Iraqi official promises crackdown

BAGHDAD — Iraq's defense minister promised on Sunday to wage a new crackdown northeast of Baghdad in a volatile province where militants have been driven by the influx of U.S. troops to the capital.

Suicide attacks have killed more than 20 people in the last three days in Diyala province, a tribal patchwork of Sunni Arabs, Shiites and Kurds that stretches from Baghdad to the border with Iran.

Defense Minister Abdul-Qader al-Obeidi told The Associated Press that preparations had begun for a fresh military operation in the provincial capital Baqouba, about 35 miles from Baghdad.

"If we succeed in controlling areas of Diyala close to Baghdad, the rate of incidents in Baghdad decreases by 95 percent," al-Obeidi told the AP.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, meanwhile, arrived in southern Iraq on a surprise visit to the southern city of Basra, signaling what London hopes will be the transition from a military mission in Iraq to one with a stronger economic component, aimed at reinvigorating a country torn apart by war and years of neglect under Saddam Hussein.

"The great venture that started with all the difficulties we face, that cost causalities, means we have managed now to get Iraq into a far better position," Brown told British troops, who lined the staircases of an airport base to watch his arrival.

The British plan to handover security responsibilities for the oil-rich area to the Iraqis within the coming weeks.

Violence has declined sharply in Iraq since June, when the influx of U.S. troops to the capital and its surrounding areas began to gain momentum. Also credited with the decline were the freeze in activities by the Mahdi Army militia, led by the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and the decision by tens of thousands of Iraqis — most of them Sunni Arab — to join the fight against al-Qaida.

But it has been a constant challenge to subdue extremists in Diyala, which is the eastern gateway to Baghdad. More than two years ago, U.S. forces thought they'd turned the corner and American commanders handed over substantial control of the province to the Iraqi army in August 2005.

A year later, the al-Qaida-backed Islamic State of Iraq declared Baqouba as its capital.

This summer, U.S. and Iraqi forces launched a new drive in Diyala, and the Americans have fostered groups of former militants who have switched sides in the fight against al-Qaida. But any gains are hard-won: On Friday, a pair of suicide bombings less than 10 miles apart killed at least 23 people — more than half of them members of the anti-al-Qaida groups.

Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, a U.S. military spokesman, credited intelligence gleaned from Iraqis tired of militant violence, as well as American efforts to track down insurgents' financing, safe houses and bomb-making facilities to the decline in violence around the country.