Allawi charge is boost for Kerry
By Tim Reid in Washington and James Hider in Baghdad






IRAQ'S interim Prime Minister yesterday delivered another blow to President Bush just a week before the US election when he blamed American-led forces for failing to prevent last weekend's massacre of 49 Iraqi Army recruits.

Mr Allawi, who only last month lavished praise on Mr Bush during a White House visit, said that "gross negligence" on the part of the US and its coalition partners was to blame for the massacre of the recruits, 95 miles north of Baghdad.




Mr Kerry had already moved onto the attack against Mr Bush over Monday's news that hundreds of tons of explosives were stolen from an Iraqi military facility after the US-led invasion, and reports yesterday of an imminent White House request for another $70 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan.