After US President George W. Bush told his troops during a lightning Thanksgiving visit to Baghdad that the coalition would prevail over insurgents, former US first lady Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in the city to meet with US officials and soldiers.

In Europe, police also moved against the Iraqi insurgency, arresting three alleged militants suspected of recruiting insurgents for suicide attacks in the country.

Iraqi police and US forces closed off Baghdad's main commercial thoroughfare as hundreds marched through the city centre to demonstrate against terrorism amid persistent fears of attack by anti-US insurgents or Islamic militants.

Security services were taking no chances with a rally bound to be seen as pro-US by the insurgents and a heavy Iraqi police presence accompanied the marchers while two US military helicopters hovered ahead.

"This is the picture of the martyr Adnan. He is a martyr of terror," said Hassan Rehemi, as he held aloft a photograph of his 20-year-old son, who died in a blast north of Baghdad last week.

In a speech, Aziz al-Yasser, the coordinator of the rally organizers, the Alliance of Iraqi Democratic Forces, called on ordinary people to help the US-led coalition in the fight against insurgents.

"We have to help the coalition – the call issued by some for the withdrawal of occupation forces is suspect, Iraq will drown in a lake of blood if they withdraw," he said.

"We need them to help Iraqi forces to restore security first."

He said the attacks were actually delaying the end of the US-led occupation.

The latest coalition casualty came when a US soldier from the 101st Airborne division was killed when four mortar shells were fired at the division's base in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, a US army spokesman said.

Meanwhile, Italian and German police arrested three North Africans as part of a massive anti-terrorism dragnet reportedly connected with terrorist attacks in Iraq.

The arrests followed a confirmation by prosecutors in Milan that they had issued arrest warrants for five suspected al-Qaeda activists, including an Algerian arrested in Germany and a woman nabbed in a dawn at Padua.

They were wanted, among other things, on suspicion of having recruited suicide attackers for strikes in Iraq, police sources said.

The five included the Algerian whom German police said had been arrested in Hamburg at the request of the Italian prosecutors. A police spokeswoman identified him as Mahjub Abderrazak, known as "the sheikh."

Italian prosecutors say the Milan-based cell, which had contacts throughout northern Italy, was trying to recruit suicide bombers for attacks in Iraq. But two of the five for whom warrants were issued were still at large, including an Iraqi and a Tunisian citizen, both 33.

Bush, during a top secret morale-boosting mission to Iraq Thursday, that defied threats from ground-to-air missiles, told some 600 US troops at Thanksgiving dinner at Baghdad airport that the militants would not win.

"We didn't charge hundreds of miles into the heart of Iraq, and pay a bitter cost of casualties, defeat a ruthless dictator and liberate 25 million people only to retreat before a band of thugs and assassins," he warned.

"Those who attack our coalition forces and kill innocent Iraqis are testing our will," Bush told the troops who have come under regular attack during the peresistent insurgency that has dogged the US-led occupation for seven months.

"We will prevail. We will win because our cause is just ... We will prevail because the Iraqis want their freedom." COWARDLY STOPOVER

Bush's visit was welcomed Friday by the country's Shiite majority but shunned by the Sunnis as a cowardly swift stopover for fear of insurgents.

Bush also met with some leaders of the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, which is facing increasing pressure from leading Iraqi Shiites to amend power transfer plans.

Washington is now considering holding elections for a provisional Iraqi government rather than have its members selected by regional caucuses, The Washington Post said Friday.

The possible change in the US plan for a transition to Iraqi sovereignty comes after the leader of Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, rejected Thursday the current US-led coalition's blueprint for transition and demanded elections at all levels of the Iraqi administration.

"Elections are now a possibility," a senior US official close to Iraq's political transition process told the daily. "We're scrambling to find a solution."

On November 15, the US-led coalition announced it would hand over power to a provisional Iraqi government selected by notables to be convened in each of Iraq's 18 provinces, abandoning its previous insistence on prior elections under a constitution approved by referendum.

After Sistani's rejection, however, US officials told the daily that the Bush administration may be forced to organise elections to satisfy Sistani.

In unrest reported north of Baghdad Friday, two young Iraqi sisters were killed by US troops as they collected wood from a field near Baqubah, police and family members said.

In a further potential boost to coalition morale, Japan has reportedly decided to send 10 Air Self-Defence Force troops to Kuwait in December, followed by a main force of 140 personnel in January to help supply US and British troops, the Yomiuri Shinbun newspaper said.

The Japanese contingent will be accompanied by three C-130 transport planes that will shuttle supplies between Kuwait and Iraq, the report said.

Japanese defence chief Shigeru Ishiba said Friday reconnaissance of southern Iraq shows security in the area has stabilised as Tokyo mulls deployment of non-combat troops to help with reconstruction.AFP