Iraq exit strategy gets approval

George Bush and Tony Blair have approved plans for an exit strategy from Iraq but denied that they would turn their backs on the Iraqi people by withdrawing coalition troops too quickly.

After talks in Downing Street, the US President and the British Prime Minister said they would welcome the involvement of the United Nations and other countries, including those who opposed the war, in the international effort to rebuild Iraq.

Following the rise in the attacks on coalition forces, they confirmed plans to speed up the timetable for handing control back to the Iraqis.

A US-British declaration said a transitional Iraqi administration should be in place by June next year, with elections for a new Iraqi government by the end of 2005. The two leaders agreed to "firm up" these plans before seeking a UN resolution to underpin them early next year.

At a press conference at the Foreign Office, Bush denied reports that American forces in Iraq would be scaled down early next year. If necessary, he said, he would send more forces, saying that decisions on numbers would be taken by commanders on the ground. "We will finish the job we have begun," he said.

While the Istanbul atrocity allowed the two leaders to stand "shoulder to shoulder" against terrorism, there was little apparent progress on issues that have caused tensions between them. No deal was reached on the Britons being held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Blair said: "Either they will be tried by the military commission out there, or alternatively, they will be brought back here. It is not going to be resolved today, but it will be resolved at some point soon."

At least four people in Iraq were killed by a suicide bomber in a truck yesterday in the latest of a fresh burst of attacks against officials and political groups co-operating with the American occupation.

The explosion occurred outside the headquarters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in the Kurdish city of Kirkuk shortly after the US's chief administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, was quoted by an Italian newspaper declaring that the country was "around 90 per cent quiet, normal and at peace".

The PUK's leader, Jalal Talabani, is currently head of the unpopular and ineffectual US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council. He was in Turkey when the bomb went off.

Although no one had claimed responsibility, among those under suspicion is one of the party's regional rivals, Ansar al-Islam.

The bomb in Kirkuk - which shook buildings across the oil city - was the worst of a two-day flurry of bombing and shooting over a wide area. This included attacks in Baghdad and Ramadi and the holy Shia city of Kerbala, and an assassination in Basra, in southern Iraq.

The Ramadi attack came when a bomb was detonated as a US convoy drove past, killing one American soldier and wounding two, a military spokeswoman said.

Americans insist their crackdown is proving successful.

In the Baghdad area, where "Operation Iron Hammer" has been underway for nearly a fortnight, the Americans say they have killed 14 Iraqi insurgents, arrested 104 suspects, and smashed what they termed the "636 cell", which they accuse of rocketing Baghdad's al-Rasheed Hotel while the US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was inside.

The Kirkuk suicide bomb was the third assault within 24 hours in which Iraqis who have been willing to work with the Americans seem to have been singled out.

- INDEPENDENT, REUTERS


Herald Feature: Iraq