Bush comes under Democrats' fire

In Washington, as the CIA took the rap for US President George W. Bush's erroneous claim that Saddam sought nuclear arms, opposition Democrats called for heads to roll and Bush's popularity ratings plummeted to their lowest level since January 2003.

Sunday's landmark meeting of the new transitory governing council in Baghdad has been declared a major step by coalition forces desperate to restore order and placate Iraqi citizens seething at the slow pace of US-led efforts to restore basic services and security and introduce a democratic government.

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The council, with 25 members reflecting the make-up of Iraqi society, is charged with mapping Iraq's path towards elections -- and is meeting almost 35 years to the day since Saddam's Baath party came to power.

But Iraq's first tentative steps towards democracy came amid ongoing violence, with more attacks on US forces in the flashpoint town of Fallujah, west of the capital.

Two people were arrested after a separate blast rocked the Abu Gharib prison, west of Baghdad, leaving one US soldier slightly wounded.

A US army patrol also came under fire on the outskirts of Fallujah late Friday, but suffered no casualties.

US military vehicles patrolled Baghdad neighbourhoods Saturday appealing by loudspeaker for Iraqis to help them restore law and order to the capital terrorised by looters and armed robbers since the regime fell.

The credibility of the unelected governing council is considered crucial to coalition efforts to rebuild Iraq and get its oil-based export economy up and running to fund the massive costs of reconstruction.

Its success will also be vital if Bush is to reverse plummeting US public support as the majority find the number of US casualties in Iraq "unacceptable", according to a new poll Saturday.

Fifty-two percent of respondents to a Washington Post-ABC poll said the number of casualties was unacceptable, while 44 percent found them acceptable and three percent had no opinion.

At least 31 US soldiers have been killed in guerrilla attacks in Iraq since May 1, when the United States declared an end to major combat operations.

Fully 50 percent of polled Americans said they thought the Bush administration "intentionally exaggerated its evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction."

Democrats turned up the heat on the Bush administration Friday, calling for an independent investigation into whether the White House misled the public over the Iraqi threat before the war, and insisting that heads should roll over the growing scandal.

In a surprise statement, Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet took responsibility for a key error that Bush had included in his January 28 State of the Union Address to Congress, that Iraq was trying to procure nuclear material from Africa.

Tenet admitted that the statement: "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," should "never have been included in the text written for the president".

Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean called for a full-scale investigation into whether the US government ignorned the CIA's faulty intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs.

"We need to find out what the president knew and when he knew it," Dean added, resurrecting language used during the investigation into the Watergate political scandal, which led to the resignation of disgraced President Richard Nixon in August 1974.

Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, another Democratic presidential hopeful, also demanded a full-scale inquiry, saying in a statement that the controversy "breaks the basic bond of trust we must have with our leaders in times of war and terrorism."

The White House has been on the defensive for several days over reports that the CIA gave the Bush administration advance warning last year that documents alleging Iraq had tried to buy enriched uranium from Niger were false.