Jakarta, Indonesia – The top U.S. military officer said Tuesday the discovery that roadside bombs in Iraq contained material made in Iran does not necessarily mean the Iranian government is involved in supplying insurgents.
The comments by Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called into question assertions by three senior U.S. military officials in Baghdad on Sunday who said the highest levels of Iranian government were responsible for arming Shiite militants in Iraq with the bombs, blamed for the deaths of more than 170 troops in the U.S.-led coalition.
White House spokesman Tony Snow said Monday that he was confident the weaponry was coming with the approval of the Iranian government. On Tuesday, Snow said Pace’s comments do not conflict with those of the senior military officials or the White House.
Pace told reporters in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, that U.S. forces hunting militant networks in Iraq that produced roadside bombs had arrested Iranians and some of the materials used in the devices were made in Iran.
“That does not translate that the Iranian government per se, for sure, is directly involved in doing this,” Pace said. “What it does say is that things made in Iran are being used in Iraq to kill coalition soldiers.”
Meanwhile Tuesday, the Iraqi commander of the Baghdad security crackdown announced that Iraq will close its borders with Syria and Iran for 72 hours as part of the drive to end the violence that has threatened to divide the capital along sectarian lines.
Addressing the nation on behalf of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Lt. Gen. Abboud Gambar also said Baghdad’s nighttime curfew would be expanded by an hour and permits allowing civilians to carry weapons in public would be suspended during all of the operation, which he suggested could last weeks.
Gambar’s announcement came hours after a suicide truck bomber struck a government warehouse in a mainly Shiite Muslim neighborhood of the capital, killing at least 15 people and wounding 27, according to police and hospital officials. A parked car bomb also exploded near a bakery in another Shiite area, killing four people and wounding four others, police said.
The general did not say when the borders would close, but another official said it was expected within two days. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to journalists, added that the borders would only partly reopen after the 72-hour closing.
Gambar said Baghdad’s nighttime curfew would be extended by one hour when the security drive kicks off fully, running from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m.
In other violence, the U.S. military announced that an American soldier died in combat Sunday in volatile Anbar province, west of Baghdad, raising to 42 the number of American personnel killed this month.
