IRAQ: Coalition forces must stay but hand over political control, Iraq's elder statesman said yesterday, as Iraqis fear Washington is planning a hasty exit strategy leaving the country in the lurch.
The remark came as a further blow was dealt to US efforts to share the burden of post-war Iraq when Japan yesterday ruled out a rapid dispatch of its forces. Japan had said it would send non-combat troops to southern Iraq by the end of the year, where the Italian troops, still reeling from Wednesday's suicide bombing which killed 18 of their nationals, are based.
Meanwhile, violence continued as an American soldier was killed in a roadside bomb attack in Baghdad.
Mr Adnan Pachachi (80), of Iraq's governing council, said: "We know the Americans are anxious to leave. But to do so now would bring bloodshed everywhere. They must hand over political power, but in the current security crisis any talk of a withdrawal would swell the ranks of the insurgents."
Mr Pachachi's comments strike a conciliatory note.
But three weeks of devastating violence killing a hundred has raised the possibility of an early departure by the Americans.
Since the summer months, calls for self-government have died down. Outside trouble spots such as Falluja the increasingly organised insurgents has led many to accept the necessity of American military protection.
Hundreds of mourners arrived at Nassiriya's central hospital to collect their dead from the city's morgue - among them four schoolchildren, whose bodies were unidentifiable after the vehicle carrying them was caught in the blast outside the Italian military police headquarters.
A demonstration was planned at the blast site by local Iraqis to show support for the Italian presence - but in the end only a straggle of people turned up as the town struggled to come to terms with arrival of the terrorist threat on their doorstep.
At the hospital, the mood was already beginning to turn to anger as mourners blamed foreign fighters for the attack.
"The people who did this are not Iraqis. They are foreigners who don't care who they kill," said Ibrahim Faisal, a relative of one of the dead.
But there appears to be little coalition forces could do in the face of what many fear will be a concerted terrorist campaign as insurgents move to soft targets in the south after a security clampdown in central Iraq.
At Nassiriya central police station, officers said they had no plans to install defences but instead were labouring to set-up a satellite television. On the outskirts of the city teams of Italian soldiers laboured to fill sandbag barriers with dirt - the same barriers that had proved so ineffective the day before.
Dr Khudair Hazbel, general manager of the hospital that had treated most of the 95 casualties, said: "We don't have the right mentality to deal with another attack. We're sitting ducks."