Baghdad Initiative to Go Door to Door

In his discussions with Bush, al-Maliki continued to press for a rapid U.S. withdrawal from the capital to bases "on the outskirts of Baghdad," al-Askari said. The prime minister has claimed his forces will be ready to assume control of security for the whole country by summer. The Americans, perhaps optimistically, hope that can happen by year's end.

Al-Askari and Hassan al-Suneid, another top al-Maliki aide and lawmaker from his Dawa Party, said the fresh security push would be open-ended once initiated this weekend.

"The Iraqi Interior, Defense and National Security ministries will take part using information we have gathered from a new intelligence network," al-Suneid said. "There will be no time limit, and there will be many stages to the operation."

Al-Suneid said American forces would take part in a supporting role.

As forces apparently began to get ready, the powerful Association of Muslim Scholars voiced Sunni agitation and claimed the coming drive was really a joint operation by Interior Ministry commandos, the Iraqi army and the Mahdi Army to further cleanse mixed neighborhoods. Iraq's security forces are dominated by Shiites.

Sheik Mohammed Bashar al-Fayadh, a spokesman for the organization, claimed residents had seen 150 vehicles massing Friday in the Shula region in northwest Baghdad in advance of the assault.

"We fear a huge attack," al-Fayadh said on Al-Jazeera satellite television.

Throughout Iraq on Friday, at least 31 people died violently or were found dead, including two beheaded victims of the sectarian slaughter found floating in the Tigris river.

The body of an Associated Press employee was found shot in the back of the head Friday, six days after he was last seen by his family leaving for work. Ahmed Hadi Naji, 28, was the fourth AP staffer to die violently in the Iraq war and the second AP employee killed in less than a month. He had been a messenger and occasional cameraman for the AP for 2 1/2 years.

"All of us at AP share the pain and grief being felt by Ahmed's family and friends," said AP President and CEO Tom Curley.

The circumstances of Naji's death were unclear. Dozens of Iraqis are found slain almost every day in Baghdad, many believed to be victims of sectarian death squads.

An American contractor was abducted Friday along with his driver and translator, and the two Iraqis were later found dead near a stadium in the southern city of Basra, police said. The fate of the American was unknown.

"The two victims were the translator and a driver," said a Basra police official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

Basra's police chief, Gen. Mohammed Humadi, confirmed that a U.S. citizen had been kidnapped and said he was an American of Iraqi origin. The contractor's name and the company for which he worked were not disclosed.

French President Jacques Chirac, meanwhile, said the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq destabilized the entire Middle East and caused terrorism to spread, adding that the problems in Iraq justified France's strong opposition to the war.

"As France foresaw and feared, the war in Iraq caused upheavals whose effects have not yet finished unraveling," Chirac said in a speech to French ambassadors.

___

AP Military Writer Robert Burns in Washington and AP reporter Christine Ollivier in Paris contributed to this report.