Officials began the second-stage counting from national elections to produce a government to confront the insurgency, while Iraq's president said Tuesday it would be "complete nonsense" to ask foreign troops to leave the country now, although some could depart by year's end.  

Despite scattered clashes in rebel areas across the country, Iraq reopened its borders yesterday and commercial flights took off from Baghdad International Airport as authorities eased security restrictions imposed to protect last weekend's elections.

In Baghdad, about 200 election workers yesterday began the second -- and possibly final -- stage of the count.

They reviewed tally sheets prepared by workers who counted ballots starting Sunday night at the 5,200 polling centers across the country and began crunching the numbers into 80 computer terminals. Officials said no figures were expected to be released yesterday.

The Sunday ballot, which occurred without catastrophic rebel attacks, raised hopes that a new Iraqi government would be able to assume greater responsibility for security, hastening the day when the 170,000 US and other foreign troops can go home.

During a news conference, President Ghazi al-Yawer was asked whether the presence of foreign troops might be fueling the Sunni Arab revolt by encouraging rebel attacks.

"It is only complete nonsense to ask the troops to leave in this chaos and this vacuum of power," al-Yawer, a Sunni Arab, said.

He said foreign troops should leave only after Iraq's security forces are built up, the country's security situation has improved and some pockets of terrorists are eliminated.

"By the end of this year, we could see the number of foreign troops decreasing," al-Yawer said.

Later yesterday, Defence Minister Hazem Shaalan said Iraq would only ask US and other forces to leave when the country's own troops were capable of taking on insurgents.

"We do not want to have foreign troops in our country, but at the same time we believe that these forces should stay for some time until we are able to control the borders and establish a new modern army and we have efficient intelligence," Shaalan said. "At that time ... we will ask them to leave."

Violence continues

In the latest violence, clashes broke out early yesterday in the eastern Mosul neighborhood of Nablus between insurgents and Iraqi National Guards, officials said. One person was killed and another injured. A roadside bomb killed four Iraqi National Guardsmen in the northwest of the city, Lieutenant Khalil Rashid said.

US troops clashed with insurgents yesterday near the main market in Qaim near the Syrian border, sending crowds fleeing, witnesses said. There was no report of casualties.

Two policemen were killed when a bomb they were trying to defuse exploded on a street in the Kurdish-run city of Irbil.

On Monday, US guards opened fire on prisoners during a riot at the main detention facility for security detainees, killing four of them, the US command said. Six other prisoners were injured.

The riot broke out shortly after noon at the Camp Bucca Theater Internment Facility near Umm Qasr in southern Iraq after a routine search for contraband in one of the camp's 10 compounds, the command said.

"The riot quickly spread to three additional compounds, with detainees throwing rocks and fashioning weapons from materials inside their living areas," it said. "Guards attempted to calm the increasingly volatile situation using verbal warnings and, when that failed, by use of non-lethal force."

The statement said the riot "resulted from both the use of force to control the situation and from violence by other detainees within the camp during the riot."

As violence continues, Iraq takes some security measures. The Yarubiya crossing point that leads to the northern Iraqi city of Mosul remained closed.

An eight-kilometer line of trucks loaded with goods was waiting on the Syrian side to cross, an official said.

However, Royal Jordanian Airlines and Iraqi Airways resumed flights to and from Baghdad. Cars, trucks and buses began crossing the border between Iraq and Syria at Tanaf.

Rebel videotape

On Monday, the Arab television station al-Jazeera aired a rebel videotape with footage that appeared to show evidence that insurgents shot down the British military plane that crashed Sunday, killing 10 British soldiers.

A spokesman for al-Jazeera said the television station received the video from a group that called itself "the Green Brigade, which is one of the brigades of the 1920 Revolutionary Brigade, a military wing of the National Islamic Resistance in Iraq."

The videotape, which al-Jazeera aired on Monday evening, showed pictures of a finger pressing a button, then pictures of a missile flying up into the air.

The video did not show the missile hitting a plane. Instead, it cut to footage of a plane's wreckage burning on the ground.

It was not immediately possible to determine if the wreckage was that of the British C-130 that crashed Sunday. But the footage showed the burning wreckage scattered over a wide area, and British officials have said the wreckage was widely scattered.

Ten British soldiers died when the plane went down between Baghdad and Balad.

In another statement attributed to an al-Qaeda affiliate dismissed Sunday's elections as "theatrics" and promised to continue waging "holy war" against the Americans and their Iraqi allies.

A purported al-Qaeda statement also appeared on Monday on an Islamist website.

"These elections and their results ... will increase our strength and intention to getting rid of injustice," the statement said.

(China Daily February 2, 2005)