BAGHDAD, December 19, 2005

Iraqi oil minister threatens to submit his resignation unless government cancels decision to raise fuel prices.


Thousands of angry Iraqis took to the streets Monday to protest government-imposed gasoline price increases as the oil minister threatened to resign if the measure was not reversed.

As insurgent attacks left at least five dead and 11 wounded in Baghdad, the US military announced that eight former high-level detainees from the regime of deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein have been released.

Police fired in the air to disperse some 3,000 stone-throwing demonstrators in the southern city of Nasiriyah who took to the streets in the wake of Sunday's government announcement of a 300 percent increase in gasoline prices.

Local officials, in a bid to restore calm, ordered petrol stations to cancel the price hikes.

In the southern towns of Amarah, several dozen demonstrators threw stones at a British army patrol while chanting slogans hostile to Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari.

Security forces dispersed demonstrators who surrounded petrol stations in Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, while further demonstrations took place in the northern city of Tikrit.

Oil Minister Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum threatened to resign unless the government cancelled a decision to raise gasoline (prices) from 50 to 150 dinars (0.03 usd to 0.10 usd).

"I call on the government to hold off on implementing this decision. One shouldn't punish Iraqis who risked their lives going to vote (in general elections on Thursday) by increasing prices," the minister said.

Nearly half the government's budget currently goes to subsidizing goods and services, mostly in the energy sector.

In the latest round of violence, a few hours after US President George Bush stressed that his country was winning the war in Iraq, gunmen wounded Baghdad's deputy governor, Ziyad Tarek al-Zubai, and killed three of his bodyguards in an ambush on his convoy in southern Baghdad.

A civilian and another bodyguard were also hurt, an interior ministry official said.

And in a second attack, a car bomb killed two civilians and wounded eight people, including three policemen, in an attack on a police colonel.

Colonel Salam Aalag Zahal, police chief in the capital's southern district of Dura, was driving to work when the bomb exploded. Both he and two bodyguards were hurt.

Meanwhile, the US military said it had released eight former top officials linked to the Saddam Hussein regime.

US military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson, who declined to reveal their names, said the detainees were originally held as suspects on charges of war crimes and as material witnesses, but were no longer deemed to have information.

Al-Arabiya satellite channel said those released included Humam Abdel Khaleq, a former minister of higher education, Ahmed Murtada, a former transport minister, and Asil Tabrah, a former official of the country's Olympic committee.

Meanwhile, scores of electoral officials were working around the clock to tabulate results following Thursday's general elections, the first to a full-term parliament since the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003.

Some 70 percent of the electorate turned out to vote.

On Sunday, vice-president Adel Abdel Mahdi said his United Iraqi Alliance, a Shiite-backed coalition, was "close" to winning an absolute majority of the 138 parliamentary seats.

But the electoral commission has warned that preliminary indications released by political parties should be "taken with the upmost caution". It said it would start giving initial election results as of Tuesday, while warning that final results may not be out before the end of the year.

A Sunni Arab extremist group close to Al-Qaeda issued a videotape on the Internet which showed the execution of a man described as an American contractor held hostage in Iraq.

The Islamic Army in Iraq had earlier said statement on December 8 that it had killed Ronald Schultz, a security contractor. The US State Department said it could not confirm his death.

However German archaeologist and aid worker Susanne Osthoff has been released, Germany's foreign minister said.

He said Osthoff, 43, was at the German embassy in Baghdad. Her Iraqi driver Shalid al-Shimani has also been released.

Susanne Osthoff, a convert to Islam who has lived in Iraq for 10 years, was seized with her driver on November 25 in the Nineveh region of northwest Iraq.

Several other western hostages, including at a Briton, a US and two Canadian aid workers, are still being held in Iraq.