The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Baghdad

The US military has announced the death of a US soldier in an non-combat incident in northern Iraq, bringing the toll for the month of July to 12, the lowest since the US invasion of 2003.

"A US soldier died in a non-combat related incident while conducting operations in Nineveh province July 31," according to military statement late on Thursday. Two other soldiers were injured, it added, without providing further details. The lastest death brings the US toll to 4,126 troops killed in Iraq, according to icasualties.org.

Meanwhile, an army spokesman says a roadside bomb attack has killed two Iraqi soldiers and wounded two others in northern city of Kirkuk.

Col. Salam al-Zobaei, the spokesman of the Iraqi army in Kirkuk, says the bomb struck an army patrol near the city on Friday.

A suicide bombing killed 25 people in the oil-rich city during a Kurdish demonstration on Monday. Tensions are running high in the multi-ethnic city where Kurds want the annexation of the regional capital Kirkuk and other areas to the self-ruled Kurdish region over the opposition of Arab and Turkomen residents. Iraqi parliament is to hold a special session Sunday to try to resolve disagreements over power-sharing in Kirkuk that have blocked legislation enabling U.S.-backed provincial elections.

AP report from Washington: Trumpeting progress in Iraq, President Bush said for the first time Thursday that security improvements now have a "degree of durability" - an assertion that appeared to lay the groundwork for an announcement in coming weeks of further U.S. troop reductions. Echoing the president's assessment, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said later at a Pentagon news conference that security in Iraq has "improved dramatically" and that he sees "a real possibility" that conditions there will permit more troop cuts, although he did not say how soon or how many.

The administration is awaiting a recommendation from its soon-to-depart commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, on future troop levels. Petraeus is expected to submit that report before the end of August, and in mid-September he will leave Baghdad to become commander of U.S. Central Command, a position of broader responsibility that includes the increasingly worrisome war in Afghanistan. Management of the two wars is becoming more closely intertwined in the sense that the Pentagon's ability to send more troops to Afghanistan - as requested by U.S. commanders there - is severely constrained by the large number of forces still in Iraq - about 145,000 as of Thursday.

"We'd like to get additional troops there as soon as we could," Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, appearing alongside Gates. Mullen was referring to commanders' stated request for three additional brigades in Afghanistan, including one to conduct training of Afghan forces.

Gates said "there are some alternatives" to waiting for Petraeus' recommendation on troop levels in Iraq before sending more troops to Afghanistan, but he was not specific. At another point, he said the Pentagon is "looking at" sending a relatively small number of support forces, such as ordnance disposal teams and civil affairs soldiers - "a couple of hundred at most" - to Afghanistan soon.

With the Iraq war in its sixth year and violence substantially decreased in recent months, Bush gave a brief and hastily arranged update at the White House. He noted that violence is at its lowest since the spring of 2004 and said Iraqi forces increasingly are capable of securing the country.

"The progress is still reversible," Bush said, but added, "There now appears to be a degree of durability in gains."

That statement is especially noteworthy because it addresses one of the keys to eventually winding down the war: establishing what Petraeus calls sustainable security - a condition in which Iraqis can maintain sufficient security throughout the country with minimal or no American military assistance.

Looking ahead to the next recommendation on troop levels from U.S. generals in Iraq, Bush suggested it was reasonable to expect "further reductions in our combat forces, as conditions permit."