Meanwhile, the United States said it is sticking to its timetable for Iraq self-rule by July 1 even though U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Wednesday the deadline might have to be reconsidered to forge an agreement on a provisional government.

The United States says it is impossible to arrange elections in such a short time because of the ongoing insurgency.

In their latest violence, two suicide bombers blew themselves up at the offices of two Kurdish parties in the northern city of Irbil on Sunday, killing a total of 109 people.

On Wednesday, an Iraqi insurgent group, the "Jaish Ansar al-Sunna," claimed responsibility for the bombings. It said it targeted the "dens of the devils" because of the parties' ties to the United States. The claim could not be independently confirmed.

The two parties are the strongest allies of the United States and had fought alongside its troops during the invasion of Iraq last March.

The statement was posted in Arabic on a Web site that frequently carries statements by Islamic militants.

The name of the organization was included among a dozen insurgent groups that issued a joint statement this week in Ramadi and Fallujah - part of the Sunni Triangle stronghold of Saddam Hussein loyalist - warning Iraqis against cooperating with the U.S.-led occupation.

Kurdish and U.S. officials had suspected the attacks were carried out by Ansar al-Islam, an extremist group with alleged ties to al-Qaida.

The attacks killed numerous officials of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. Insurgents have in recent weeks widened their operations to include Iraqi civilians in addition to U.S. forces who have lost 368 troops to hostile fire since the invasion. The January toll was five more than in December.

Despite continuing losses, Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno, commander of the Army's 4th Infantry Division based in Tikrit, predicted that coalition forces would be able to crush the insurgency within a year.

He said the violence shows the insurgents are trying to sabotage a future government or even gain leverage in it.

"There are ethnic issues. People are now positioning themselves to see what their role is in the next government, and they are doing it by force," Odierno said after a tour of Tikrit, Saddam's hometown.

"They are trying to disrupt the way things are going so they can get a little advantage." He did not elaborate.

The U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority plans to hand over sovereignty to a provisional Iraqi government on June 30. However, Iraq's influential Shiite Muslim clergy is demanding that power be handed over to a directly elected government rather than an administration chosen indirectly through a system of caucuses, as envisaged by Washington.

The United Nations soon will dispatch a team to Iraq to resolve the dispute.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington Wednesday the administration and some U.N. experts remain convinced that elections could not be held before July 1, when the U.S. occupation is due to end.

"But we are willing to listen to ideas when the U.N. team comes back to see what they might say," Boucher said.

However, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that if the two sides "were to change that understanding, that agreement, of course it would be something that we would have to consider."

In another fatality, a Spanish military adviser, Gonzalo Perez Garcia, who fell into a coma after being seriously wounded in a shootout last month died Wednesday, the Spanish Defense Ministry said. He is the 11th Spaniard to be killed here since August.

U.S. troops, meanwhile, arrested a relative of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, and believe he may help in the hunt for the most senior former regime figure still at large, a U.S. officer said Wednesday.

Al-Douri was the vice chairman of the Baath Party's Revolutionary Command Council and a longtime confidant of Saddam. He is No. 6 on the wanted list and U.S. forces have offered a US$10 million bounty for his arrest.

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