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Rumsfeld arrives in Iraq, to discuss Baghdad security

Posted on: Wednesday, 12 July 2006, 00:41 CDT

BALAD, Iraq (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld arrived in Iraq on Wednesday on a visit that comes amid waning support in the United States for the war and questions about when U.S. troops might start returning home.

Rumsfeld, whose visit follows stops in Afghanistan and Tajikistan, has so far declined to comment on troop levels, saying those decisions should be made with ground commanders.

He will discuss security in Baghdad as well as the training and mix of Iraqi security forces.

The visit comes at a critical time, both for Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's U.S.-backed national unity government and for the U.S. military in Iraq, which faces a series of inquiries in which U.S. troops are suspected of killing civilians.

The latest case, the suspected rape and murder of a teenage girl and her family by U.S. soldiers last month, outraged Iraqis and prompted Maliki to call for a review of foreign troops immunity from Iraq's courts.

While Washington has resisted setting a timetable for withdrawal of its 127,000 troops, many of President George W. Bush's Republican allies are anxious to show progress before U.S. congressional elections in November.

But that could be complicated by a surge in sectarian bloodletting between Iraq's majority Shiites and minority Sunnis that has killed scores in street fighting and tit-for-tat attacks in Baghdad since Friday alone.

The violence has raised questions about the effectiveness of the new Iraqi army, which Washington is training to take over security so that it can begin pulling out its troops.

U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said in a speech on Tuesday that sectarian violence was now the biggest challenge facing U.S. and Iraqi forces, overtaking the three-year-old Sunni insurgency as the main source of instability.

Source: REUTERS

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