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BAGHDAD, Iraq, - Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari
said Tuesday that some Iraqi cities were secure
enough for American-led forces to begin withdrawing
to outside bases, a move he suggested could later
lead to a more definitive timetable for the
departure of foreign troops.
But Mr. Jaafari said he opposed setting a timetable
for the total withdrawal of troops, because Iraqi
security forces were not ready to secure the entire
country.
The comments, made at a morning news conference here
with Robert B. Zoellick, the deputy secretary of
state, were the first time Mr. Jaafari had advocated
a troop withdrawal of any sort since taking office
in April. In recent weeks, as the insurgency has
shown no signs of abating, President Bush has come
under increasing pressure from Congress to set a
timetable for drawing down the 138,000 American
troops here.
Violence continued to roil the country on Tuesday. A
car bomb aimed at an American convoy exploded
outside the northern city of Kirkuk, killing three
Iraqi civilians and wounding at least 14. Two police
officers were gunned down in Baghdad and one in
Basra. In Falluja, an American marine mistakenly
fired on a convoy carrying the city's Iraqi police
commander, killing one policeman and wounding
another, American and Iraqi officials said. The
American military said a soldier died on Tuesday of
wounds from a land mine explosion in the capital the
previous day.
Despite the violence, Mr. Jaafari said Iraqi
security forces were ready to take over
responsibility from American-led troops in many of
Iraq's 18 provinces.
"We can begin 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," Mr. Jaafari
said as he stood next to Mr. Zoellick inside the
heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, which
houses the Iraqi government headquarters and the
American Embassy.
Mr. Jaafari also said the ultimate question was,
when would Iraq be "self-sufficient."
"There is a plan and a threshold that the security
forces, whether from the Interior or Defense
Ministries, have to meet in terms of the growth in
their capabilities," he said.
Mr. Jaafari did not specify which cities were secure
enough to allow foreign troops to withdraw. The
Shiite-dominated south and Kurdish north have
experienced much less violence than Baghdad and the
nearby Sunni Triangle. In the southern city of
Basra, for instance, British convoys are rarely seen
in the streets.
By contrast, Sunni Arab cities like Falluja remain
occupied zones, with American troops and Iraqi
soldiers stationed in bases within the cities and
making frequent patrols and raids. Before last
November, American troops had tried withdrawing from
Falluja to bases on the perimeter, only to have the
insurgency grow in strength within the city. That
decision to withdraw, repeated in several other "no
go zones" in the Sunni Triangle, ultimately led to a
costly invasion of Falluja in November by the
Americans.
Mr. Zoellick, who had just arrived in Baghdad from a
meeting on Iraqi reconstruction in Amman, Jordan,
said that "President Bush has emphasized U.S. forces
intend to continue to support the Iraqi people and
that we will stand down as the Iraqi forces stand
up."
The debate over setting a timetable for troop
withdrawal has gained prominence in the United
States as polls have shown flagging public support
for the war, and as some members of Congress have
pushed for more detailed withdrawal plans. In recent
speeches, President Bush has emphasized that he has
no intention of setting a timetable.
Last weekend, The Mail on Sunday, a London
newspaper, published a confidential government memo
examining the possibility of reducing British troops
in Iraq to 3,000 from 8,500 by mid-2006. The memo,
signed by Defense Secretary John Reid, also
mentioned that there was a "strong U.S. military
desire" for a significant troop reduction, and that
American officials were hoping 14 of the 18
provinces could be handed over to Iraqi forces by
early next year.
Tamim Province, which includes the volatile city of
Kirkuk, is almost certainly not one of those. On
Tuesday, the car bomb that killed three civilians
and wounded at least 14 left a gruesome scene among
a cluster of car-repair shops just outside the city.
Minutes later, two policemen were shot in another
part of town, but they survived.
At the general hospital, relatives of those wounded
in the blast wailed in the hallways as paramedics
struggled to save the life of Bader Mahmood al-Obaidei,
36, the owner of a scrap shop, who had a huge gash
in his chest and a partly severed right hand. As the
medics put paddles on his chest to keep his heart
pumping with jolts of electricity, the power failed,
plunging the room into darkness for a fraction of a
minute. A collective groan from the doctors went up
as they stood waiting in the darkness. Mr. Obaidei
died during the power failure.
An injured man, Mustafa Abbas, lay on a gurney near
the entrance, stunned by the concussion of the
explosion and unable to say anything but his name, a
tear stain streaking his face from his right eye.
The car bomb exploded about 10 miles south of Kirkuk,
on the main road to Baghdad, at 11:30 a.m., said
Capt. Ali Mutashar Al-Obaidei of the Kirkuk police.
About 45 minutes after the blast, dark lines
radiated outward from a crater in the pavement,
marking the trajectory of shrapnel and pointing
toward holes punched through the walls of a clump of
auto parts and repair stands. Tables of greasy auto
parts were charred and smoldering from the blast,
and a smear of blood and flesh stained the dirt in
front of one stand.
Attacks have surged recently in Kirkuk, where Arabs,
Kurds and Turkmens vie for political dominance of
the city and its oil fields. President Jalal
Talabani of Iraq, a Kurd, met on Tuesday in Baghdad
with a delegation from the office of the Shiite
cleric Moktada al-Sadr, who has relentlessly
campaigned against the American presence in Iraq.
Mr. Sadr commands a strong following among Arabs in
Kirkuk and could be instrumental in negotiations
over the city.
In Falluja, an American marine opened fire on a
convoy carrying Brig. Gen. Saleh al-Ani, the police
chief, as General Saleh was driving to the local
government center in the morning to interview
potential police recruits, police officials said. A
spokesman for the Second Marine Division, Capt.
Jeffrey Pool, said in an e-mail message that the
marine fired after a vehicle accelerated toward a
checkpoint rather than slowing down or stopping, as
directed by hand signals. The military is
investigating, he added.
In Washington on Tuesday, Gen. Richard B. Myers,
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a senior
commander of the terrorist network of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
in Iraq had been captured on Monday.
"It's still a very dangerous insurgency," General
Myers said during an interview on the PBS program
"The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer." But he added, "We're
having pretty good success against pieces of this."
According to a transcript released by the program,
General Myers said that "on the battlefield we
picked up Zarqawi's main leader in Baghdad, they
call him the emir of Baghdad, Abu Abd al-Aziz, and
that's going to hurt that operation of Zarqawi's
pretty significantly."
www.nytimes.com
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