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Iraqi guards fire on protesters

Guards at the Ministry of Science and Technology opened fire Sunday on a crowd of protesting government employees here, killing one and wounding three. The shootings came as General John Abizaid, the senior US commander in the region, warned that delays in forming a government in Iraq could contribute to a rise in violence.

The protesters worked as guards at an old government-owned uranium storage site south of Baghdad, and went to the ministry to collect their wages and ammunition. After discovering that their salaries had been reduced, the group of about 50 workers staged an impromptu demonstration, Interior Ministry officials said.

It was unclear why the demonstrators were fired upon.

On Sunday, negotiations to form a government continued but no progress was apparent. Abizaid said that the longer it took to form a government in Iraq, the more uncertainty there would be, and "the more uncertainty, the greater chance for escalated violence."

The general, speaking on CNN's <> also said that the percentage of foreign fighters in Iraq had increased in the past several months largely because the number of Iraqis joining the insurgency had declined. He did not give specific figures, but other US military officials have said that foreign fighters account for about 5 percent to 10 percent of the estimated 12,000 to 20,000 hard-core insurgents in Iraq.

In addition, the number of non-Iraqis being detained at the three major US detention centers in Iraq has been rising since September, with 325 foreign prisoners from 16 countries currently being held military said.

Most of the foreign fighters are continuing to enter through Syria, with far smaller numbers coming across the Saudi and Iranian borders, Abizaid said. He accused the Syrian government of not cracking down on rebel sympathizers who help ferry the fighters into Iraq.

"The Syrians are not doing everything we've asked them to do," Abizaid said, echoing a repeated criticism Bush administration officials have leveled at the Syrian government. "The Syrians know there are facilitation cells in places like Damascus and Aleppo and Homs and Hamah. Their security services can find those facilitation cells. They can dismantle those cells."

He continued: "They certainly can go after the people that we've identified to them by name that are former members of the regime that are coordinating actions inside Syria. I won't go so far as to say these groups have the active support of the Syrian government, but the Syrians certainly aren't doing enough to shut off their support to the insurgency."

As Abizaid spoke of the growing uncertainty in Iraq because of the lack of a new government, more problems emerged in the political negotiations, which have dragged on for nearly two months.

A schism has begun to develop in the Shiite bloc with some politicians, including those backed by Muqtada al-Sadr, the young firebrand cleric, saying they are unhappy with the bloc's choice for prime minister, the conservative head of the Dawa Islamic Party, Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

That split could be exploited by the Kurds and by Ayad Allawi, the interim prime minister, to push for a more secular candidate to succeed Allawi.

In Najaf, the top UN envoy in Iraq met Sunday with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the cleric who helped form the Shiite alliance that won a slight majority of the 275 seats in the new national assembly. At a press conference after the meeting, the envoy, Ashraf Qazi, said he had asked for the ayatollah's thoughts about the political situation but had not offered any suggestions.
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