US, Britain mull to scale down troops in Iraq
Foreign Desk Report

BAGHDAD—Tony Blair and Donald Rumsfeld counselled caution over hopes for a quick fix in Iraq in surprise visits to the war-torn country, as former dictator Saddam Hussein stood by claims he had been beaten by US guards.
The British prime minister and the US defence secretary, who visited the southern city of Basra and Baghdad respectively, did not give timetables for troop reductions, insisting that time was still needed to heal Iraqi wounds. Polish Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz also made an unexpected visit to Iraq, where Saddam and seven of his cohorts were again in court on charges of crimes against humanity. Not to be upstaged, 35 Iraqi political groups, including secular Shiites and Sunni Arabs, rejected early results announced in the wake of watershed general elections and called for a new poll.
Rumsfeld, who flew into Iraq from Afghanistan, forecast that cementing democracy in Iraq and defeating the insurgency would take awhile. “The Iraqi people who are involved in this process are relatively new to the political process. It will take them some time I suspect,” Rumsfeld said. “The defeat of the people opposed to that government will be something that will take some time,” as well, Rumsfeld said before meeting US troops and Iraqi officials.
Blair was upbeat in Basra about starting a British troop withdrawal next year, during a Christmas visit to soldiers and a meeting with top British and US officials. But he refused to set an “artificial timetable” saying that the beginning of any pullout would depend on the ability of Iraqi soldiers and police to take on security tasks.
After spending half an hour chatting with small groups of soldiers, Blair said he was pleased to hear they had a high regard for Iraqi forces. “This is a very hopeful sign because obviously the whole purpose is to build up the capability of the armed forces and the police so we can then draw down our own forces,” he told reporters. Rumsfeld, too, refused to be drawn out into giving a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops. “The period we are in is a very important period. What takes place in the next period of days and weeks and possibly even months will produce a government that will be in for four years,” he said. “Our interest as a country is that the process produces a set of people that are going to pull that country together towards the center and not pull it apart.”
Marcinkiewicz discussed the deployment of Polish troops with Iraqi counterpart Ibrahim Jaafari and visited with the soldiers in Diwaniyah province, south of Baghdad. The question of maintaining Polish troops in Iraq would “depend on the decision of the elected Iraqi government”, Marcinkiewicz said
With 1,400 soldiers, Poland has the third-largest contingent in the US-led coalition in Iraq but is believed to be keen to withdraw combat troops. In Baghdad, early results from a legislative poll sparked protests from 35 Iraqi groups including the main Sunni Arab coalition, a secular Shiite bloc headed by former prime minister Iyad Allawi and the National Congress of Ahmed Chalabi.