U.S. Already Refusing to Comply With Withdrawal Agreement

Commander: Some US troops to stay in Iraqi cities
By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press

BALAD, Iraq – Despite a summer deadline to pull American combat troops from urban areas, thousands will stay in cities to support and train Iraqis, the top U.S. commander in Iraq said Saturday.

Even with the mandate in the recently approved U.S.-Iraq security agreement, there have been suggestions some troops would not leave urban areas. But Gen. Raymond Odierno was the first military leader to acknowledge some forces would remain at local security stations, as training and mentoring teams.

"We believe we should still be inside those after the summer," he said the sprawling U.S. base in Balad, north of Baghdad before welcoming Defense Secretary Robert Gates on a brief visit.

Iraq's prime minister upbraided his top government spokesman for saying some U.S. soldiers might need to remain in the country for many more years. "What was announced about the Iraqi forces needing 10 years in order to be ready is only his personal point of view and it doesn't represent the opinion of the Iraqi government," Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's office said in a written statement Saturday.

The spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, told reporters in Washington this past week that the Baghdad government would be open to negotiations that would keep troops in Iraq past the agreed upon withdrawal date.

Odierno said he will make recommendations soon on how many troops the U.S. can withdraw from Iraq early next year. There are now about 149,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. That is more than 10,000 higher than before the buildup President George W. Bush ordered in early 2007.

President-elect Barack Obama has pledged to pull combat forces from Iraq in 16 months and the new security agreement calls for a U.S. withdrawal by 2012.

Odierno looked ahead to a series of Iraqi elections, including provincial voting in January, and said, "It's important that we maintain enough presence here that we can help them get through this year of transition."

He added, "We don't want to take a step backward because we've made so much progress here."

Gates' stop in Iraq comes at a critical time. The U.S. is preparing for the troop reduction even as intermittent spikes in violence continue. An important question is whether the Iraqis are ready to take over security and will they be ready when U.S. troops withdraw from urban areas.

Odierno said that overall he believes the Iraqis will be prepared, but that there are a few trouble spots, including Mosul in the north. If the Iraqis believe they need more help in Mosul after June, he said, they can ask for assistance.

He would not say what the prospects are for the Marines to leave the western province of Anbar, where violence has plummeted. Marine leaders have said they want to leave Iraq and head into Afghanistan, where violence has escalated.

The urgent requests from commanders in Afghanistan for more troops has added to the tension to cut troops in Iraq. Military leaders have said repeatedly they cannot send the desired 20,000 or more forces to Afghanistan unless troop levels are cut in Iraq. Gates said that while he is prepared to those troops, he is concerned about having the foreign military force be too large and appear more like occupiers.

Odierno acknowledged that the security improvements in Anbar will allow troop reductions there. He said he will adjust troop levels across Iraq in coming months based on need.

Before stopping in Iraq, Gates attended a meeting in Bahrain of Persian Gulf leaders, where he urged them to help fight the spread of violent extremism by funding and training Afghan security forces and reaching out more aggressively to the Iraq government.

Gates, who will continue as Pentagon chief under Obama, also warned terrorists that "anyone who thought that the upcoming months might present opportunities to 'test' the new administration would be sorely mistaken."

He said Obama and his national security team "will be ready to defend the interests of the United States and our friends and allies from the moment he takes office on Jan. 20."

In his speech, Gates took a more reserved tone on Iran when compared with his sharper criticism in remarks last year that Tehran was a chaotic and destabilizing threat. The defense secretary and others have rebuked Iran for helping bolster militants who cross the border into Iraq. Officials long have believed that Iran has provided money and training to insurgents, and supported the delivery of lethal explosives to Iraq.

On Saturday, Gates pressed Gulf nations to penalize Iran, but added that they can be even more influential "by welcoming the new Iraq into the Arab fold."

Withholding support for the country, he said, increases the risk that Iraq will be overcome by Iranian influence that has already cost many lives.

Asked later about Iran, Gates said Tehran is meddling and attempting to destabilize the region, but said the U.S. is not working to change the government, just Iran's behavior.

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Troops to Stay Longer in Iraq as Support, U.S. Says
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

BALAD, Iraq — The top American commander in Iraq said Saturday that some soldiers would remain in a support role in cities beyond summer 2009, when a new security agreement calls for the removal of American combat troops from urban areas.

The commander, Gen. Ray Odierno, said American troops would remain at numerous security outposts in order to help support and train Iraqi forces. “We believe that’s part of our transition teams,” he told reporters in Balad while accompanying Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who arrived on an unannounced trip Saturday.

General Odierno declined to say how many American troops might remain in Iraqi cities past the summer and said the number still remained to be negotiated with the Iraqi government under the terms of the so-called status of forces agreement. “But what I would say is we’ll maintain our very close partnership with the Iraqi security forces throughout Iraq even after the summer.”

Later on Saturday, a spokesman for General Odierno, Lt. Col. James Hutton, reiterated that the soldiers staying in cities would not be combat forces but rather “enablers,” who would provide services like medical care, air traffic control and helicopter support that the Iraqis cannot perform themselves. He said that all their actions would be closely coordinated with the Iraqi government and that all tenets of the security agreement would be followed.

Mr. Gates met with General Odierno for an hour and then was scheduled to return to Washington. Before the meeting, Mr. Gates held a question-and-answer session with American soldiers and repeated the Bush administration’s pledge to the Iraqi government of a complete troop withdrawal by the end of 2011.

But General Odierno said Saturday, as Pentagon officials have said previously, that the agreement might be renegotiated with the Iraqi government. “Three years is a very long time,” he told reporters.

Mr. Gates came to Baghdad from Manama, Bahrain, where he warned that foreign powers should not try to “test” President-elect Barack Obama with a crisis in his first months in office. He said the new administration would be committed to security in the Gulf and criticized Iran as trying to destabilize the region.

“The president-elect and his team are under no illusions about Iran’s behavior and what Iran has been doing in the region and apparently is doing with weapons programs,” he said.

Mr. Gates, who was speaking at a conference on regional security, said that Mr. Obama and his advisers had done more extensive planning across the government for the transition than any other incoming administration he could remember and asserted that they would therefore be prepared from their first day in office. Mr. Gates, who is staying on as defense secretary, has worked for seven presidents; Mr. Obama will be his eighth.

“So anyone who thought that the upcoming months might present opportunities to ‘test’ the new president would be sorely mistaken,” Mr. Gates said at the conference. “President Obama and his national security team, myself included, will be ready to defend the interests of the United States and our friends and allies from the moment he takes office on Jan. 20.”

In response to questions from audience members after his formal remarks, Mr. Gates said that although the Pentagon would be sending thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan over the next months, he was ultimately worried about the size of the American presence on Afghan soil. The United States plans to add some 20,000 troops in Afghanistan in 2009.

“I am more mindful than most that with 120,000 troops the Soviets still lost, because they never had the support of the Afghan people,” Mr. Gates said. “I think that after we complete these troop increases that we’re talking about, we ought to think long and hard about how many more go in.”

Asked about the problem of piracy of commercial ships off the coast of Somalia, Mr. Gates said he did not think the United States had enough information to launch attacks on pirate bases on land, but he said such attacks might be possible in the future. The comment appeared to put Mr. Gates at odds for now with a United Nations resolution that the United States began circulating in the Security Council on Wednesday that would increase interdiction efforts by permitting foreign forces to conduct land-based attacks.

Mr. Gates said there were a number of “minimally intelligent things” that ship captains could do when pirates approached, like “speed up” and “pull up the ladders.” He added, “This is not rocket science.”

Alissa J. Rubin contributed reporting from Baghdad.