Iraq

Bush says 'we're not leaving' Iraq

The president is undeterred from the U.S. goal of returning stability to Iraq, despite a string of bombings - including another Tuesday killing at least four people.

President Bush said Tuesday that he sees no need for additional U.S. troops in Iraq despite a series of bomb and rocket attacks in Iraq over the past three days, but he vowed that the United States "will stay the course" until stability is restored.

The president said the recent attacks were probably the work of remnants of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party as well as "foreign terrorists" who were trying to intimidate U.S. forces into pulling out.

"Iraq is dangerous, and it's dangerous because terrorists want us to leave," Bush said during a 48-minute Rose Garden news conference, his most extensive question-and-answer session with the media since July. "And we're not leaving."

Tuesday saw more violence in Iraq. A pickup truck stuffed with explosives blew up near a police station in Fallujah, on the Euphrates River about 35 miles west of Baghdad, killing at least four people and injuring seven others in the fifth deadly bomb attack in two days.

It was unclear whether the bombing was a suicide attack. People on the scene offered conflicting reports about whether the bomber was killed in the blast or walked away from the Toyota before it exploded.

The blast came as U.S. officials said one of Baghdad's deputy mayors had been assassinated in a drive-by shooting and a 1st Armored Division soldier died in a rocket-propelled grenade attack in the capital.

Deputy Mayor Faris Abdul Arzzaq Assam was gunned down outside his home Sunday after returning from Madrid, where he attended a conference of donors who pledged funds to rebuild Iraq.

Iraq dominated Bush's news conference. Bush, who returned late last week from a 26,000-mile, six-nation trip across Asia, appeared subdued and sometimes short-tempered with the drumbeat of questions about the U.S.-led occupation. He declined a request to promise that a year from now he will have reduced the number of U.S. troops in Iraq, calling it "a trick question, so I won't answer it."

Bush also indicated that he was not considering sending in additional U.S. troops to help restore order, but said he was not the one making the decision.

"That's a decision by John Abizaid," Bush said, referring to the senior U.S. commander in the Persian Gulf region.

The president defended his request to Congress for $20-billion in grants to help rebuild Iraq, saying that he expected the House and Senate to approve it and that a "free and peaceful" Iraq is essential to stability in the Middle East.

On Capitol Hill, action on an $87-billion emergency spending bill that includes the $20-billion in reconstruction for Iraq was postponed after Democratic senators on the joint House-Senate conference committee complained that they had not been informed about agreements reached by Republican leaders of the committee. Negotiations were to resume today after all members could be informed of the status of the bill.

In his news conference, the president said that $13-billion pledged over five years to Iraq reconstruction from nations at a recent conference of donors in Madrid, most of it in loans, "may be just only a beginning."

But he voiced some apprehension that the suicide bombings over the last 48 hours in Iraq, which left more than 38 dead and some 200 injured, might stop other kinds of international assistance.

One day after a suicide bomber killed a dozen people outside its Baghdad headquarters, the International Committee of the Red Cross said it had not decided whether to pull out of Iraq or reduce its staff in Baghdad.

Secretary of State Colin Powell pleaded with the Red Cross to stay and assist a country reeling from two decades of war and international economic sanctions.

Of the 56 aid groups that belong to an umbrella organization, more than half have decided to press on despite the security risks. They are betting, one organization member said, that the bombers are unlikely to strike small operations that discreetly provide aid to the Iraqi people.

"As far as we can tell, there are not people plotting in dark little corners to hit the small NGOs," or nongovernmental organizations, said David Pankratz, an executive board member of the umbrella organization, the NGO Coordinating Committee for Iraq. "We don't feel we're targeted yet."

- Information from the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune was used in this report.

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