BAGHDAD - Two more US soldiers were reported killed in separate attacks in Iraq, amid growing controversy in the United States and Britain over the reasons for waging the war to oust Saddam Hussein.

One attack targeted a US convoy in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit north of Baghdad at around 10:30 pm (1830 GMT) Wednesday, killing one soldier and wounding another, US Central Command said.

Three US Army soldiers from the 315 Infantry on foot patrol pass by a mosque, in the flashpoint town of Fallujah, some 50kms west of Baghdad. Two US soldiers were killed overnight in Iraq in separate attacks.(AFP/Stan Honda)

In Mahmudiyah, south of the capital, another soldier was killed in an ambush with small arms fire at around 6:30 pm (1430 GMT) on Wednesday, the CENTCOM statement said.

The deaths brought the toll from attacks on US troops to 31 since May 1, when US President George W. Bush declared major combat operations over, highlighting the human as well as the financial cost of the occupation.

Bush admitted Thursday that "There is no question we have got a security issue in Iraq.

"We are just going to have to deal with it person by person. We are going to have to remain tough," he said in Botswana on the third leg of a five-nation African tour.

He said that as more Iraqis became involved in a transitional government for Iraq, they would realize that the attackers of occupying US forces were "apologists for Saddam Hussein" who were creating misery for their country.

"It's going to take more than 90 to 100 days for people to recognize the great joys of freedom and the responsibilities that come with freedom," Bush said.

"We are making steady progress. A free Iraq will mean a peaceful world, it is very important for us to stay the course and we will," he added.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told senators Wednesday that Iraqi operations were costing the United States 3.9 billion dollars per month, and said Washington wanted other nations to help police and rebuild the country.

Washington and London meanwhile appeared to backtrack on their main reason for the war, the existence and imminent threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), while still insisting that they were right to invade Iraq.

The BBC quoted unnamed senior British government officials as saying they no longer believe that such weapons will be uncovered in Iraq.

"They don't think that there were no weapons programs. They believe that interviews with Iraqi scientists, perhaps documentation will be uncovered which will reveal the extent of programs. that were there in the past," correspondent Andrew Marr said.

"But when it comes to physical evidence I have to say that the belief that that will be found and can be paraded in front of the cameras seems to be trickling into the sand."

A spokesman for Britain's prime minister said however that Tony Blair was sure that proof of the banned weapons would be unearthed.

"The prime minister believes, and is absolutely confident, that we will find material" relating to chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, the spokesman told reporters.

"The prime minister is also absolutely confident that we will find evidence not only of his (Saddam's) WMD programs., but concrete evidence of the product of those programs. as well," he added.

Robin Cook, who quit Blair's cabinet in protest over the war, told BBC radio the government "said quite explicitly that there were weapons, indeed famously they said there were weapons that would be ready within 45 minutes.

"They also said that Saddam had rebuilt the factories to make more chemical weapons. To establish that that is correct, you do have to produce the weapons. You do have to actually produce the factories.

"You cannot now say 'well, there were some scientists around who might at some time have had a capacity to develop it'. That is not what (Britain's) parliament was being told in March when it voted for war."

The latest twist follows an admission by the White House that claims by Bush that Iraq had tried to obtain nuclear materials from the African state of Niger were based on false intelligence.

Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the United States "did not act in Iraq because we have discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq's pursuit of weapons of mass murder.

"We acted because we saw the existing evidence in a new light through the prism of our experience on September 11," he said, referring to the 2001 terror attacks in the United States that killed some 3,000 people.

"That experience changed our appreciation of (the) vulnerability the US faces from terrorist states and terrorist networks armed with powerful weapons," he added.

The statement seemed to conflict with those made before the war by officials from Bush's administration, that military force was needed against Iraq because its weapons of massive destruction threatened the security of the United States and its allies.

Rumsfeld also said that postwar reconstruction needed the contribution of a broad array of nations.

"We've got 19 countries on the ground, we've got commitment from another 19 ... Italy and Spain have both made commitments," he said, adding that he expected additional deployments of foreign troops from September.

"Our goal is to get a large number of international forces from a lot of countries," he said, including France and Germany, which both opposed the war.

But French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said in an interview published Thursday that Paris will only join a multinational peacekeeping force in Iraq if it is under a UN mandate.

Copyright 2003 AFP