Joint US-Iraqi sweeps target insurgency
(AP)
Updated: 2005-12-01 08:31

In Baghdad, presidential Lt. Gen. Wafiq al-Samaraei told the U.S.-run Alhurra television that as Iraqi forces improve, the Americans would be able to draw down their troop levels.

"If America is defeated in Iraq, it will be defeated in the whole world," he said. "It is not a question of supporting America but of the interests and well-being of Iraq."

On Wednesday, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., joined Iraqi officials in a ceremony placing Iraqi troops in control of a major border crossing point into Syria. U.S. and Iraqi troops cleared al-Qaida-led insurgents from the area this month.

Casey said the ceremony "commemorates the restoration of Iraqi control" of the area "from the northern border with Turkey down to Jordan."

Also Wednesday, a group of influential Sunni clerics called for the release of five Westerners taken hostage last week, saying they should be granted their freedom as a humanitarian gesture.

The Association of Muslim Scholars, believed to have contacts with some Sunni insurgent groups, has helped mediate the release of other Western captives in Iraq.

The five include four aid workers from the group Christian Peacemaker Teams — Tom Fox, 54, of Clearbrook, Va.; Norman Kember, 74, of London; and James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, both of Canada — and German archaeologist Susanne Osthoff, 43.

On Tuesday, Al-Jazeera broadcast video of the four men held by a previously unknown group calling itself the Swords of Righteousness Brigade. The group claimed they were spies working under the cover of Christian peace activists.

The Sunni association said releasing Osthoff would recognize Germany's "positive" stand toward Iraq. Germany strongly opposed the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

In Berlin, Germany's new chancellor, Angela Merkel, vowed that her government will "not let ourselves be blackmailed" by militants who kidnapped Osthoff and her driver.

Kidnappers have threatened to kill Osthoff and her driver, who were kidnapped Friday, unless Germany halts all contacts with the Iraqi government. German TV station ARD showed images of what appeared to be Osthoff and her driver blindfolded on the floor beside armed and masked militants.

Six Iranian pilgrims were seized Tuesday near a Shiite religious shrine north of Baghdad, police said. Iranian state TV said Tuesday that all six were released but it contradicted that report on Wednesday, saying that only two of the six Iranians were freed. Both of the freed hostages were women, while four men remain captive.

Elsewhere, gunmen opened fire on a minibus early Wednesday in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, killing nine construction workers and wounding two, police said.