BC-Iraq

The belts were found during a search of a truck that had crossed into Iraq from Syria at the Waleed border station, Interior Ministry spokesman Maj.-Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said.

“When the truck was searched, 200 explosives belts were found in it,” the general said. He said the driver was detained but he would not give his name or nationality.

Iraqi and U.S. authorities have long complained that Syria is not doing enough to stem the flow of weapons, ammunition and foreign fighters into Iraq. Syria insists it is trying to stop the flow but that it is impossible to seal off the long desert border.

But U.S. military spokesman Brig.-Gen. Kevin Bergner told reporters that 60 to 80 foreign fighters enter Iraq “in any given month” - 70 per cent of them through Syria. He said up to 90 per cent of the suicide attacks in Iraq were carried out by “foreign-born al-Qaida terrorists.”

Bergner did not offer detailed evidence to support the claim.

However, he cited the July 1 suicide attack that collapsed part of a major bridge across the Euphrates River north of Ramadi. A second bomber was supposed to have attacked the bridge but backed out and was captured, Bergner said.

The surviving attacker told interrogators he had been recruited by al-Qaida in his home country, flown to Syria and smuggled across the border to Ramadi, where he stayed for about 10 days before the attack.

Bergner would not give the would-be attacker's nationality, but other military officials said he was a Saudi. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not supposed to release the information.

Bergner said the U.S. command expected al-Qaida in Iraq fighters “to lash out and stage spectacular attacks to reassert themselves” after U.S. troops' gains in their stronghold of Baqouba, located northeast of Baghdad.

A number of private security analysts have questioned the U.S. military's emphasis on "al-Qaida in Iraq," saying it is one of many Sunni and Shiite groups threatening Iraq's stability. Some have suggested that the emphasis on al-Qaida is to link the fight in Iraq to the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks in the United States at a time when the American public is turning against the conflict.

But Bergner insisted "al-Qaida in Iraq" and its allies were the main focus because they were the “main accelerant in sectarian violence and the greatest source of these spectacular” suicide attacks “that are killing Iraqis in such large numbers.”

U.S. officials maintain that violence in Anbar province, long the focal point of the Sunni insurgency, dropped by 50 per cent after local Sunni tribes joined U.S. and Iraqi forces in fighting al-Qaida last year.

That has led to a series of reprisal attacks by al-Qaida, a Sunni terror group, against Sunnis in Anbar and elsewhere who have abandoned the insurgency.

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