Iraq President Sees UK Troops Gone by End-2007

By Alastair Macdonald

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq’s president forecast on Tuesday that British troops could go home by the end of next year but, on another day of killings, Britain’s visiting foreign minister cautioned against leaving a "security vacuum."

Iraq’s parliament, meeting for the first time after a summer recess, extended a state of emergency, granting Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki extraordinary powers for another month to tackle a minority Sunni insurgency and sectarian bloodshed.

The monthly renewal of Maliki’s emergency powers came as gunmen shot dead four Shi’ite pilgrims, the U.S. military reported the deaths of three more of its soldiers, and Baghdad police found seven bodies with gunshots to the head.

While Washington and London continue to stress the growing independence of the new sovereign Iraqi government, the U.S. ambassador weighed in to a row over dropping its Saddam-era flag that has prompted talk of secession by ethnic Kurds. President Jalal Talabani, himself a Kurd, said there must be a new flag.

"Unilateral steps by regions or parties on this issue are inappropriate and do not have the support of the United States," U.S. envoy to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad said, adding that Washington was committed to "Iraq’s unity and territorial integrity."

U.S. ally Turkey, as well as Iran and Syria, worry their own Kurdish minorities want to emulate Iraqi Kurds’ wide autonomy.

The Kurdish regional government has banned the use of the Iraqi flag on public buildings as a symbol of oppression under Saddam Hussein. Maliki has demanded the use of the national tricolour and said only parliament can decide on a new flag, but his spokesman said designing a new flag was now a priority.

But some Sunni leaders spoke out in defense of the old one.

One of parliament’s main tasks during the new session will be to meet pressing deadlines for defining how regions can have federal autonomy — a vexed issue as many Sunnis see Shi’ites and Kurds using it to grab unfair shares of Iraq’s oilfields.

The Kurdish north won wide autonomy from Saddam in 1991 but Talabani stressed the Kurds were not seeking full independence.

Asked after meeting Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett for a date when some 7,000 British troops could leave Iraq, Talabani said: "In my personal opinion, by the end of 2007."

By then, he hoped, Iraqi forces would be strong enough to deal with any remaining violence. He dismissed talk of civil war, a phrase newly fashionable among senior U.S. officials, as exaggerated, saying most Iraqis supported national unity.

NO TIMETABLE

Beckett stressed London had no date in mind for troops pulling out and said the 2007 timeframe was Talabani’s personal opinion. After meeting Iraq’s top leadership, she said she found general support for the continued presence of 150,000 mainly U.S. forces until 300,000 Iraqi troops and police are ready.

"Coalition forces can’t go now because that would create a security vacuum," she said, noting however that Iraq was making "very slow" but distinct progress on improving security and describing that as "two steps forward, two steps sideways."

While some in Iraq wanted foreign troops to leave, most officials, she said, were anxious they stayed until such time as Iraqi forces were ready: "Hardly anyone thinks that time is now or is likely to be in the immediate future."

With the rise of militias from the Shi’ite majority, many in Saddam’s once-dominant Sunni community appear less hostile to the foreign troops than in the early days of the Sunni revolt.

Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, the most senior Sunni Arab in the coalition administration and long a proponent of a clear timetable for U.S. withdrawal, also warned after meeting Beckett of a "security vacuum" if troops left before Iraqis were ready.

British troops control a swathe of Shi’ite southern Iraq that has largely escaped the violence in the Sunni-dominated and ethnically mixed provinces in central Iraq, but which has witnessed a surge in violence in recent weeks.

Two soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb on Monday, taking the British death toll since the start of the war to 117. A third was seriously wounded in a shooting on Tuesday.

A top British commander said last month Britain planned to halve its force by the middle of next year. British forces handed over control of one province to the Iraqi army in July and are due to transfer power over a second this month.

The U.S. military said two Marines and a sailor were killed on Monday in Anbar province, where fighting between U.S. forces and insurgents is fiercest and U.S. casualties are highest.

The deaths took to 2,650 the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq since U.S. forces invaded in March 2003.

(Additional reporting by Hiba Moussa, Mussab Al-Khairalla, Ibon Villelabeitia and Ross Colvin in Baghdad)