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The US aimed for Iraqi elections by mid-2004, but a new regional council set up in toppled dictator Saddam Hussein's heartland met with local indifference as two more US troops died in rebel strikes.

US troops inaugurated a 44-member regional council for Al-Anbar province, home to the flashpoint towns of Ramadi and Fallujah, as they sought to calm one of the main battlefields in the war with insurgents.

"Today is a very historic day for Al-Anbar," said Colonel David Teeples, commander of the Third Armoured Cavalry Regiment.

But in a hint that US efforts to foster democratic participation in a free Iraq may be falling on deaf ears, people of the provincial capital Ramadi said they knew nothing about the first meeting of their civic representatives.

The chief administrator of the new Iraq, Paul Bremer, expressed confidence that nationwide elections could be held in less than a year, clearing the way for the coalition forces to withdraw.

"It is certainly not unrealistic to think that we could have elections by mid-year 2004," Bremer told reporters at the inauguration of a new foreign ministry in Baghdad.

"And when a sovereign government is installed, the coalition authority will cede authority to the government and my job here will be over," said the 61-year-old diplomat.

Following the July 13 unveiling of a 25-member interim Governing Council, the next step will be the drafting of a new Iraqi constitution to be approved by referendum and followed by nationwide elections, Bremer said.

The pace of the rebuilding effort has come under fire in the US as a deadly insurgency by Saddam loyalists has now cost the lives of 52 soldiers since major combat was declared over on May 1.

Although US troops had arrested more than 700 people in raids since Monday, in a bid to track down Saddam and his supporters, they appeared unable to stop the deadly attacks.

A US soldier was shot dead and four more wounded in an ambush northeast of Baghdad late Wednesday, while a second soldier was killed and three wounded yesterday on the road to Baghdad's airport, a frequent site for attacks.

In the second incident, the US military said an armored personnel carrier hit a land mine, but witnesses said the weapon used was a rocket-propelled grenade fired in a brazen mid-day attack from a car, which drove up alongside.

The US military announced it would pay 500 dollars for each shoulder-fired missile launcher turned in around Iraq's flasphoint province of Al-Anbar, where US forces routinely come under attack.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell approved the payout of a 30-million-dollar reward to the Iraqi tipster who allowed US forces to kill Saddam Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay.

A reward of up to $25-million for information leading to Saddam's capture was still up for grabs.

The Pentagon handed out electronically altered images of Saddam without a moustache, with a beard and in other possible guises to help US troops in their hunt for the elusive former leader.

After four months on the run, Saddam will have tried to change his appearance to escape capture, according to experts.

The top US commander in Iraq, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, expressed regret over the deaths of civilians after US soldiers opened fire on at least one car during a raid in the wealthy Baghdad district of Mansur.

However, Sanchez said he could not confirm the number of fatalities or wounded in the botched operation, which, for some Iraqis, has come to symbolize the excessive use of force by American troops.

Meanwhile, some 2 000 Polish troops prepared to join the US-led coalition on a mission President Aleksander Kwasniewski described would help Iraqis rebuild, and would repay a "moral debt" for Western democracies' help when Polish communism collapsed.

The coalition now has 13 400 non-US troops from 18 countries in Iraq, the bulk of them British, US officials said.

A mission of Japanese lawmakers left for Iraq to study the security situation and the nation's reconstruction needs ahead of Japan's historic troop deployment expected this year.

In the debate over whether Saddam's Iraq posed a credible threat to the US, The Washington Post reported that interviews with Iraqi scientists have failed to support US and British justifications for war.

Ahead of an appearance in Congress yesterday by David Kay, the CIA's representative overseeing the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, The Washington Post reported that no information had so far been gleaned.

However, Kay told reporters after a closed-door briefing of members of the Senate Armed Services committee, "We are making solid progress." Kay added, however, "It's going to take time".

On the economic front, Iraq's main pipeline from the oil center of Kirkuk to the Turkish Mediterranean terminal of Ceyhan, wrecked in post-war sabotage, will reopen the first week of August, a coalition official said.

"It will have a capacity between 200 000 and 300 000 barrels a day," the official said.

In another boost, Iraq signed major contracts with 12 foreign companies for 650 000 b/d.

More than three months after the fall of Baghdad, world markets were still awaiting Iraqi's restoration of oil exports in significant quantity after looting and sabotage hampered the oil industry's scheduled comeback.

Two of Saddam's daughters, accompanied by their nine children, traveled to Jordan from Syria, where they had fled two weeks after the fall of Baghdad.

King Abdullah II has agreed to host them "for humanitarian reasons and because of the difficult situation in their country," a high-ranking official from the Jordanian royal palace said.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees would like to return to Iraq.

On Wednesday, the first batch of 244 refugees returned to Iraq from Rafha after spending 12 years in a Saudi desert camp near the border.

UNHCR expects more than 3,600 of the remaining 5 200 refugees in Rafha, which sheltered some 33 000 refugees when it was first set up in 1991 - to be repatriated by year's end.

According to UN figures, of four million Iraqis living outside Iraq, up to 900 000 are either refugees or living in a refugee-type situation, mainly in Iran, Jordan and Syria. – Sapa-AFP.

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