All British troops may be gone from Iraq by the end of 2007 as
Iraq's army and police gradually assume security responsibility,
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said Tuesday.
Talabani was speaking after meeting British Foreign Secretary
Margaret Beckett, who is in Iraq on her first official visit.
"In my personal opinion, by the end of 2007," Talabani said,
when asked at a news conference when he thought Britain's
7,000-strong force in the Shi'ite south could go home.
"By then we will have achieved good success in building our
forces," he added.
London and Washington see the build-up of Iraq's security
forces, now numbering close to 300,000, including troops and
police, as key to the withdrawal of the mainly American combined
forces of about 150,000.
Beckett would not be drawn into offering a timetable for the
withdrawal of all British troops and emphasized that Talabani was
just giving a personal opinion. Britain has said it aims to cut its
force by half next year.
"The president is not setting a deadline," she said, adding that
the handover of territory to Iraqi forces will be dictated by
conditions on the ground and as Iraqis build more strength.
"These are circumstances which we will have to judge over time,"
she said.
British officials said Beckett, who took office in May, was
principally on a fact-finding mission to assess the situation.
Army command to be transfered
Earlier, after a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Barham
Salih, Beckett said Britain was determined that Iraqis take over
responsibility for security.
Salih said that by the end of this year nearly half of Iraq's 18
provinces would be under control of the Iraqi security forces and
that a delayed transfer of command of Iraq's armed forces to Iraqis
would take place this week.
An Iraqi government spokesman on Monday said the United States
and Iraq hope to sign an agreement by next week to hand operational
command of Iraq's new army to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, after
wrangles on wording had held up the accord.
A handover ceremony set for Saturday was delayed over
disagreements between Baghdad and Washington over the wording of a
document outlining their armies' new relationship.
Denying there had ever been serious disagreement, government
spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said: "Both sides have agreed on the main
issues. I think the document is ready to be signed, probably by the
end of this week or early next week."
He said all remaining disagreements were "technicalities."
The agreement, which the US military says is a key step towards
Iraq taking responsibility for its security, lays out a gradual
transfer of command from US forces to Iraqi units.
Under the timetable, every two weeks command of Iraqi units
meeting certain criteria would be transferred until, by April 1,
Iraqi troops in even the Sunni insurgent strongholds of Ramadi and
Falluja would no longer be under US command, Dabbagh said.
In parallel with this, control of security is being handed over
province by province to Iraqi leaders, a process Dabbagh said would
largely be complete this year, requiring US forces then to receive
approval for any movements across the country.
(China Daily September 6, 2006)
