Powell promises Iraq billions in aid

US secretary of state Colin Powell said the United States would speed delivery to Iraq of billions of dollars in reconstruction aid, as Nato countries agreed to send a 40-member team as soon as possible to begin training Iraqi security forces.

During his brief, unannounced trip to Iraq yesterday, Powell said the United States would step up the slow pace of reconstruction funds to rebuild the infrastructure and create jobs, which would reduce support for the uprising.

“We want to show the Iraqi people that this money is being used for their benefit and do it as quickly as we can,” Powell said.

Powell was unable to announce specific figures, but Iraq’s deputy prime minister, Barham Saleh, who joined Powell at a news conference, said £6bn (€9bn) in US reconstruction money would be disbursed by December.

Later, Nato countries agreed to send a 40-member advance team to Iraq after side-stepping a dispute between France and the United States over command of the mission.

Nato secretary-general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said the team would leave for Iraq “as soon as possible” to begin the training and would report back in September about proposed relations with the US-led multinational force.

Meanwhile in Fallujah, fierce fighting between US Marines and Iraqi rebels killed 13 Iraqis and wounded 14 others in a series of gunfights, mortar barrages and air strikes.

Many of those wounded, including at least one child, appeared to be civilians injured in the US air strikes, hospital officials said. The military said the militants started the fighting by ambushing a patrol and then fled into buildings in the city.

Iraq has been beset by surging violence in recent weeks, including a wave of kidnappings and a devastating car bombing on Thursday that killed at least 70 people.

Iraqi interim President Ghazi al-Yawer said the violence proved rebels were growing desperate.

“The bad guys, the enemy, the army of the darkness is getting more helpless and hopeless, that is why they are stepping up these things. Time and the place is on our side,” al-Yawer said after a meeting with Powell, the highest-ranking US official to visit since the handover of sovereignty last month.

Meanwhile, a deadline set by militants to save the life of a captive truck driver expired yesterday.

The militants, who are holding seven foreign hostages from India, Kenya and Egypt, threatened to kill one of the men last night if its demands, including a pull-out by their company, were not met.

The drivers’ company, Kuwait and Gulf Link Transport, said it was sending an official to Iraq to work with Sheikh Hisham al-Duleimi, head of an organisation of Iraqi tribal leaders trying to negotiate the hostages’ release.

In Jordan, the relatives of four Jordanian truck drivers held by a different group joined with fellow drivers in chanting “Death to America” during a protest arch they said the kidnappers had demanded they hold as a condition for the hostages’ release.

After the demonstration, the kidnappers called the relatives, saying they were pleased with the television reports of the protest and promised to release the men today, said Mohammed Abu Jaafar, whose brother Ahmad is one of the hostages.