BUSH SAYS THE DAYS OF SADDAM ARE COUNTED

WASHINGTON 26 Mar. (IPS) President George W. Bush said Wednesday that the "day of reckoning is drawing near”' for the Iraqi regime and assured that although he ignored when the “Shock and Awe” operations aimed at toppling his Iraqi counterpart would end, yet he was losing his grip”.

"We cannot know the duration of this war but we are prepared for the battle ahead", he said, speaking at the MacDill Air Force base in Tampa, Florida, adding that “Saddam Hoseyn was losing his grip" on Iraq as he promised a "day of justice" for those Iraqis who harm prisoners of war or use civilians as human shields.

"Day by day, Saddam Hussein is losing his grip on Iraq," Bush told a cheering audience, adding "This band of war criminals has been put on notice: The day of Iraq's liberation will also be a day of justice".

"I assure you and I assure the long-suffering people of Iraq, there will be a day of reckoning for the Iraqi regime and that day is drawing near", the American leader said, as both American and British forces were facing strong resistance from the Iraqi armies in the one hand and new anti-war demonstrations took place around the world, particularly in Australia and some Asian countries, most of them close to Washington.

Thousands of people protested in several cities in Indonesia, India, Pakistan, South Korea and Thailand, with demonstrators calling for a boycott of American and British-made products, burning effigies of the American president and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, shouting "Down with Bush and Blair", "Down with America and its agents".

In Tehran, the Government’s official spokesman reiterated Iran’s opposition to the ongoing war in Iraq and repeated Iran’s call on Washington to halt the conflict “as soon as possible”.

"We believe this war is against all humanity and all human beings have been in jeopardy; all the world peace lovers stress that war should be halted as soon as possible", Mr. Abdollah Ramezanzadeh said in his first weekly briefing in the new Iranian year of 1382, which started on 21 of March.

“US military invasion of Iraq would be detrimental to all states and nations of the region and the world”, he said, adding that not only Iran would stay neutral, but at the same time would not allow any military movement for or against the belligerent sides until the end of the clashes.

"Our borders are closed for any sort of movement", Ramezanzadeh said when asked to comment on the date the “al-Badr Brigade”, or the 25.000 to 50.000 strong army made of Iraqi refugees based in southern Iran and controlled by the Tehran-based Supreme Assembly of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI), would leave Iran to enter Iraq, helping the Allied forces for the capture of the Basra province.

Heavy fighting raged in southern Iraq on Wednesday, U.S. paratroopers took control of a key airfield in the north and at least 15 Iraqi civilians were killed in a Baghdad street during another intense bombardment.

The United States denied that it had intentionally targeted the Shaab residential district of Baghdad, where Iraqi witnesses spoke of a twin American missile strike, but the Pentagon left open the possibility that a missile or bomb had gone astray.

Davood Hermidas Bavand, an Iranian expert on international affairs said that Iraqis are more inclined to drag the enemy inside Iraq, engaging the Americans and British troops to hand-to-hand fighting in order to make them suffer higher casualties and as a result, inciting public opinion against the US.

Speaking to the official Iranian news agency IRNA, Mr. Bavand said Americans too are willing to avoid engagement in hand-to-hand fighting as much as possible.

“Due to the same reason, the coalition forces ignore capture of non-strategic cities and only attempt to take strategic city of Baghdad to ensure end of war”, he pointed out.

The advance of the war operations, the situation of Iraq and the picture of the region in the aftermath of the fall of the present Iraqi regime was the topic of the meeting between President Bush and Mr. Tony Blair, the embattled British Prime Minister. ENDS SHOCK AND AWE 26303