Iraqis demand government

Iraqi mosque preachers sought to calm tensions with US troops yesterday and demanded that the United States establish a government to restore order after President George W. Bush declared the war all but over.

While grappling with postwar chaos, the US military said it was holding two more of deposed President Saddam Hussein's top aides, including one who helped direct his weapons programmes.

It named him as Abdul Tawab Mullah Hwaish, head of the military industrialisation ministry, which oversaw the development of weapons of mass destruction in the 1980s.

Hwaish was No. 16 on the US list of 55 most wanted Iraqis.

He was taken into custody on Thursday, along with Taha Mohieddin Ma'rouf, an Iraqi vice president and member of Saddam's Revolutionary Command Council, and No. 42 on the list.

The continuing hunt for Saddam and his inner circle is one reason why Bush has stopped short of formally ending the war ostensibly fought to rid Iraq of banned weapons, whose existence Saddam denied. US and British forces have yet to find any.

Many Iraqis are happy at President Saddam's removal but have made clear they want US troops to leave as soon as possible.

"To America and its allies we say: where are your honeysweet promises? Now is the time to fulfil them," Sheikh Ahmad al- Issawi said in a sermon at Baghdad's Abdel-Qader Kilani mosque.

"Where is the government?" he asked. "Install a government as quickly as possible even if it is an emergency government.

"Maintain security and protect public and private possessions from looters and get public services, water and electricity, back to normal," Issawi added.

Speaking a day after President Bush declared that US-led forces had prevailed in the military phase of the war, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in London that insecurity remained rife.

"It would be a terrible mistake to think that Iraq is a fully secure, fully pacified environment. It is not, it is dangerous," he said after meeting British Prime Minister Tony Blair at the end of a victory tour to Iraq and Afghanistan.

"There are people who are rolling hand grenades into compounds. There are people that are shooting people, and it is not finished, so we ought not to leave the world with the impression that it is," he said.