The New Nation - Internet Edition

Reuters, Washington

A majority of the Iraqi parliament has written to Congress rejecting a long-term security deal with Washington if it is not linked to a requirement that U.S. forces leave, a U.S. lawmaker said on Wednesday.

Rep. William Delahunt, a Massachusetts Democrat and Iraq war opponent, released excerpts from a letter he was handed by Iraqi parliamentarians laying down conditions for the security pact that the Bush administration seeks with Iraq.

The proposed pact has become increasingly controversial in Iraq, where there have been protests against it. It has also drawn criticism from Democrats on the presidential election campaign trail in the United States, who say President George W. Bush is trying to dictate war policy after he leaves office.

"The majority of Iraqi representatives strongly reject any military-security, economic, commercial, agricultural, investment or political agreement with the United States that is not linked to clear mechanisms that obligate the occupying American military forces to fully withdraw from Iraq," the letter to the leaders of Congress said.

The signatures represented just over half the membership of Iraq's parliament, said Delahunt, a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee chairman.

AP report from Baghdad: A truck packed with rockets blew up Wednesday in a Shiite area of Baghdad, killing 18 people in the deadliest single blast in the city in more than three months. Three U.S. soldiers were killed by gunfire north of the capital.

A U.S. military spokesman said the blast appeared to have been an accident that occurred as Shiite militiamen were transporting the weapons through a densely populated neighborhood of northern Baghdad - possibly to fire at a nearby American base.

Iraqi police said a suicide truck bomber had targeted the house of an Iraqi police general, who was not at home but whose nephew was among those killed. U.S. officials said 75 people were wounded, and police said they included the general's elderly parents.

But the U.S. military disputed the police account, saying Shiite extremists were transporting rockets and mortars on a tractor-trailer when the weapons mistakenly exploded. Witnesses also confirmed the vehicle was carrying weapons.

"They were trying to attack us t and it went off (accidentally)" said U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Steve Stover, who provided the death toll. "They wouldn't waste rockets like that" on a suicide attack.

The force of the blast crumbled several two-story buildings, buried cars under rubble, sheared off a corrugated steel roof and left a large crater on the residential street.

It was the deadliest single explosion in Baghdad since March 3, when a suicide car bomber killed 22 people in eastern Baghdad. Sixteen people died in a mortar attack in the Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City on April 9.