Iraqi troops are ready to take control of selected cities in provinces unaffected by the insurgency as a first step toward sending American and other foreign soldiers home, Iraqâs Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari said yesterday. But he rejected any timetable for a pullout until Iraqi forces are ready. As a sign of the ongoing security crisis, gunmen stormed a house in western Baghdad yesterday and killed four Iraqi human rights activists, and a car bomb killed at least three people and wounded 15 in ethnically tense Kirkuk.
An American soldier died of injuries suffered in a land mine explosion south of the capital, the US military said â one of a series of scattered clashes across insurgency hotbeds. Speaking to reporters alongside US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, Prime Minister Jaafari warned against setting a timetable for foreign troops to leave âat a time when we are not readyâ to confront the insurgents. But he said security in many of Iraqâs 18 provinces â notably in the Shiite south and the Kurdish-controlled north â has improved so that Iraqi forces could assume the burden of maintaining order in cities there. âWe can begin with the process of withdrawing multinational forces from these cities to outside the city as a first step that encourages setting a timetable for the withdrawal process,â Jaafari said. âWe donât want to be surprised by a decision to withdraw at a time when we are not ready.â
Jaafariâs comments were aimed in part at defusing growing calls by Sunnis and others for the Americans to set a date for them to leave Iraq. Jaafari, a Shiite, told Parliament yesterday that he wants any withdrawal plan to be âan Iraqi decision with an Iraqi timetable â not with a terror timetable.â
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