Iraq PM vows to crush rebels

Baghdad: Iraq's prime minister promised a new crackdown on Saturday on sectarian gunmen who kill hundreds of people a week in Baghdad but has yet to endorse any proposal from President George W. Bush to send in more American troops.

In a pugnacious speech for Army Day, Nouri Al Maliki said a plan was in place for Iraqi forces to crush illegal armed groups "regardless of sect or politics".

"There will be no refuge from this plan for anyone who is operating beyond the law, regardless of their sect or their political affiliation," Al Maliki told Iraqi soldiers gathered on a vast Baghdad parade ground built by Saddam Hussain in the 1980s.

"We will come down hard on anyone who does not carry out their orders and who does their job according to his political or sectarian background," he added, underlining concern over the loyalties of 300,000 new, US-trained Iraqi troops and police.

One of Al Maliki's Dawa party allies, member of parliament Ali Al Adeeb, said the crackdown would start "soon", though no date was set. He added that Al Maliki was still considering Bush's idea for more US troops, made in a telephone call on Thursday.

Al Maliki's announcement, along with a defiant response to critics of his decision to hang Saddam a week ago, came as Bush conducts a major reshuffle of his commanders and diplomats in Iraq and prepares to unveil a new strategy this week that officials say may include a proposal to add 20,000 US troops in Baghdad.

"The Iraqi government could be obliged to review its relations with any state that fails to respect the wish of the Iraqi people," said Al Maliki in his first reaction to the ousted president's hanging in Baghdad on December 30.

"We consider the execution of the dictator an internal affair that concerns only the Iraqi people," he said Maliki, lashing out at those who criticised the execution.

"We find that this conduct is inciting sedition and flagrant interference in the internal affairs of Iraq and abuses feelings of the families of the victims."

Saddam's half-brother Barzan Al Tikriti and a former judge are also due to hang, possibly today, officials say.

A number of international leaders have criticised Saddam's hanging, saying it appeared as a sectarian lynching rather than a court-directed punishment after a guard, believed to be a Shiite, taunted the Sunni former president in his final moments.

As with a major crackdown by US and Iraqi forces last summer, which briefly reduced the killing rate before appearing to run out of steam, Al Adeeb said US troops in Iraq could simply be switched into the city. A US military spokesman declined comment on "future operations".