UN experts met Iraqi leaders for the first time to discuss the chances of holding early elections as Britain's Prince Charles made a surprise visit and Japan expanded its first military deployment to a combat zone since World War II.
In fresh violence, insurgents attacked separate US Army convoys with explosives, killing one soldier and wounding three others, witnesses said. The soldier was killed when a roadside bomb exploded near Mahmudiyah, 32km south of Baghdad, a military spokesman said. No other details were available.
Prince Charles, wearing desert camouflage and a black beret, made a surprise visit to British troops, the first member of the British royal family to go to Iraq since Saddam Hussein's ouster.
PHOTO: AP
At a former Saddam palace in the southern city of Basra, the prince mingled with about 200 soldiers, shaking hands, sipping tea and praising them for their role in keeping security in southern Iraq.
"This part of the world doesn't have much chance unless their armed force can learn a lot from your experience ... not only in the military but in the hearts and minds," the prince said, according to the British Press Association.
Security was tight for the prince's 5-hour visit. His staff only allowed journalists to report that he'd been to Iraq after he left for Iran -- the first member of a British royal family to visit that country in 33 years.
In southeastern Iraq, a heavily armored convoy of Japanese soldiers arrived as part of Tokyo's first military deployment in a hostile region since 1945.
The ground troops, mostly engineers, lead a deployment that will eventually reach about 800 soldiers in a humanitarian mission to improve water supplies and other infrastructure projects around Samawah.
The UN team, led by veteran diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, sat down with the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council to start determining whether legislative elections can be held by June 30, when the Americans plan to transfer sovereignty to Iraqis.
The current US plan is to choose legislators in regional committees, or "caucuses" -- a move opposed by the country's most powerful Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani. If early elections are deemed unfeasible, the UN team will offer alternatives to the American plan.
Failure to find a formula for establishing a new Iraqi government acceptable to al-Sistani and Iraq's other religious and ethnic communities could sabotage US plans for scaling back the US role here at a time when criticism of President George W. Bush's Iraq policy has become an issue in the US presidential election campaign.
After keeping the UN at arm's length in Iraq, the US administration asked for world body help last month to resolve the dispute with al-Sistani and find a way to constitute a new Iraqi government by July 1.
UN and Iraqi officials said little about the substance of the first day's talks. Brahimi, a special adviser to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said after the meeting that the UN would "do everything possible" to help the Iraqi people "regain independence and sovereignty."
However, Iraqi sources said that the initial session was taken up mostly by Governing Council members expressing their views on elections.
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