LISBON, Portugal - On a four-day visit to Europe, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is thanking nations that supported the U.S.-led war in Iraq and asking for more postwar help to keep the peace there.
He said the failure of the U.S.-led coalition to prove deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is dead may be fueling continued violence and resistance in the country. -(Well, let's see if this is the last we will hear about this statement if true that is what Rumsfeld actually said).
"There are people who may fear that he could come back," Rumsfeld said Monday.
"If they fear he could come back, they might be somewhat slower in an interrogation to say what they know" and it could "give heart" to some from Saddam's Baathist Party who hope "that they can take back that country."
Rumsfeld said 41 countries are considering assistance to Iraq and some half dozen have committed forces. He didn't name them, but he said the first forces should be ready in September.
"We have a very aggressive effort to bring in forces from other countries in sizable numbers," Rumsfeld said.
He spoke during a flight to Portugal, where he was to thank officials Tuesday for their support in a war that was unpopular in much of the rest of Europe.
Rumsfeld was to meet later in the day with Albanian officials, who also supported the campaign to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction.
He is to end his tour at a NATO meeting in Brussels, but not before stopping Wednesday in Munich for the 10th anniversary of the joint German-U.S. George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies. The Marshall Center was founded in 1993 to stabilize and strengthen post-cold war Europe through education and training of military and civilian officials.
"The NATO meeting ... provides an opportunity for me to thank some friends and allies — people who have been helpful. Clearly, we will be doing that in Portugal and Albania," Rumsfeld said.
"At the 10th anniversary of the Marshall center, there will be ... a good number of ministers of defense also helpful and cooperative who are graduates."
Portugal is looking for a way to re-equip the outdated Portuguese armed forces despite a recession and cash problems. It is trying to negotiate the purchase of six new Hercules C-130J transport planes from U.S. company Lockheed Martin. It also wants Iraqi reconstruction contracts, and has lobbied for a NATO regional command headquarters to be installed at Oeiras, outside Lisbon.
Portugal did not provide military help for the Iraq war, but it plans to send some 100 police there to help with security and humanitarian aid distribution.
Albania just held a joint exercise with U.S. forces aimed at boosting the ex-communist country's ability to respond to humanitarian crises and other emergencies.
European giants France and Germany led the continent's opposition to the U.S.-British military action; states lending diplomatic support included Denmark, Italy, Latvia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Romania and Croatia.
Rumsfeld said he did not doubt that intelligence on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction will prove correct, despite the failure after two months to find the weapons the Bush administration said were the rationale for the war.
Rumsfeld said resistance to U.S. forces was not nationally organized, but confined to certain regions.
He blamed violence in the region from Baghdad north to Saddam's hometown of Tikrit on Saddam loyalists who survived because there were relatively few battles in that area.
AYACUCHO, Peru - Gunmen seized 60 people, including eight foreigners, in a predawn raid on their pipeline construction camp in the Peruvian Andes, the defense minister said.
Army troops have been sent to the area and "the government has taken the necessary measures to liberate the kidnapped people," said Defense Minister Aurelio Loret de Mola, reading from a statement late Monday.
Police said earlier that they believed the attackers were members of the Maoist Shining Path guerrilla group. But Loret de Mola only described them as "armed criminals" without elaborating further or providing details of the rescue.
The Argentine petroleum company Techint has been using the camp near Toccate, 220 miles southeast of Lima, to build a section of pipeline to carry natural gas from Peru's Amazon jungle across the Andes to the Pacific coast.
Omar Quesada, the top official in the region, said the attackers had seized 2,700 sticks of dynamite and had demanded a $1 million ransom as well as communications equipment.