IRAQ - The Immediate US Objective.

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Sept. 10 vowed that the US would not allow extremist insurgents to maintain sway over Falluja or other rebel strongholds in Iraq, where Taliban-like regimes have emerged under the guidance of extremely fanatic Muslim religious leaders. Responding to criticism that the US occupation force and the Iraqi government had allowed extremists to set up no-go areas, Rumsfeld said:

"We know what will take place in Falluja (in the Sunni Triangle) and that is that it will be restored under the control of the Iraqi government eventually. What we don't know is whether it will be done peacefully or by force. But one way or another, it will happen... The Iraqi government and certainly the coalition military understand fully that you cannot over a sustained period of time allow portions of that country to be under the control of people who are using it to kill Iraqis or to kill coalition forces and to try and kill and damage the new Iraqi government".

Wahhabi extremists and Saddam Hussein loyalists have become entrenched in Falluja since a US Marine attack was called off four months ago on fears of an escalation in tensions between Iraqis and coalition forces. On Sept. 10 US forces resumed a fourth day of bombing of Falluja following a suicide car bomb attack earlier in the week that killed seven US soldiers outside the town.

The Bush administration has recently admitted that insurgents have created strongholds in the Sunni Triangle in central Iraq, in particular in towns such as Falluja. Attacks on US troops have remained stubbornly high and more than 1,000 US soldiers have now been killed in Iraq, the great majority of them since President George W. Bush declared the end of major combat on May 1, 2003. National security is a central issue in the US presidential campaign, with the polls due on Nov. 2.

Rumsfeld emphasised the importance of remaining vigilant in the war on terror. Vice-President Dick Cheney has suggested that voting for John Kerry, the Democratic candidate, could result in another attack on the US. Kerry responded that the Bush administration's handling of Iraq had made the US less safe.

Rumsfeld criticised an editorial in The Financial Times of Sept. 10 which suggested it was time to consider a structured withdrawal of US forces from Iraq to reduce instability. He said: "The extremists are determined to destroy states. They are determined to destroy free systems. They are determined to take their violence and spread it across this globe and we can't let them to it. And the Financial Times is wrong". He compared the war on terrorism to the cold war, saying people would have to be resolute. Before the recent Republican convention in New York, Bush said the war on terror could not be won. But White House officials later said his remarks were intended to emphasise the long nature of the struggle.

Rumsfeld dismissed criticism of military investigations into prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. He rejected claims that the panel headed by former defence secretary James Schlesinger to review detention policies in Iraq and Afghanistan was not independent.

US forces on Sept. 9 entered Samarra' to reassert Iraqi government authority there. Samarra', like Falluja, is one of the Iraqi cities under greatest rebel control in the Sunni Triangle west and north of Baghdad.