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(From Agence France Presse)
The United States aimed for Iraqi elections by mid-2004, but a new regional council set up in toppled dictator Saddam Hussein's heartland met with local indifference as two more US troops died in rebel strikes.
US troops inaugurated a 44-member regional council for Al-Anbar province, home to the flashpoint towns of Ramadi and Fallujah, as they sought to calm one of the main battlefields in the war with insurgents.
"Today is a very historic day for Al-Anbar," said Colonel David Teeples, commander of the Third Armoured Cavalry Regiment.
But in a hint that US efforts to foster democratic participation in a free Iraq may be falling on deaf ears, people of the provincial capital Ramadi said they knew nothing about the first meeting of their civic representatives.
The chief administrator of the new Iraq, Paul Bremer, expressed confidence that nationwide elections could be held in less than a year, clearing the way for the coalition forces to withdraw.
"It is certainly not unrealistic to think that we could have elections by mid-year 2004," Bremer told reporters at the inauguration of a new foreign ministry in Baghdad.