Britain's special representative in Iraq warned on Thursday US-led forces faced rough months ahead due to guerrilla attacks, and US officials said thousands of fresh troops would be ordered to prepare for duty.

"I believe we are in for a rough winter," Sir Jeremy Greenstock said in an interview with the Times newspaper in London, adding British troops could still be in Iraq in 2005.

"(The guerrillas) want to try and close Baghdad down and make it look as though Iraq can't work with coalition forces," said Greenstock, British Prime Minister Tony Blair's envoy to Iraq.

Guerrillas launched a series of attacks on US troops in Iraq on Wednesday, killing three Iraqis and wounding at least 12 people -- including five American soldiers.

Washington, which has lost at least 138 US soldiers to hostile fire since President Bush declared major combat over on May 1, blames the attacks of supporters of Saddam Hussein and foreign fighters, including al Qaeda members.

Greenstock criticized three of Iraq's neighbors -- Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia -- for not doing more to stem the flow of guerrillas into Iraq.

The three countries were cooperating in "dribs and drabs," he said.

Fresh US troops

In Washington, defense officials said the Pentagon would issue call-up orders immediately for thousands of additional troops, including reservists, to prepare to serve in Iraq early next year.

Marine Corps General Peter Pace, vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the troops would be part of a 2004 Iraq rotation plan, and that the 132,000 American troops now there could decrease to just over 100,000 in May.

Washington has lost more troops since May 1 than it did during the war to topple Saddam.

Pace told the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee the Bush administration had put off much of the planning for the aftermath of the war -- launched on March 20 -- out of concern such planning would bring on the conflict.

"We did not want to have planning for the post war make the war inevitable. We did not want to do anything that would prejudge or somehow preordain that there was definitely going to be a war," he said.

The United States rejected Russian and UN proposals that international inspectors return to Iraq to look for weapons of mass destruction, none of which have so far been found.

Bush and Blair cited Saddam's possession of such weapons as the reason for going to war to oust him.

Opposition Democrats and other critics in the United States have suggested Bush, seeking re-election next year, may have exaggerated the threat from weapons of mass destruction to build support for war.

Accusations fly in Washington

On Wednesday, Republicans accused Democrats of trying to use a US congressional investigation into pre-war intelligence on Iraq to wage a political attack against Bush.

The accusation followed a Democratic staff memo suggesting Democrats seek an independent inquiry when cooperation with the majority Republicans was exhausted, preferably next year when Republicans will also be seeking to retain control of Congress.

Republicans want to keep the probe focused on the accuracy of assessments made by US intelligence agencies. Democrats want to broaden the inquiry to include how the Republican White House used the information.

US national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said Bush would call for democracy across the Middle East on Thursday and cite a failure of US policy spanning 60 years in support of governments not devoted to political freedom.

Bush will make the speech at a time when he is under fire for the mounting US casualties in Iraq and as anti-Americanism spreads among many Muslims who feel Islam is under attack.

Rice told reporters most of Bush's speech would be about "the new opportunity for a forward strategy for freedom in the Middle East."

Bush has often talked about his hopes that democracy in Iraq would foster a democratic movement in the Middle East.

"After 60 years of trying to find stability through regimes that were not devoted to political liberty for their people, what we found is that we did not buy security and stability," Rice said.

Instead there was "frustration and pent-up emotions in a region that has fallen behind in terms of prosperity and in fact continues to produce ideologies of hatred," she said.

(China Daily November 6, 2003)