Agence France Presse

Baghdad, March 13:

The United States-led coalition plans to make it harder for foreign fighters to enter Iraq when it unveils a new border control policy later today, a senior official said.

Entry points along the country’s porous borders will be reduced as part of the scheme, drawn up by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), Iraq’s Governing Council and the interior ministry, the official told reporters. Some 10 to 20 points of entry along the Iraq-Iran border would be cut to three at Muntheriyah, Zurbatiyah and al-Shalamasha, he said.

“We expect these three border points along the Iraq-Iran border to be fully functioning points of entry within approximately six weeks,” the coalition official said.

“These are part of our broader effort to more aggressively regulate and in some cases limit border traffic coming across the borders,” he continued.

United States officials say extremists and insurgents, backed by foreign fighters, have now replaced former members of the Baath party and Saddam Hussein loyalists as the biggest security threat in Iraq.

Iraqi Shiite religious leaders blamed US forces for not policing the country’s borders tightly enough after the bombings at

Shiite shrines in two cities on March 2, in which more than 170 people died and hundreds more were injured.

In the wake of the attacks, Iraq’s US civilian administrator, Paul Bremer, pledged to beef up border security and said that 60 million dollars had been earmarked for that purpose.