U.S. not sure al Qaeda suspect killed Salim
U.S. to move troops from South Korea to Iraq
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 Funeral held for Governing Council President Izzedine Salim.
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 A car bomb kills Izzedine Salim in Baghdad.
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 CNN's David Ensor on the Iraqi artillery shell believed to contain sarin gas.
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| IZZEDINE SALIM | • Born: Basra, Iraq, 1940
• Occupation: Writer
• Previously worked as teacher
• Fled Iraq in 1980 until end of Saddam Hussein's regime
Source: The Associated Press
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Interactive: Governing Iraq
Map: Where Salim was killed
• U.S. confirms S. Korea troop cut
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BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- U.S. military officials reversed course Tuesday in their investigation of the killing of Iraqi Governing Council President Izzedine Salim, saying evidence now indicates the suicide bombing that killed him was not the work of suspected al Qaeda operative Musab al-Zarqawi.
Salim's death was a blow for the coalition's efforts to transfer power to Iraqis before July, but officials said those plans are not only still in effect, they are absolutely necessary to complete.
"We have made a promise to the Iraqi people that the culmination of that process will be June 30," the spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition, Dan Senor, said. "We think it would be an enormous mistake to push off that date."
Salim and six other Iraqis died in a fiery attack at a coalition checkpoint near the center of Baghdad Monday morning. Officials said Monday that the bombing had the "hallmarks" of an al-Zarqawi attack -- a spectacular suicide attack against a symbolic target.
Al-Zarqawi is a Jordanian-born al Qaeda associate who has been tied to numerous attacks in Iraq and throughout the Middle East.
But on Tuesday, hours after the coalition's chief civilian administrator eulogized Salim, military spokesman Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said "the methodology" used in the attack didn't match al-Zarqawi.
"Some of the forensic evidence we picked up causes us to believe it might not have been an attack conducted by Zarqawi, that it might have been a different group, because of a different methodology in some of the techniques used," Kimmitt said. "That's about all I can say."
A previously unknown group calling itself the "Arab Resistance Movement" claimed responsibility Monday evening for the attack, and Kimmitt said that group "was certainly not a Zarqawi affiliate."
Earlier Tuesday, the coalition's chief civilian administrator Paul Bremer vowed that an Iraqi government will assume control of the country as scheduled in 43 days.
"We must continue the political process leading to an interim government next month and to elections next year," Bremer said at Salim's funeral. "Izzedine Salim gave his life for this cause and we honor his life and memory by continuing this quest."
After the funeral, Salim's body was returned to his hometown, the southern city of Basra, for burial.
New troops to Iraq
About 3,600 troops from an Army division based in South Korea will be going to Iraq to replace soldiers whose tours of duty were extended after an outbreak of fresh fighting there last month, the Pentagon announced Tuesday.
The 2nd Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division is expected to deploy to Iraq by mid-summer, Pentagon officials said. Its reassignment from the Korean peninsula to the Middle East will keep the number of U.S. troops in Iraq at around 138,000.
"This decision supports the military requirement to meet operational commitments in Iraq," a Pentagon statement said. "The Department of Defense will maintain its commitment to the defense of Korea and to the security and stability of the region."
The announcement from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's office confirmed plans already disclosed.
Cleric wants fighters to leave Najaf area
Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, on Tuesday called for "participating parties" in the conflict between U.S.-led troops and Muqtada al-Sadr's banned Mehdi Army to "leave the holy city of Najaf" and neighboring areas.
Al-Sistani also cautioned the residents of the area to stay out of the holy city "during these dangerous and uncertain times," according to a statement released by his office.
"The office hopes that the Iraqi police and tribal leaders carry out their responsibilities to maintain security and stability," the statement said.
Najaf was "relatively calm," Kimmitt said, but Karbala witnessed a "minor engagement" in the morning and some further fighting in the evening. No casualties were reported.
Kimmitt also said coalition forces and the sheikhs of Sadr City -- a Baghdad neighborhood with a high concentration of al-Sadr supporters -- had reached an agreement to end hostile acts against police, the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps and coalition forces by local residents in exchange for a reduced coalition presence in the area.
Kimmitt said that agreement was holding, with some minor exceptions, as was a cease-fire in Fallujah west of Baghdad, where the coalition set up an Iraqi force headed by former Saddam Hussein regime soldiers to keep the peace.
In the northern city of Mosul, Task Force Olympia spokesman Lt. Col. Joseph Pieck confirmed eyewitness accounts of a "foreigner" working for a security company affiliated with the coalition being gunned down in the southeastern part of the city. No further details were available.
Four coalition soldiers -- three of them Americans -- and at least 50 Iraqis were reported killed in combat around Iraq on Monday, military officials said. The fighting appeared heaviest in southern Iraq, where coalition warplanes bombed targets in Nasiriya after Italian troops pulled back from a base in the center of that city, Kimmitt said.
Al-Sadr is wanted in connection with the killing of a rival cleric.
Chemicals in artillery shell tested
The Iraq Survey Group was conducting tests on an artillery shell believed to have been loaded with the chemicals needed to create the nerve agent sarin.
The 155 mm artillery shell exploded Monday before it could be disarmed. It had been found Saturday near the Baghdad airport.
Kimmitt said U.S. troops who found the device showed "minor traces of exposure" to sarin, but they were quickly treated and released.
The unmarked shell contained two inert chemicals meant to be mixed together when fired from a cannon. As an improvised explosive device, Kimmitt said, the weapon was "ineffective," and he said he doubted whoever had rigged it even knew it contained the potentially lethal chemicals.
No stocks of banned weapons have turned up since the U.S. invasion.
A Pentagon official told CNN that a single field test indicated the shell contained sarin and that a more definitive laboratory test had not been conducted. Initial field tests are often incorrect.
CNN military analyst Ken Robinson noted that more than 15,000 "false positives" for chemical weapons were registered during the first Gulf war.
Other developments
A final payment of $340,000 was made in May to the Iraqi National Congress led by Ahmed Chalabi, a senior Pentagon official said. The payments, made under under the Iraqi Liberation Act, were aimed at getting information and providing training for INC members. But they are ending because, as of June 30, the law supporting opposition groups becomes moot due to the fact Iraq will resume sovereignty over its own affairs, the official said. Iraq was the focus Tuesday of a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage both testified. (Full story)British Prime Minister Tony Blair has ruled out any "quick exit" from Iraq and vowed to keep British troops there until stability is restored. "We will continue until the job is done," Blair said after talks in Ankara with Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan. (Full story)
