IRAQ - Dec 17 - Sunnis 'Risk Ethnic Cleansing'.

Vice-president Tariq al-Hashimi, the country's most senior politician from the Sunni Arab minority, says that more US troops are needed in Baghdad to stop the "systematic cleansing" of the Sunni community by Shi'ite militias. Some 3,000 Iraqis were fleeing the country daily and Iraqi forces were insufficient, incompetent and corrupted, he said. There is intense speculation in Washington that Pres Bush will propose "surging" some 30,000 more US troops into Iraq in a last-ditch effort to secure the city and Anbar province. However, in an interview broadcast by CNN, Hashimi said there was "no consensus" between the US and Iraq on how to tackle security. He also said the Bush administration had told him last week that US troops were "insufficient to handle the security as required in Baghdad". Colin Powell, former secretary of state, agreed. "We have tried this surge of troops over the summer. I am not persuaded that another surge of troops into Baghdad for the purposes of suppressing this communitarian violence, this civil war, will work".