The United States is confident elections can be held in Iraq on schedule in January despite the insurgency currently raging in that country, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday.
"There is an insurgency raging. We see it every day, there's no question about it," Powell said on the NBC television programme "Meet the Press." "This is a difficult time as this insurgency still rages and as we work to bring it under control.
"But it will be brought under control," he said. "It's not an impossible task, and when it has been brought under control you will find that the forces that keep Iraq together are stronger than the forces that would pull it apart.
"When that insurgency is put down what the people of the world will see are Iraqis in charge of their own destiny," Powell said.
"Nobody is planning to postpone the elections," he said. "Prime Minister (Iyad) Allawi has been quite clear about this.
"Most of the country would be in a satisfactory position for elections if they were being held next month," Powell said. "So we have time to deal with the challenges we face.
"We're confident of what we're doing, we're confident of our strategy, we're confident that we've done the right thing in both Afghanistan and Iraq. This is not the time to get weak in the knees or faint about it but to drive on and finish the work that we started."
Asked about cities such as Samara and Fallujah where US forces are not in control, Powell said: "Our military commanders, working with Iraqi military leaders and the Iraqi interim government, have plans for each one of those areas, to bring them back under government control in time for the election."
Powell also reiterated that no connection had been found between the ousted regime of Saddam Hussein and the al Qaeda members who carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
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