CENTCOM denies operational pause

Reuters

Earlier, U.S. officers in the field said commanders had ordered a pause of four to six days in their push toward Baghdad because of supply shortages and stiff Iraqi resistance.

They said the "operational pause," ordered on Friday, meant advances would be put on hold while the military tried to sort out logistics problems caused by long supply lines from Kuwait.

"There is no pause on the battlefield. Just because you see a particular formation pause on the battlefield it does not mean there is a pause," Renuart said.

He joked that he had asked U.S. Central Command chief General Tommy Franks for a few days off and been turned down.

Renaurt said 10 days did not amount to a long conflict, noting it took some 60 to 70 days before Hamid Karzai was installed as the new president of Afghanistan after the U.S.-led military campaign to topple the Taliban administration.

Officers in the field said the U.S.-led invasion force would continue to attack Iraqi forces to the north with heavy air strikes during the pause, battering them before any attack on Baghdad.

On Friday, Britain's army chief, Mike Jackson, dismissed suggestions that the campaign had become bogged down after a few days of quick advances from Kuwait since the invasion started on March 20. But he spoke of a need to pause.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's government has played down the apparently lightning advance by the U.S.-led forces, saying that most of the gains have been across tracts of desert while skirting major towns along the route.