British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, on a surprise visit to Iraq, said on Tuesday violence must not upset plans to hold nation-wide elections.
"I believe they can and should take place by the end of January in all of Iraq," Straw said.
Straw said his trip had been long planned and was not directly connected to efforts for the release of 62-year-old British engineer Ken Bigley, kidnapped in Baghdad on September 16.
"But of course when I get to Baghdad the issue of Ken Bigley and his plight will be high on my agenda," he told reporters in northern Iraq, where he met Kurdish leaders.
Asked whether there had been any contact with Bigley's captors, he said: "Not to my knowledge."
Britain has vowed not to bargain with the kidnappers, Islamic militants led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. They have already beheaded two Americans seized with the Briton.
The son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi said he was using his charity foundation contacts in Iraq to help free Bigley. He said he believed the next 48 hours would be critical.
A taped appeal to the kidnappers from Bigley's 86-year-old mother Lil has been played repeatedly on Iraqi radio.
Straw's visit to Iraq coincides with a bloody trial of strength between insurgents and US-Iraqi forces trying to stop them from sabotaging the planned elections.
Rampant insecurity has raised questions about whether the polls can go ahead, but interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi again pledged to hold them on time.
"We won't let terrorist forces dictate our schedule," he told Iraq's interim assembly. "Military operations will go on until stability has been established in all Iraqi cities."
A US-Iraqi assault drove insurgents off the streets of the northern town of Samarra at the weekend. Police patrolled the town on Tuesday and water and electricity was restored.
But rebels remain in control of other areas such as the Sunni Muslim bastions of Falluja and Ramadi, west of Baghdad, and the Shi'ite slum district of Sadr City in the capital.
FRESH VIOLENCE: Three Iraqi civilians were killed and three wounded in the northern city of Mosul on Tuesday when US troops opened fire after a car bomb blast targeting their convoy, witnesses said.
The US military said four soldiers had been wounded by rocket-propelled grenade fire after the bombing. Another car bomb exploded near a US convoy in Ramadi, killing four Iraqis and wounding two, hospital officials said.
Five decapitated bodies, all believed to be Iraqis, have been found in northern towns, local officials said.
In Baghdad, mortar fire killed one civilian and wounded another near a passport office in the city centre.
Two senior Iraqi customs officials were assassinated in Latifiya, south of Baghdad, on Monday, police said. A roadside bomb killed a US soldier and wounded a second in the Iraqi capital on Monday night, the military said.
That raised to 807 the US combat death toll since the United States invaded Iraq last year to topple Saddam Hussein and eliminate what Washington said was the peril posed by his weapons of mass destruction and links with al Qaeda.
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