U.S. Transfers Power to Iraq 2 Days Early

BAGHDAD â€”  The U.S.-led coalition authority here transferred sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government this morning, in a surprise move two days ahead of schedule.

U.S. civilian administrator L. Paul Bremer III, who handed formal documents to Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, was expected to leave the country sometime today.

The transfer came a day after insurgents said Sunday that they had kidnapped a U.S. Marine and a Pakistani working for a major American company, threatening to behead them unless their demands were met.

Military spokesmen confirmed Sunday night that Wassef Ali Hassoun, a 1st Marine Expeditionary Force corporal of Lebanese descent, had been missing since last Monday but did not confirm his capture.

In West Jordan, Utah, a family friend said late Sunday that Hassoun was the Marine shown blindfolded on Arab satellite television, Associated Press reported.

“In the name of Allah ... we pray and we plead for his safe release,� Tarek Nosseir said outside the family’s home.

Another U.S. serviceman, Army Pfc. Keith M. Maupin, 20, of Batavia, Ohio, was captured in an attack on a fuel convoy April 9. A videotape of him in custody also has been broadcast, but his fate remains unclear.

Guerrillas are already holding three Turkish contractors and have promised to behead them -- while President Bush is in Istanbul for a NATO summit -- unless all Turks working for the U.S.-led occupation leave Iraq.

News of the two latest hostages came as militants increased attacks on the U.S. and its allies in the final days before the transfer of sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government.

By striking several high-profile targets, Sunday’s violence seemed geared toward demonstrating that U.S. and Iraqi forces did not have control of security in the capital and in large swaths of the country.

Baghdad and other Iraqi cities reverberated Sunday with news of frequent attacks:

* Two U.S. service members were reported killed. Rockets slammed into a U.S. base in the southeastern outskirts of Baghdad, killing one soldier. The military said one Marine assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force had been killed in action Saturday in Al Anbar province. Their names were not given.

* Insurgents hit an Australian C-130 transport plane leaving Baghdad, killing one person on board and forcing the aircraft back to the military-run airport. Australia’s Defense Department said the victim was a U.S. Defense Department civilian contractor who was not an Australian, but gave no further identification.

* Guerrillas attacked a security checkpoint north of Baghdad in the evening, killing six Iraqi national guardsmen and wounding four policemen.

* Insurgents fired mortar rounds into the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad housing the headquarters of the U.S. occupation. There were no reports of casualties.

Al Jazeera TV broadcast footage of the blindfolded Marine in a desert camouflage uniform and a military ID card bearing his name and rank.

Al Jazeera said the captors, members of a group calling itself Islamic Response, had lured the Marine from an unspecified outpost and abducted him. It said the militants were demanding the release of all Iraqi prisoners in U.S. custody in exchange for the Marine’s life.

Militants associated with Jordanian-born fugitive Abu Musab Zarqawi have beheaded two civilian contractors. The body of the latest victim, South Korean interpreter Kim Sun Il, was dumped on the side of a road last week.

Zarqawi’s group, linked to the Al Qaeda terrorist network, has said it would impose “the just sentence of beheading� on the three Turks by Tuesday unless Turkey complied with its demands to sever all ties with the U.S. occupation.

Most Turks opposed the U.S.-led war that toppled Saddam Hussein’s government and resent the occupation, which has inflicted widespread instability in the region. At least 20,000 turned out to protest Bush’s arrival in Istanbul for a two-day summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Turkey’s leaders said Sunday that they would not heed the militants’ demands or negotiate the fate of the three captives. “Turkey will not bow to pressure from terrorists,� Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul told reporters in Ankara, the capital.

Earlier in the day, Al Arabiya broadcast footage showing a different group of gunmen threatening to behead a man they identified as a Pakistani truck driver for Halliburton, the Houston-based contractor that supplies U.S. troops. The gunmen, who did not identify themselves, said they would kill the man, whom they identified as Yusuf Amjad, unless the U.S. freed Iraqi prisoners held at the Abu Ghraib prison and other detention camps in Iraq.

In the video, Amjad asked Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to close the Pakistani Embassy in Iraq, apparently at the request of his kidnappers.

A Halliburton spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment Sunday.

According to an account of the broadcast by Associated Press, the man, bowing his head, said: “I’m also Muslim, but despite this they didn’t release me. They are going to cut the head of any person regardless of whether he is a Muslim or not.�

Halliburton subsidiary KBR sends hundreds of trucks through Iraq daily as part of a multibillion-dollar contract to provide fuel, food and other supplies to U.S. troops. More than 30 employees have been killed and several have been kidnapped, including Thomas Hamill, a Halliburton truck driver from Mississippi who escaped his captors in May.

The two groups holding the Marine and the Pakistani did not claim any links to Zarqawi’s gunmen, who said they seized the three Turks on Saturday.

In Istanbul with Bush, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said the U.S. was working to find and free the Turkish hostages.

Authorities closed Iraq’s borders Sunday as a security measure before the transfer of sovereignty. At a checkpoint near the Euphrates River about 100 miles south of Baghdad, soldiers stopped a bus carrying 10 men without identification. The military said they were suspected of being foreign fighters.

The small-arms fire that hit the C-130 in Baghdad was the first fatal attack on a fixed-wing aircraft, despite many recent attempts. A DHL cargo plane hit by a rocket last year was severely damaged but made an emergency landing. An Air Force cargo jet carrying 63 passengers was struck in January but returned to the ground safely.

In Hillah, where a car bomb late Saturday detonated among crowds of young strollers on a busy street, hospital officials confirmed that 40 people had died and 41 were injured. Locals railed against the coalition forces based in their city for exposing them to danger and failing to protect them.

“When four Americans were killed in Fallouja, they made a great commotion,� Aqil Abdulrahman, a 33-year-old clothing merchant, said of U.S. authorities. “But when innocent Iraqis -- children, women -- are killed, they do nothing while, according to all world laws and conventions, they are the ones responsible for that.�

Allawi offered amnesty to those who have been fighting the occupation forces and their Iraqi allies. He said his government hoped to divide and thus weaken the insurgency by isolating the hard-core elements from those who have merely aided the resistance against occupation forces. The move was seen as an effort by Allawi to gain credibility from Iraqis who view him and his ministers as U.S. puppets.

In Istanbul, national security advisor Condoleezza Rice signaled U.S. acceptance of Allawi’s plan to integrate former intelligence operatives of the Hussein regime into Iraq’s new security forces.

“I think that the Iraqis believe that there are some people who have security training from the army and who can be brought back. Some have already been brought back,� Rice said on “Fox News Sunday.�

Bremer ordered the disbandment of Hussein’s army in May 2003 and the firings of thousands of former Baathist Party members from government positions -- actions that left Iraq with a security vacuum and a dearth of professionals.

Iraq’s national security advisor, Mouwafak Rabii, said on “CBS Evening News� in an interview here that the Iraqi leadership expected Hussein to be handed over by coalition authorities within the next few days to face trial on charges of crimes against humanity. Rabii also said Allawi had made clear that he was inclined to reinstate the death penalty soon after full sovereignty was restored and that Hussein would most likely face execution if convicted.

Allawi said on CNN’s “Late Edition� that his government would take custody of Hussein by July 4.

Powell told CNN that details of the hand-over were still being worked out. He said he expected that Hussein would remain in the physical custody of the U.S., but that legal custody would be given to Iraq “shortly.�

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Times staff writers John Balzar in western Iraq, Janet Hook and T. Christian Miller in Washington and special correspondent Raheem Salman in Hillah contributed to this report.