Iraq Army Pay May Be Raised

An exodus of recruits from the new Iraqi army has prompted the U.S.-led ruling coalition to reconsider pay scales for the nascent force, the top American commander in Iraq said Saturday.

Early today, the campaign to draw more Iraqis into their own security forces suffered another setback when a car bomb exploded outside a police station in the town of Khaldiyah, 35 miles west of here, reportedly killing at least six Iraqi officers.

Coalition officials in Baghdad had no information on the blast, said a military spokesman, but news agencies in Khaldiyah reported six dead and dozens wounded in the latest in a spree of explosions. Emergency vehicles evacuated the wounded to a hospital in Ramadi, 35 miles farther west, Reuters and Al Jazeera reported.

The attack on police highlighted the dangers faced by Iraqis working alongside U.S.-led coalition forces to restore order. The perilous environment has been a major factor in deterring Iraqis from joining the army, civil defense forces and police services that the coalition hopes will assume greater responsibility for security.

The first battalion of the Iraqi army, scheduled to take up duty posts, lost about 300 of its original 695 recruits, officials said, when the recruits abandoned the army. The recruits had decided that the salary -- about $60 a month -- was too low, said Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. commander here. Recruits with families were especially concerned about the risks as insurgents increasingly target Iraqis assisting the occupation.

“The cause of the problem that we’re facing right now with that first battalion is based on pay,” Sanchez said at a news conference here. “We’re working to review the pay scales.”

The army is the focus of a plan to gradually hand over control of security to Iraqi forces as the country moves toward independence and beyond, and U.S. and other coalition troops reduce their presence. The plan is for Iraq to regain its sovereignty under a transitional government after a hand-over of power by June 30.

The general said the mass defections would not slow down plans to train 40,000 members of the Iraqi army by next fall.

“I believe that our targets for building the new Iraqi army are still valid,” Sanchez said.

Iraq is engulfed in a bloody insurgency that has slowed down economic progress and cost hundreds of lives.

No one is predicting when the insurgency will be defeated, but the expectation is that as time goes by Iraqi forces will take on increasing responsibility.

“The entire concept is that we hand over responsibility to Iraqi security forces,” Sanchez said.

The new army is to be a much scaled-down version of Saddam Hussein’s 400,000-plus force, which U.S. civilian administrator L. Paul Bremer III disbanded in the spring after the fall of Baghdad. Unemployed officers took to the streets in angry and violent protests, and U.S. officials finally agreed to pay pensions to career soldiers.

The allied commander deflected questions comparing U.S. tactics here -- including the destruction of homes used by the enemy -- to procedures used by the Israel Defense Forces.

“It’s a different time, it’s a different place, it’s a different country, it’s a different enemy,” Sanchez said. “It’s a different world.”

Sanchez spoke at the end of a week in which insurgents dispatched three suicide bombers to U.S. bases in an effort to inflict mass casualties. Two of the bombers were shot dead at base entrances, but a third group -- a suicide team disguised as furniture deliverymen -- managed to infiltrate the compound of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division outside Ramadi, a hot spot of anti-coalition activity west of Baghdad. One soldier was killed and 14 wounded when a bomb exploded near division headquarters.

A military official said Saturday that investigators believe that the bomb was placed inside the truck’s gas tank -- a new tactic that is causing great concern, because detecting such a well-concealed explosive is difficult. Hundreds of civilian vehicles enter U.S. bases in Iraq daily, delivering supplies and workers.

“We’re going to see a chain of these suicide attacks,” predicted the military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

In another development, the U.S. Army announced that an officer who was charged with assault after he fired his pistol near the head of an Iraqi whom he was interrogating will forfeit $5,000 in pay. But the Army declined to court-martial Lt. Col. Allen B. West, who was serving near Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, north of Baghdad, when the incident occurred Aug. 20.

“This incident reflects a brief lapse in judgment by an officer with an otherwise good record of performance,” the Army said in a statement. Also considered in the decision, the Army said, was “the stressful environment our leaders and soldiers face daily.”

West, a 20-year Army veteran who led an artillery battalion, admitted his guilt, the Army said. He has filed for retirement and is on his way back to the U.S., an Army spokesman said.

Military officials say all allegations of abuse are taken seriously. “We will do the right thing,” Sanchez said.

Times staff writer Carol J. Williams contributed to this report.