PHILADELPHIA, Dec 12: US President George Bush warned on Monday that Iraq’s elections this week ‘won’t be perfect’ and will not end the ‘insurgency’. In a rare comment by a US leader on the toll, Mr Bush said in a question and answer session after a speech here that roughly 30,000 Iraqis had been killed since the March 2003 invasion, while 2,140 US troops have lost their lives.

Mr Bush was in Philadelphia to give the third in a series of speeches ahead of Thursday’s parliamentary elections in Iraq, touting political progress there in a bid to shore up public support for the unpopular war and his strategy to end it.

“No nation in history has made the transition to a free society without facing challenges, setbacks and false starts,” including the United States, the president said.

“This week’s elections won’t be perfect, and a successful vote is not the end of the process,” he cautioned, warning that those targeting US and Iraqi forces ‘aren’t going to give up because of a successful election’.

Mr Bush repeated that democracy in Iraq would be a ‘turning point’ for the Middle East, encouraging reformers throughout a region where Washington has often favored stability over democracy.

“If you’re a supporter of Israel, I would strongly urge you to help other countries become democracies. Israel’s long-term survival depends upon the spread of democracy in the Middle East,” he said.

Some 15.5 million Iraqis are eligible to cast ballots on Thursday to pick a full-term parliament that many hope will stabilize the country and set the stage for the 160,000 US troops to leave.

Mr Bush said the Sunnis had learned to embrace Iraqi’s flegdling political process after boycotting January elections that left them with little representation, and were rallying to politics over violence after US and Shia efforts to include them.

“More Sunnis are involved because they see Iraqi democracy succeeding. They have learned a lesson of democracy: they must participate to have a voice in their nation’s affairs,” he said.

Mr Bush also repeated past criticism of Iran, which he said was ‘actively working to undermine a free Iraq’, and Syria, which he accused of ‘permitting terrorists’ to cross its border into Iraq.

“The vast majority of Iraqis do not want to live under an Iranian-style theocracy and they don’t want Syria to allow the transit of bombers and killers into Iraq. And the United States of America will stand with the Iraqi people against the threats from these neighbors,” he said.

He also had harsh criticism for ‘Arabic television stations’ that were ‘constantly just pounding America’ — without naming names. Washington has previously assailed the Qatar-based Al Jazeera satellite television.

At a time when the Pentagon has been accused of using a contractor to plant stories in Iraq’s media, Mr Bush said the anti-US ‘propaganda machine is pretty darn intense’.

After being pilloried last week for bucking the question-and-answer tradition at the Council on Foreign Relations, Mr Bush took five queries from the crowd — the first a request for an estimate of Iraqis killed.

“How many Iraqi citizens have died in this war? I would say 30,000, more or less, have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis. We’ve lost about 2,140 of our own troops,” he said. —AFP