‘Iraqis to fully replace US troops by 2006-end’

BAGHDAD: The Iraqi army will fully replace US-led coalition forces in the country by early 2007, once it has enough experience, Bruska Shaways, the director general of the Iraqi defence ministry said yesterday.

“By the end of 2005, we’ll have fewer multinational forces (in Iraq) and by the end of 2006, it will be complete,” the number two official said, speaking of their withdrawal.

Shaways acknowledged that Iraq’s new army needed more experience before being able to take full responsibility for the defence of the country.

“My idea is this will not be earlier than the end of 2006,” Shaways said.
“Our training is not enough. We cannot compare a soldier who has finished his training now with one from the former regime who has 10 years of experience,” he added.

US military officials have suggested that American troops could start leaving by early 2006 if the Iraqi military and police are equipped and trained well enough to take over the job.

President George W. Bush has not given a specific timetable for the troop withdrawal, but in mid-April he noted that the number of Iraq security forces had overtaken that of US troops on the ground for the first time since the US-led invasion of Iraq two years ago.

The number of “trained and equipped” members of the Iraqi security forces now exceeded 155,000, while US troop strength fell to less than 140,000 in April following the departure of more units from the country, according to the US Pentagon.
Sabah Kadim, an Iraqi interior ministry spokesman, has conceded however that the number of police and Iraqi soldiers nationwide was closer to 132,000, because of problems of unauthorised absences.

Regardless of the number, Iraqi security forces are getting a trial by fire – battling insurgents who are believed to be loyal to former president Saddam Hussein, Shaways said.

“They need training in battle fighting terrorism and former regime elements,” Shaways said. “I know my troops, I know my people, I know their capabilities.”
Shaways said he has temporarily taken over the day-to-day running of the ministry while Shia and Sunni politicians haggle over which Sunni candidate will take over as minister.

Meanwhile, Nine Iraqi soldiers were killed and 17 people wounded in a car bomb attack in Baghdad yesterday, an interior ministry official said.
Six of the wounded were also soldiers, the source said.
The attack took place in Dura, a neighbourhood in southern Baghdad where insurgents have relocated in recent months after US-Iraqi raids against their strongholds south of the capital.

n BRUSSELS: The US-led coalition in Iraq has decided to hire a private security firm to protect a military training academy outside Baghdad which Nato plans to open in September, an official said yesterday.

Nato military planners recommended the “temporary” solution to avoid a new delay in launching the training centre at Al Rustimayah in the suburbs of the Iraq capital.
Nato leaders agreed last June to set up a mission to train senior Iraqi officers, and began deploying military instructors last September. But so far they have been confined to the heavily-fortified central Green Zone due to security concerns.
So far more than 500 Iraqi officers have received training there, but the military alliance has made it clear all along that it plans to expand its training mission to Al Rustimayah.

The decision to hire a private company to protect the training academy and its staff was agreed by Nato ambassadors yesterday evening, allowing the US-led coalition to contract out the work.

“This is a temporary solution, until the end of the year,” to allow Nato to assess the needs and deploy a Nato-led contingent, said the Nato official, requesting anonymity.

Nato aims to train some 1,000 Iraqi officers per year. A number of the 26-member alliance’s members, notably France and Germany, are supporting the mission although refusing to send troops onto Iraqi soil.

n BAGHDAD: Kurdish leaders fumed yesterday over the removal of a reference to Iraqi federalism in the oath sworn by the country’s new cabinet members a day earlier, and they want to know why,

“I swear before God the Almighty to do my utmost to carry out my duties and responsibilities and to preserve Iraq’s independence and sovereignty,” the ministers read from a piece of paper presented to them on Tuesday when they were sworn in.
The original text read: “... preserve Iraq’s independence, sovereignty and its federal and democratic regime.”

Fuad Massum, an MP and a senior member of President Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party, said “the Kurdish coalition wants to know who was behind the omission.”

The principle of federalism is of paramount importance to the Kurds, who already enjoy a high level of autonomy in northern Iraq and want to see it enshrined in the permanent constitution, which is to be drafted this year.

“The parliament presidency board will talk to the cabinet to know what happened,” said Hussein Shahrastani, deputy speaker of the national assembly, and a leading member of the Shia United Iraqi Alliance.