BAGHDAD – Insurgents killed three British troops and two American soldiers in separate attacks in southern and central Iraq, coalition officials said Friday.

Several British soldiers also were wounded in the Thursday mortar attack on their base at the airport in the southern city of Basra, the British military said. The two Americans were killed in separate attacks Thursday in the Baghdad area, the U.S. said.

The British deaths bring the number of British soldiers killed in the Iraq war to 162. The much larger American force has lost at least 3,630 service members, according to an Associated Press count.

U.S. and British officials hope that stepped-up military operations around Baghdad will give Iraqi leaders the chance to reach power-sharing agreements to establish a long-term peace in this country.

On Thursday, Sunni legislators returned to parliament after a five-week boycott, raising hopes the assembly can make progress on legislation demanded by Washington before the lawmakers take a month’s break in August.

The 44 members of the Iraqi Accordance Front attended Thursday’s parliament session after striking a deal with the Shiites and Kurds to reinstate the Sunni speaker, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, who was ousted by the Shiite-dominated assembly last month for erratic behavior.

Under a face-saving formula, al-Mashhadani is expected to resign after presiding over a few sessions. One official said al-Mashhadani was to step down Wednesday or parliament will force him out. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.

The Sunnis returned to the 275-member parliament two days after al-Sadr’s 30 lawmakers ended their boycott. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government accepted the Sadrists’ demands for rebuilding a Shiite shrine damaged by bombings.

The two boycotts had paralyzed the legislature, which is under strong criticism from the Americans for failing to approve key legislation and for plans to take a month’s vacation in August at a time when U.S. and Iraqi troops are fighting and dying on the battlefield.

In Friday’s violence, four people were killed and three wounded when clashes broke out in the Shiite village of Ajemi near Khalis, 50 miles north of Baghdad, the provincial police said. They said it appeared the village had come under attack by Sunni extremists.

The commander of U.S. forces south of Baghdad said Friday that if the U.S. troop buildup in Iraq is reversed before the summer of 2008, the military will risk giving up the security gains it has achieved at a cost of hundreds of American lives over the past six months.

Maj. Gen. Richard Lynch, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, mentioned none of the proposals in Congress for beginning to withdraw U.S. troops as soon as this fall. But he made clear in an interview that in his area of responsibility south of Baghdad, it will take many more months to consolidate recent gains.

“It’s going to take through (this) summer, into the fall, to defeat the extremists in my battle space, and it’s going to take me into next spring and summer to generate this sustained security presence,” he said, referring to an Iraqi capability to hold gains made by U.S. forces.

Iraq’s national security adviser raised doubt that the Iraqi security forces would be able to take responsibility for the whole country as had been expected.

“We had hopes and intentions to take over security in all provinces and command of all army divisions before the end of the year,” Mouwaffak al-Rubaie told The Associated Press. “But there are difficulties and challenges that appeared along the way, in arming, equipping, recruiting and training our armed forces.”

Al-Rubaie would not say how long it would take for Iraqi forces to be able to operate on their own.

“I think it is very difficult to predict a certain time,” he said. “This depends on the speed of training and equipping. This depends on the level of threat whether regional or local. But we are not talking about weeks, or not even months. More than months.”

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said the U.N. “could play an enormously helpful role” in Iraq.

Zalmay Khalilzad, who also served as U.S. ambassador to Iraq from 2005 to April, wrote in an op-ed piece Friday in The New York Times that the U.N. “possesses certain comparative advantages for undertaking complex internal and regional mediation efforts.”

The United Nations has an office and a special representative in Iraq but it cut back severely on its presence here after the Aug. 19, 2003 truck bombing at its headquarters in eastern Baghdad that killed at least 22 people, including the top U.N. official Sergio Vieira de Mello and his deputy, Nadia Younes.

“In the role of mediator, it has inherent legitimacy and the flexibility to talk to all parties, including elements outside the political process,” Khalilzad wrote in the Times.

Khalilzad also said the United Nations is “uniquely suited to work out a regional framework to stabilize Iraq.”

Associated Press correspondent Bassem Mroue contributed to this report.

A service of the Associated Press(AP)