US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Sunday (local time) warned that the insurgency in Iraq could go on for at least a decade and confirmed that the army had been in contact with some of its leaders in an attempt to quell the violence.

He spoke after insurgents launched co-ordinated suicide attacks that killed at least 33 people and wounded dozens more in the northern city of Mosul.

Rumsfeld said that Iraqis, not US troops, would eventually bring an end to attacks that have killed thousands of civilians and 1,730 US soldiers.

His downbeat assessment, during a television interview, contradicted a claim at the end of May by Vice-President Dick Cheney that the insurgency was "in its last throes."

Mr Rumsfeld said: "We're not going to win against the insurgency. The Iraqi people are going to win against the insurgency. That insurgency could go on for any number of years. Insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, 10, 12 years."

But al-Qaida in Iraq and an affiliated group issued denials on websites that they were negotiating with US or Iraqi officials to ending the insurgency, saying their fight was about upholding their religion, not only about ending the occupation.

"There is a lot talk about false misleading negotiations with the Crusaders and the Jews," the al-Qaida group said in a statement. "We have good faith in our Mujahedeen brothers that these tricks will not dupe them."

Former Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said Monday that a timetable for foreign troops' pullout from the country is not decided, Egypt's official MENA news agency reported.

Allawi made the remark after a meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on the latest developments in Iraq and the region.

Allawi was quoted as saying that the timetable is linked with Iraq's potentials and the establishment of military security institutions capable of facing challenges.

"It is tough to set up a timetable but there is a full agreement between Iraq and the United States and other countries participating in multinational troops that whenever Iraq has the potentials the troops will leave the country," he said.

He also praised Egypt's supportive stance on Iraq.

During an international conference on Iraq in Brussels, Belgium, on Wednesday, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiar al-Zibari said that Egypt is the first Arab nation to send an ambassador to post-Saddam Iraq.

Allawi also said that the militants crossing into Iraq from Syria are not backed by the Syrian Government.

"The answer to the tension in Iraq cannot be through a military solution or by force alone," Allawi said.

Helicopter crashes down

A US Apache attack helicopter crashed in Iraq Monday and recovery teams were sent to find out the fate of its two-man crew, the US military said.

"We had a helicopter crash northwest of Taji," Lieutenant Colonel Cliff Kent, spokesman for the 3rd Infantry Division said, referring to a major airbase north of Baghdad.

Local people said they saw two helicopters circling before one crashed out of the sky just north of Baghdad.

"I saw a missile hit one of the helicopters and black smoke come from it before it went down," said one man, who gave his name as Abu Mustafa.

Also Monday, a roadside bomb detonated near a police patrol in northern Baghdad, killing two civilians and wounding three others.

Source: China Daily