Bomb kills 2 U.S. soldiers; Bush, Bremer talk in D.C.

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Assailants detonated a roadside bomb near a U.S. military convoy in Baghdad on Monday, killing two American soldiers and an Iraqi translator. A U.S. commander said soldiers in the city had captured nine top rebel leaders in the past week and had increased security ahead of possible Christmas season attacks.

Meanwhile, President Bush met Monday at the White House with L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of Iraq and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Earlier, Bremer told NBC's "Today" show that "there's been a suggestion of high terror threats" in Iraq in recent weeks unrelated to Saddam Hussein's capture on Dec. 13.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the White House meeting was "an opportunity, again, for Ambassador Bremer to update the president on the progress that we're making in Iraq. . . . They had a good discussion."

In Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Mark Hertling of the 1st Armored Division, which is responsible for security in Baghdad, said that additional security measures would be a prudent move.

"We have some indications that it would be prudent to take some additional measures to counter specific potential threats," Hertling said. "In this past week alone we have captured nine senior leaders in the former regime network; we have intel on about a dozen more, and we are pursuing them," Hertling wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

Two other soldiers from the 1st Armored Division were wounded in the attack at about 11:45 a.m. in Baghdad. The soldiers' names were being until their families are notified.

A total of 317 U.S. soldiers have been killed as a result of hostile action since the invasion in March.

In Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin told members of Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council that Russia was ready to write off more than half of the $8 billion that Baghdad owes Moscow, its largest creditor.

At a Kremlin meeting, Putin told the delegation — led by the current head of the Governing Council, Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim — that Russia was ready to write off 65 percent of the debt, said Samir Shaker Mahmoud, a council member.

The debt is part of the approximately $41 billion owed by Iraq to the so-called Paris Club group of creditor nations; Iraq's overall debt is about $120 billion.

Also Monday, Poland's President Aleksander Kwasniewski made a brief and unannounced visit to Polish troops based at Babylon, south of Baghdad.