Italian troops leave as Iraq readies for security control
Middle East Desk Report

BAGHDAD—The last Italian troops in Iraq have headed home as Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said his forces could take over the battered nation’s security by June 2007.
Despite the optimism, violence raged unabated across the country with at least 13 people killed Friday, highlighting the difficulties faced by the embattled premier. Baghdad itself echoed to the sound of machine gun fire as insurgents clashed with Iraqi troops in the Fadhel neighbourhood, killing one soldier and wounding nine people, including five civilians.
US attack helicopters circled the site of the fighting. Iraqi state television described the clashes as an operation against “terrorist hideouts” in the central Baghdad district. The British military told that the last Italian troops were set to leave the southern Dhi Qar province Friday, ending their three-year mission as part of the US-led coalition forces.
Earlier this year they handed over the province’s security to Iraqi forces. “The last of the Italians are leaving today to Kuwait and from there they will go to Italy,” British military spokesman Major Charlie Burbridge said, adding that the troops had ended military operations in the past six weeks. “All of them will be gone by the afternoon,” he said.
On Monday Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said the remaining 70 troops of the 3,000 sent to Iraq in 2003 would return home in the first few days of December. Italy’s centre-left parties, backing Prodi’s government which replaced the conservative administration of Silvio Berlusconi after April elections, made withdrawal from Iraq one of the centrepieces of their election campaign.
Berlusconi was one of US President George W. Bush’s key allies in Europe. The Italians were deployed in Iraq’s south along with British, Australians and Romanian forces. At least 31 Italian soldiers have been killed in Iraq since 2003.
The troops were stationed in Nasiriyah, the provincial seat of Dhi Qar, a relatively peaceful region compared with Iraq’s central and western regions where US forces are battling a raging insurgency and a brutal sectarian conflict. Maliki told the US television network ABC Thursday that his forces will be ready to take charge of Iraq’s security in June 2007.
“I can say that Iraqi forces will be ready, fully ready to receive this command and to command its own forces, and I can tell you that by next June our forces will be ready,” Maliki said. His statement came a few hours after his meeting with Bush in Jordan where the two leaders discussed Iraq’s ability to secure the country on its own and whether it could curb the current sectarian bloodshed.
Upon his return to Baghdad from Amman, Maliki told reporters that Bush was “responsive” to his government, wishing “success to his government so that we could ultimately be ready to gradually do away with the foreign forces”. Bush had hailed Maliki as a strong leader.
Maliki said he had won an agreement from Bush that he will take control of Iraq’s security forces more quickly than planned, to allow him to fight the insurgency in his own way and also stop the communal bloodletting. Currently most of the fledgling Iraqi army comes under the day-to-day control of a US-led coalition, which also has 150,000 American troops.
Meanwhile powerful Iraqi Shiite leader Abdel Aziz al-Hakim said Iraq’s sectarian conflict could “burn everyone” and threaten the security of the entire region. Calling for Iraqi unity in Jordan’s largest mosque of King Hussein, Hakim said “we do not want a Shiite government that sidelines the Sunnis and we don’t want a Sunni government that marginalises the Shiites”. Hakim’s Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) is a key part of the ruling coalition government in Baghdad.
His Friday sermon came two days after confusion over alleged remarks attributed to Hakim after talks Wednesday with Jordan’s King Abdullah II in Amman.