20 April 2007
U.S. Troop Levels in Iraq Depend on Political Progress
Force levels will be evaluated in summer, U.S. defense secretary says
Washington -- In an unannounced visit to Iraq, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates urged Iraqi leaders to make political progress and speed up reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites before U.S. troop levels are evaluated this summer.
Visiting Fallujah and Baghdad on April 19-20 during a broader visit to the Middle East, Gates said Iraq’s political progress and reconciliation will be taken into account when the United States evaluates troop levels this summer. Gates said the United States has a long-term commitment to Iraq as an important regional ally. But, he added, U.S. military support will not last indefinitely.
“Our commitment to Iraq is long-term,” Gates said. “But it is not a commitment to have our young men and women patrolling Iraq’s streets open-endedly.”
In January, President Bush announced a “surge” of more than 27,500 U.S. troops – primarily into Baghdad and Anbar province – with the goal of securing critical population centers and providing more time for political progress. However, many leaders in the U.S. Congress, which funds the armed forces, are skeptical of the expanded mission.
In Fallujah, Gates held talks with Joint Chiefs Chairman General Peter Pace and Navy Admiral William Fallon, the new chief of U.S. Central Command, who the day before had testified before Congress about the urgent need for Iraqi leaders to make progress toward reconciliation. (See related article.)
Also attending the meeting were General David Petraeus, commander of Multi-National Force – Iraq, and Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, commander of coalition ground forces in Iraq.
In Baghdad, Gates continued high-level military talks and also met with senior Iraqi leaders, including Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi and Defense Minister Abd al-Qadir al-Mufriji.
“I told the prime minister that we continue to be committed to this government,” Gates told reporters. “And we are committed to the Baghdad security plan, a strategy for buying time for progress toward justice and reconciliation here in Iraq.”
The day before Gates’ arrival, a series of bombings in Baghdad killed and wounded hundreds of Iraqis. “Yesterday was a bad day,” Petraeus told reporters in an April 19 news conference in Fallujah. “A day like that can have real psychological impact.”
On the day the bombings took place, Fallon had testified before Congress about a trend of declining sectarian murder rates. Fallon also told Congress his staff is developing ways to measure accurately military and political progress in Iraq.
In his news conference, Petraeus said he and other senior leaders felt that, before the April 18 bombings, they were starting to see “a bit of traction” and “slow progress” in the form of lower murder rates in Baghdad and elsewhere. However, Petraeus added that it is too soon to evaluate whether the surge plan is succeeding.
“We have always been very upfront in saying that this is about months, not days or weeks,” Petraeus said of the surge plan. About 60 percent of the U.S. surge troops have arrived in Baghdad and Anbar, and the troops will not reach their maximum force levels until early June, he said.
“It will be in mid-June or so when all of the forces will be in place and we can see the effects of the real surge,” Petraeus said. “And even then it will take some time.”
The attacks “can’t be anything other than viewed as setbacks and challenges,” Petraeus said. The bombings also show that the al-Qaida-linked insurgency “clearly is intent on trying to reignite sectarian violence and on trying to derail the Baghdad security plan.” However, he said, Iraqi and coalition leaders “have shown the determination” to withstand these attacks.
Gates told reporters that the Baghdad bombings should not stop the Iraqi government from moving forward to approve important pieces of legislation, including laws governing foreign investment in oil and how best to share oil revenues among Iraq’s provinces and ethnic groups. The Iraqi government also needs to agree on how best to deal with former Baath Party members who were part of the Saddam Hussein regime driven from power in 2003.
“I expressed a hope that the Council of Representatives [Iraq’s parliament] would not recess for the summer without passing laws on hydrocarbons, de-Baathification, provincial elections and other measures,” Gates said in Baghdad. “These measures will not fix all the problems in Baghdad, but they will manifest the will of the entire government of Iraq to be a government for all the people of Iraq in the future."
A transcript of the remarks by Gates and Petraeus in Fallujah is available on the State Department Web site.
For more information, see Iraq Update.
(USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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