UK troops likely to leave Iraq next year
Foreign Desk Report
LONDON—Iraqi forces will probably be ready to replace British troops in
one year and allow the British to return home, Iraqi President Jalal
Talabani said in a television interview.
“We don’t want British forces forever in Iraq. Within one year — I think
at the end of 2006 — Iraqi troops will be ready to replace British
forces in the south,” Talabani said Sunday, according to excerpts from
ITV1 television. Some 8,000 British troops based in the southern city of
Basra have been in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003 that
toppled Saddam Hussein.
Asked whether his assessment amounted to a commitment, Talabani replied:
“Well, I haven’t been in negotiations, but in my opinion and according
to my study of the situation I can say that it is the just estimation of
the situation... “There is not one Iraqi that wants the troops (to)
remain (forever) in the country,” said the Kurdish president. General
Sir Mike Jackson, the chief of general staff, speaking on BBC television
about Talabani’s remarks, said “we most certainly could leave” within
one year, but “it’s a question of achieving the right conditions.” The
US-led multinational forces are trying to ensure the right conditions
for a transformation to democratic rule in Iraq, trying to strike a
balance among the Sunni Muslim minority who ruled under Saddam Hussein,
the Kurds and the Shiite Muslim majority, who dominate in the south.
Despite his prediction, Talabani also urged caution about how a troop
withdrawal was conducted.
“British people have full right to ask this, their sons coming back
home, especially if they finished their main job, which was the ending
of dictatorship,” he said. But he warned that immediate withdrawal would
be a “catastrophe”, adding: “It would lead to a kind of civil war and...
we will lose what we have done for liberating Iraq from worst kind of
dictatorship.
“Instead of having a democratic, stable Iraq, we will have a civil war
in Iraq, we will have troubles in Iraq (and they) will affect all the
Middle East.” Talabani called for a gradual pull-out, with close
co-ordination between coalition nations and the Iraqi authorities. He
acknowledged that an upsurge of violence could be expected in the run-up
to National Assembly elections scheduled for December 15, but denied
that insurgents would have an impact on the result. |
