Gates Says Iraq Troop Withdrawal Could Be Accelerated

Gates Says Iraq Troop Withdrawal Could Be Accelerated
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: July 29, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/world/middleeast/30military.html?_r=1&ref=global-home


INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said on Wednesday that as many as 5,000 United States troops could come home from Iraq earlier than the Pentagon had planned because violence levels in the country were generally down and Iraqi security forces were doing well on their own.

Under the existing plan, two brigades, or about 10,000 troops, are to be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of 2009. Mr. Gates said it was now possible that an additional brigade, or 5,000 troops, would come home by that time.

Mr. Gates offered the assessment after meetings and dinner in Baghdad on Tuesday with Gen. Ray Odierno, the top American commander in Iraq. The defense secretary made his comments to reporters at a stop in Turkey on his way back to Washington.

Asked if he saw anything in Iraq that gave him reason to think there could be a slowdown or acceleration in the planned troop withdrawal, Mr. Gates replied, “I don’t think there’s anything in the cards for a slowdown.” Then he added, “I think there’s at least some chance of a modest acceleration because of the way General Odierno sees things going. But that remains to be seen.”

Mr. Gates cautioned that it was still early and that an accelerated troop drawdown “may or may not” occur. “I don’t want to put the general into a corner,” he said. Nonetheless, Mr. Gates said, General Odierno was “looking at all the possibilities, and he’s very encouraged.”

There are currently about 130,000 United States troops in Iraq. The current plan calls for a modest drawdown by the end of this year so that there are still large numbers of American troops in place to help keep stability for Iraqi elections in January 2010. From March through August 2010, the plan calls for a steep drawdown of some 80,000 troops, so that by the end of next summer there remains a “residual force” of 30,000 to 50,000 troops. Under an agreement with the Iraqi government, all United States forces have to be out of Iraq by the end of 2011.

Mr. Gates’s comments in Turkey echoed those he and General Odierno made in Iraq on Tuesday, when both said that Iraqi security forces and American troops were on balance working well together since June 30, when most American combat forces withdrew from Iraqi cities. In the ensuring weeks, American commanders have said that for the most part, their troops have moved into a subordinate role, with Iraqi forces generally in the lead.

Although both Mr. Gates and General Odierno acknowledged tensions as both sides adjust, Mr. Gates said that the transition was going “better than expected.”

Mr. Gates arrived in Turkey from Erbil, Iraq, where he had met with Massoud Barzani, the president of the semiautonomous region of Kurdistan. In the hourlong meeting, Mr. Gates offered American assistance to Mr. Barzani to try to solve the Kurds’ intensifying dispute with the central government in Baghdad, which American military commanders consider the biggest threat to Iraq’s fragile new unity.

Mr. Gates said afterward that he told Mr. Barzani that Kurdish leaders should take advantage of the remaining time the United States has in Iraq and use the Americans as brokers to help negotiate a settlement. Mr. Gates also recounted that he told Mr. Barzani that “we both have sacrificed too much in blood and treasure to see the gains of the last few years lost.”

Both Iraq and the United States have grown alarmed in recent weeks as Kurdish leaders have moved forward with a new constitution that claims territory and oil and gas rights that are sharply disputed by Iraq’s central government. The differences were supposed to have been settled in talks sponsored by the United Nations that began in June, but the Kurdish parliament pushed ahead and passed the constitution anyway.

There already have been tense confrontations between Kurdish and Iraqi security forces, and American military commanders say the potential for conflict between Kurds and Sunni Arabs in the region is one of their major worries. “Probably our number one driver of instability is Kurd-Arab tensions,” General Odierno told reporters in Baghdad on Tuesday.