Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz has claimed the war against US and British invasion forces was "going well" and defended the use of suicide bombings.
"When you fight an invader by whatever means available to you, you are not a terrorist; you are a hero," he said in an interview with the ABC television network.
His comments come a day after an Iraqi officer killed four US soldiers in a suicide bombing at a checkpoint near Najaf.
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Mr Aziz said Iraq has been bringing in would-be suicide bombers from other parts of the Muslim world for further attacks on the US-led invasion force.
"From outside or from inside [Iraq], these people are heroes. They are freedom fighters against invaders, against colonialists, against imperialists," he said.
Mr Aziz also said Iraqi leaders were not surprised by the strength of resistance against US and British troops.
"The war is going very well as far as we see it, and as far as realities are," he said. "They [the US and British forces] are surprised that the Iraqi people are resisting them courageously with a great determination to deter them. We are not surprised, we expected that, we said that".
Mr Aziz said he had spoken to a number of American journalists including one who suggested the Iraqi people would receive US troops with music and flowers."I told them that the Iraqi people are going to fight back . . . the Iraqis are going to receive the Americans with bullets," he said.
Iraqi forces were prepared to fight on in hopes of drawing out the war and exhausting America's will to fight, he told ABC. "We can end this war when the invaders withdraw totally, unconditionally from the Iraqi territory".
In a separate development, Iraqi General Hazem al-Rawi said more than 4,000 suicide volunteers had come from every Arab nation "without exception".
They have "pledged never to return to their homelands, insisting that they remain in Iraq after their martyrdom," he said. "It is our duty to chase the invaders at any price".
The radical Palestinian movement Islamic Jihad announced yesterday it had sent a first batch of suicide bombers to Iraq.