Thursday, July 28, 2005

USA: WITHDRAWAL FROM IRAQ WITHIN ONE YEAR

The US top military commander in Iraq, General George Casey, yesterday announced a partial withdrawal of its soldiers from the Iraqi scenario within the next year. He talked about an approximate number of 135,000 troops to leave by December 2006.

"I do believe that if the political process continues to go positively and if the development of the security forces continues to go as it is going, I do believe we'll still be able to take some very substantial reductions after these elections in the spring and summer of next year," said Casey.

The announcement came during the unexpected visit of Defense Secretary General Donald Rumsfeld in Iraq. However, Casey has also explained how the Iraqi government needs to follow certain paths in order to ensure social security for its citizens.

"The level of attacks they've been able to generate has not increased substantially here over what we've seen in the last year," said Casey, adding that "[the] insurgency is not progressing".

In a meeting with Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, Donald Rumsfeld expressed his concern about the Iraqi borders:

"They need to be aggressively communicating with their neighbors to see that foreign terrorists stop coming across those borders and that their neighbors do not harbor insurgents and finance insurgents in a way that is destructive of what the Iraqi people are trying to accomplish."

Meanwhile, the Pentagon recently explained that the number of Iraqi soldiers is about 171,000, roughly the same amount of international coalition troops present in the country but only 2,500 of them would be able to face a terrorist attack without the help of foreign troops.

CNN

The Guardian

al-Jazeera

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