MIDDLE EAST Administrators announce creation of new Iraqi army

Resistance groups have started giving themselves names and are stepping up attacks.
RAMADI, Iraq (AP) -- U.S.-led civil administrators announced the creation of a new Iraqi army, hoping to contain anger among soldiers jobless since Saddam Hussein's military was disbanded and to curb a rash of anti-U.S. attacks.
The insurgents' latest attacks included rocket-propelled grenades fired at U.S. Army patrols in the western towns of Khaldiyah and Habaniyah, and an ambush in Ramadi that involved a 12-year-old girl, the military said today. No one was injured.
In Baghdad, visiting U.S. senators cautioned that Americans should expect their forces to remain in Iraq for as long as five years.
"I don't think the American people fully appreciate just how long we are going to be committed here and what the overall cost will be," said Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., after meeting the head of the civil administration, L. Paul Bremer.
Iraqi oil
On Sunday, Iraq made its first foray back into the international oil market since the war, with the shipment of oil that has been stored for months at the Turkish port of Ceyhan.
But sabotage and looting of the 600-mile pipeline from the northern Iraqi town of Kirkuk to Ceyhan delayed the flow of freshly pumped oil -- the key to reconstructing an economy devastated by sanctions and war. Pumping was supposed to have begun Sunday.
Sabotage was blamed for a massive fire in a gas pipeline about 94 miles west of Baghdad on Saturday, and the al-Jazeera satellite television station reported another pipeline explosion near the Syrian border Sunday.
In another key step toward reconstruction, U.S. officials announced early plans to bring back Iraq's army, once one of the Arab world's largest and most experienced.
Recruitment for the new force is to begin next week. An initial division of 12,000 men will be ready within a year and will grow to 40,000 within three years, said Walter Slocombe, a senior adviser for security and defense for the administration.
That would still be a fraction of Saddam's military force of 400,000.
Slocombe also promised support payments of $50 to $150 per month to up to 250,000 ex-soldiers.
The moved is aimed at stemming anger among former Iraqi army soldiers who lost their livelihood when the U.S.-led administration disbanded the army May 23. Ex-servicemen have since staged several protests, and U.S. troops killed two last Wednesday when one such demonstration turned violent.
"I am pleased to announce this first step in creating an armed force that will be professional, nonpolitical, militarily effective and truly representative of the country," Slocombe said.
No payments would be made to the top four ranks of members of the now-banned Baath party. Anyone receiving funds must renounce Baathism, the political ideology that guided Iraq for more than three decades, even before Saddam came to power in the 1970s.
Attacks
In Ramadi, a U.S. patrol came under small-arms fire on Sunday, and the patrol saw a young girl running away with an AK-47 assault rifle, said Capt. Burris Wollsieffer, of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. The bullets landed harmlessly in the dirt around the vehicles, he told The Associated Press today.
The troops followed the girl home and found the rifle wrapped in a red dress and propped in a corner. Three men in the household were taken for interrogation, but the troops allowed the girl to remain at home when they learned her age. They also seized $1,500 in cash and $1,000 in Iraqi dinars, the officer said.
"It's just weird. It's totally unconventional," said Wollsieffer, when asked about the rising number of ambushes on his forces in Ramadi. "It's guerrilla warfare."
Evidence that Iraq's loose and murky resistance movement may be coalescing can be seen in the far bolder anti-American propaganda campaigns that the militants have unleashed over the past week. Another hint is that some of the groups have begun giving themselves names.
A faction calling itself the Iraqi National Front of Fedayeen is vowing to send the dead bodies of American troops home "one after another.
" until they pulled out of Iraq.
"You must know that the Iraqis have become disillusioned with your great lie about the liberation of Iraq," said a fighter, his face obscured by a checkered headscarf. Three comrades sitting near him toted rocket-propelled grenades.
Last week, another group calling itself the Iraqi Resistance Brigades alleged on Qatar's Al Jazeera channel that they were responsible for the growing string of anti-U.S. ambushes in Iraq.
Senior U.S. officers dismiss the threat of Iraq's armed resistance as negligible. Intelligence officials said that much of the violence is the work of cells made up of fewer than 10 hard-core members of Saddam's old Baath Party. Still, the U.S. troops on the receiving end of the hit-and-run attacks aren't so dismissive of the danger.
"These people know what they are doing, and they are getting better at it," said 1st Sgt. Joseph Waldren, a soldier with the 4th Infantry Division in Baiji, a town in Saddam's tribal heartland.
Two senior army officers met today with a prominent Islamic cleric, Abdullah al-Annay, who preaches in two Ramadi mosques, to ask him to tone down his anti-American sermons, Wollsieffer said.
"If he keeps this kind of speech going, they are just going to attack us more and more," he said.
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