Saboteurs blast Iraq's oil

Insurgents stepped up pressure on Iraq's new interim government yesterday with another blow to the vital oil industry just two weeks before a formal end to the US occupation.

Oil Minister Thamir Ghadhban confirmed saboteurs blasted an oil pipeline feeding storage tanks at Basra in the Gulf, cutting exports by a third. "There were two sabotage cases," he told Reuters.

In Washington, President George W. Bush said the United States will give ousted leader Saddam Hussein to the interim government when there is adequate security to ensure he stands trial.

Mr Bush would not commit to doing so by a June 30 transfer of power, as asserted by Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, but he did not rule it out.

US troops captured Saddam in December. The Americans have held him as a prisoner of war at an unknown location in Iraq.

In Baghdad, President Ghazi al-Yawar said the United States was "keen" to hand over Saddam.

But he, too, said the new government must be able to ensure it can protect Saddam's life until he goes on trial.

Iraqi leaders are fighting a wave of assassinations, bombings and sabotage by guerillas who are trying to prove the new interim government cannot rule effectively after the June 30 handover of power.

Shippers in the region said crude export rates had fallen below 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) from about 1.7 million, another setback to efforts to boost export revenues vital for Iraq's postwar reconstruction.

Some later said exports from Basra were halted and an Iraqi industry official said repairs could take seven to 10 days.

There was no let up in the violence in Baghdad. Gunmen fired on a three-vehicle convoy carrying contractors working for the US-led administration, hitting at least one car, a US military spokesman said.

Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said the attackers fired from a road bridge near Baghdad airport but could not confirm reports that some people in the convoy had been killed.

Vehicles carrying foreign contractors have repeatedly come under attack in Iraq, often on the road to Baghdad's airport.

A suicide car bomber killed 13 people, including five foreign contractors, in Baghdad on Monday, a day after 12 Iraqis died in another suicide attack near a US-Iraqi base.

As the handover nears, US and Iraqi officials are trying to resolve the problem of how to deal with thousands of other detainees held by US-led forces in Iraq.

In London, a British Foreign Office source said "furious negotiations" were under way to thrash out a solution.

Under international law, prisoners of war must be released once the occupation ends.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said prisoners of war and all other detainees in Iraq should be entitled to due legal process after the June 30 handover.

"What's important for the ICRC is that each will know his legal status and the charges against him. If tried, he should have judicial guarantees," said spokeswoman Nada Doumani.

Basra, in the mainly Shi'ite south, has stayed relatively calm since radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr launched a revolt against occupation troops in early April.

Most fighting was in the holy cities of Najaf and Kerbala further north, where Sadr's Mehdi Army militia agreed a truce this month under pressure from Shi'ite religious leaders.

Yawar said Sadr could take part in politics after June 30, indicating Iraq's leaders have no faith in the confrontational US approach to a man the military had once vowed to "kill or capture".