Rumsfeld tours heart of Baghdad

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- In the heart of Iraq's capital, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld walked through the massive doorway of one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces to tape a reassuring message to the Iraqi people.\n"Iraq belongs to you," he said, his words broadcast on radio and television. "The coalition has no intention of owning or running Iraq."\nLater, at a rally with cheering U.S. and British troops, Rumsfeld said the Bush administration is pressing other countries to turn over Iraqi fugitives.\n"Some of the countries that had been accepting them previously are no longer accepting them, which is a good start," he said.\nAs he entered the palace for the taping and a meeting with American commanders, the defense secretary craned his neck to admire a five-story foyer with a chandelier the size of a school bus.\nHe drove past defaced images of Saddam in a military convoy that mixed with battered cars, pickups and buses carrying city residents.\nHe visited a power plant on a bank of the Tigris River. It had been restarted with the help of U.S. military engineers.\nAnd he told the troops in an Iraqi Airways hangar at Baghdad International Airport, "You've liberated a people, you've deposed a cruel dictator and you have ended his threat to free nations."\nRumsfeld has insisted his trip is not a "victory tour," waiting for President Bush to make a formal announcement of the end of major combat operations, which is expected Thursday. Some of the commanders in Iraq were less circumspect.\n"We won the military fight, clearly," said Maj. Gen. Buford Blount III, the commander of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, which is occupying Baghdad. He said he hoped his division could start returning home by June.\nRetired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, who heads the reconstruction effort in Iraq, said the quick victory prevented the humanitarian crisis he had feared. Americans, Garner said, "ought to be beating our chests every day."\n"We ought to look in the mirror, stick out our chests, suck in our bellies, and say, 'Damn, we're Americans,' and smile," Garner said.\nDuring his visit to Saddam's former Abu Ghurayb North Palace, Rumsfeld taped the radio and television message to be broadcast to Iraqis in and around Baghdad by the U.S. military.\nU.S. allies from Europe and the Americas met in London Wednesday to discuss sending in troops to help with peacekeeping and reconstruction, said Gen. Gene Renuart, operations director for U.S. Central Command. The United States hopes to put together a coalition force large enough to replace one of the two American divisions planned to be in Iraq during the rebuilding phase, Renuart said.\nThat force probably would not be ready until August or September, Renuart said.\nRumsfeld also visited the Baghdad South electricity generating station, one of three in the capital that U.S. forces worked with Iraqi experts to restart. Power has been restored to water and sewer pumping stations, a dozen hospitals and about half the capital, Maj. Andy Backus of the Army Corps of Engineers told Rumsfeld.\nOther Army engineers said power was not back on in the city's sewage treatment plants, so raw sewage was being dumped into the Tigris.\n"My impression is some (countries) that were accepting them are no longer, which is a good start," Rumsfeld told the rally of U.S. troops at Baghdad airport, formerly called Saddam International.\nThe troops spoke as highly of Rumsfeld as he did of them.