Iraqi forces to take control of second province
Iraqi forces are to take control of Dhi Qar province this week but there will be no immediate reduction in numbers of US-led coalition troops in the war-torn country, officials said, as UN chief Kofi Annan voiced fears of all-out civil war.
The relatively peaceful province is the second of the country's 18 provinces to be handed over by the US-led forces.
Violence continued unabated Tuesday, with officials reporting 16 more people killed while three more US troops were declared dead.
Dozens of bodies of men, shot to death execution-style, are found daily dumped in the streets of Baghdad or in the Tigris river despite a massive security crackdown in the capital since mid-June.
Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh brushed off Annan's statement.
"We regret what the secretary general has said about Iraq. He has not even visited Iraq and his statement is far from the reality," Dabbagh said.
The security transfer of the southern Shiite-majority province, and its capital Nasiriyah, will take place in two days and was agreed after "all conditions required for the handover were met," Major General Kurt Cichowski told reporters on Tuesday.
With the agreement, Dhi Qar's governor will enforce security with provincial police and can call for help from the central government, which remains in command of army and national police personnel in the province.
Currently, 1,860 Italian and 430 Romanian troops provide security in Dhi Qar, a relatively peaceful region compared to the main southern city of Basra or Sunni-majority provinces north and west of the capital.
Cichowski said the coalition troops would "return to the bases and offer training to the Iraqi forces" after the handover, adopting what he called an "overwatch" position.
Dhi Qar will be the second province where Iraqi forces have taken over security resonsibility following the handover of Al-Muthanna province by Australian and British troops on July 13.
The head of the US forces in the Middle East General George Abizaid said in Washington that more than 140,000 US troops will likely be needed in Iraq through next spring to suppress sectarian violence and secure Baghdad.
"I think that this level probably will have to be sustained through the spring, and then we'll re-evaluate," Abizaid told reporters.
He said he was referring to current troop levels of more than 140,000 US troops. Pentagon officials have said there are now 147,000 troops in Iraq due to an overlap of forces rotating into and out of the country.
The US military's losses since the March 2003 invasion rose to 2,682 after it announced three more deaths of servicemen.
On Monday, UN chief Annan expressed fear of an all-out civil war in Iraq as violence remained unabated.
Speaking at UN headquarters in New York, Annan called for a quick and massive international effort to strengthen the embattled government in Baghdad and bring Iraq back from the "brink of a civil war".
"If current patterns of alienation and violence persist much longer, there is a grave danger that the Iraqi state will break down, possibly in the midst of full-scale civil war," Annan said.
In other violence on Tuesday, insurgents fired mortar rounds at the Iranian and British consulates in Basra.
A leader of Shiite Mahdi Army militia of the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr was killed by British troops in an operation early Tuesday. He was shot when troops came under fire as they approached a house, said British military spokesman Major Charlie Burbridge.
"In returning the small arms fire, we killed the gunman," he said, adding that a British soldier was wounded in the firefight.
Sadr's organisation identified the dead man as Habib Jassim al-Ibadi, known as Abu Haidar, and charged that he was kidnapped by British soldiers, tortured, and then executed at their complex.
Aqil Abdel Hussein, a parliamentarian with Sadr's movement in Basra, said "We are shocked by this behavior, over which we will not remain silent."
AFP
