Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said earlier this month he would meet with rival political blocs to see whether there is widespread backing for keeping American forces here, with a series of top US officials having passed through Baghdad in recent weeks to press Iraq to decide quickly.

"We believe that Iraq still needs US forces, for security and for political reasons," said Jabbar Yawar, the secretary general and top official in the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs in Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region.

The peshmerga are the Kurdish guerrilla force responsible for external defence.

"If the government in Baghdad and the Iraqi parliament want to delay (the withdrawal), we agree," Yawar told a news conference in the Kurdish capital Arbil.

"There are still unresolved problems, like the question of the disputed territories," he said, referring to a tract of land claimed by both authorities in Arbil and the central government in Baghdad, a row which US officials have long pointed to as one of the main obstacles to Iraq's long-term stability.

Though the presence of US forces has long been popular in Iraqi Kurdistan, Yawar's public support is among the first such comments as Baghdad considers whether or not to keep any American troops in Iraq beyond the end of the year.

The peshmerga, in particular, took the opportunity of the 2003 US-led invasion to oust dictator Saddam Hussein to progress further south and east into territory that had previously been held by Saddam's forces.

There are still around 45,000 US soldiers stationed in Iraq, including 1,200 who participate in a confidence-building tripartite patrols and checkpoints with central government forces and Kurdish security officers across northern Iraq.

On May 11, Maliki called for a national dialogue with rival blocs to gauge whether or not US troops should stay beyond year-end.

Anti-US Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has threatened to reactivate his Mahdi Army militia force if US forces stay in Iraq after the deadline, but the Iraqi army's top officer General Babaker Zebari said last summer that US troops would be needed until 2020.

earlier related report
Britain ends Iraq military mission
Baghdad (AFP) May 22, 2011 - Britain concluded its naval training mission in Iraq on Sunday, more than eight years after it contributed the second largest contingent of troops to the US-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.

Despite having pulled out the vast majority of its troops in mid-2009, Britain's Royal Navy has continued to train Iraqi personnel to defend their territorial waters and offshore oil installations.

"Their contribution was most appreciated and valuable," Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told AFP. "They have given many sacrifices to stabilise (Iraq) and they were the second-largest force of the coalition.

"Mistakes were made, not only by them, but by all of us," Zebari added, declining to give specific details. "But that doesn't diminish their valuable contribution to training, capacity building and, recently, for the protection of our oil ports at the tip of the Gulf."

British Embassy spokesman James Smith added: "It's over -- the British mission that began in Iraq in 2003 is complete."

Some 46,000 British troops were deployed to Iraq in March and April 2003, at the height of combat operations that resulted in Saddam's overthrow and eventual execution for crimes against humanity.

In the aftermath of the invasion, the country was engulfed in a brutal sectarian war which peaked in 2006 and 2007. Tens of thousands of Iraqis died.

Violence has since declined, but attacks remain common.

A total of 179 British personnel died in Iraq in the past eight years.

A small number will remain at the British embassy in Baghdad, and 41 British soldiers are working with NATO's training mission in Iraq. Some Iraqi soldiers will also attend the army's officer training college at Sandhurst

"The actual UK maritime agreement comes to an end today but pretty much everyone was out Thursday and Friday," a British defence ministry spokesman said. "The actual guys came out a couple of days ago."

He added: "There's a few staff left in the diplomatic corps but the deployment of military personnel has finished."

London formally ended military operations in Iraq in April 2009, and pulled out its forces in July that year, but has since been involved in the bilateral naval training mission.

That same year, then prime minister Gordon Brown opened an independent inquiry into Britain's role in the invasion and its aftermath. The inquiry is expected to issue a final report later this year.

The Royal Navy's role has involved training 1,800 Iraqi personnel on 50 different courses ranging from oil platform defence to handling small arms as part of efforts to secure Iraq's southern oil export terminals, through which the vast majority of its crude exports pass.

Around 90 percent of Baghdad's government revenues come from oil sales.

Most of Britain's troops were based in the predominantly Shiite southern port city of Basra.

Basra, Iraq's third-largest city and a strategic oil hub, had been under British command since the 2003 invasion, but the province and its airport returned to Iraqi control in 2009.

The withdrawal comes 52 years after Britain's previous exit from Iraq, in May 1959, when the last soldiers left Habbaniyah air station near the western town of Fallujah, ending a presence that dated back to 1918.

Also on Sunday, an MP belonging to the political bloc loyal to anti-US cleric Moqtada al-Sadr hailed the end of the British mission as "positive."

"We want the withdrawal of all occupying forces from Iraq," said Jawad al-Hasnawi, referring to the 45,000 US troops still stationed here, all of whom must withdraw by year-end under the terms of a bilateral security pact.

del.icio.us	Digg	Reddit
YahooMyWeb	Google	Facebook

Memory Foam Mattress Review

SPACE MEDIA NETWORK PROMOTIONS Solar Energy Solutions Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison ... Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News