US now confident of capturing Saddam

The United States remained confident Sunday of bringing former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to book, while on the ground the military dug in its heels as the US death toll in the Iraq conflict rose above 200.

Sunday saw two more instances of Iraqis' dissatisfaction with the coalition force engaged in a campaign to rebuild their country as US troops came under attack yet again in the flashpoint town of Fallujah and the British headquarters in Basra was blocked by protestors.

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The chances of capturing Saddam, toppled in the US-led invasion of Iraq launched in March but unsighted since the beginning April, remain very good, Paul Bremer, the top US administrator in Iraq, said Sunday.

"I think the chances of catching Saddam are very high. We will catch him," Bremer told the BBC. "I think it is important that we do that, that we capture or kill him."

Bremer admitted that continued failure to account for Saddam's whereabouts was hampering the coalition's efforts to restore order in Iraq.

"There's no doubt that the fact that we had not been able to show his face allows the remnants of that Baathist regime to go around in the bazaars and in villages and in towns saying that Saddam will come back and we will come back, so don't cooperate with the coalition," he said.

As attacks on coalition forces become an almost daily occurrence, more than 200 US troops have now died in the war to oust the former Iraqi leader and the campaign to rebuild Iraq.

US troops in Fallujah came under rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) attack again overnight, for the third time in four days, even though there were no reports of casualties.

The latest incident was further evidence of how strained relations are in Fallujah, a Sunni Muslim stronghold 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Baghdad, which has been tense since US troops shot dead at least 16 people at a demonstration in late April. In the main southern city of Basra, meanwhile, hundreds of former Iraqi soldiers angrily blocked the headquarters of British forces after the coalition failed to pay back wages.