highlighted the difficulty involved in the effort, including the danger that Iraqis working with US forces will be targeted as collaborators. The role played by foreign extremists, including Wahhabis and members of the Shiite Lebanese group Hizbollah, remains a source of increasing concern. The largest recent indicator of foreign involvement came last week, when US forces detained some 80 foreign fighters, including Saudis, Jordanians and Sudanese, who were rounded up along with money and weapons in two separate raids conducted by the 101st Air Assault Division near the Saudi border. The degree to which such fighters, along with Saddam loyalists, were finding support within the Iraqi population is making it difficult for US forces to track them down and root them out).