A meeting of Iraqis to discuss the formation of an interim government will take place in the southern city of Nassiriya on Tuesday, the US announced yesterday, as lawlessness and celebrations spread throughout northern Iraq.
As Mosul became the latest city to fall without a fight and more Iraqi troops abandoned the fray, Britain announced the first scaling back of troops since the beginning of the war.
The Ark Royal aircraft carrier is among the returning British forces, as is HMS Turbulent, a nuclear-powered submarine which fired about 30 cruise missiles at targets in Iraq, the Ministry of Defence said.
Royal Marines attacking the Faw peninsula in the south-east corner of Iraq ”kicked the door open,” Admiral Sir Alan West, first sea lord, said.
British minesweepers had also done an important, if lower-profile job, he said.
Tornado F3 fighters based in Saudi Arabia are also coming home, and other Royal Navy ships — including HMS Marlborough, HMS Liverpool and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship Grey Rover — are sailing to the Far East for exercises.
The US state department representative Richard Boucher said of the planned Nassiriya meeting: ”We expect this to be the first in a series of regional meetings that will provide a forum for Iraqis to discuss their vision of the future and their ideas regarding the Iraqi interim authority.
”We hope these meetings will culminate in a nationwide conference that can be held in Baghdad in order to form the Iraqi interim authority.”
The meeting will include a number of leading Iraqi exile figures.
It was also announced last night that the state department has invited the UN secretary general Kofi Annan’s special envoy to Iraq to a meeting in Washington on Monday for talks on the post-conflict period.
Annan says the United Nations should play a key role in Iraqi reconstruction after the fighting has ended ,but US officials have been resisting spelling out precisely what that role might be.
In St Petersburg yesterday Russia, France and Germany demanded a ”central role” for the UN in rebuilding Iraq, but avoided laying down strict terms for cooperation between the coalition and UN.
The German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, said they would force the reconstruction of Iraq to occur through the UN, after ”working out the details with the coalition”.
Jay Garner, the retired US general who will head an interim civil administration in Iraq, said after a meeting with local leaders in the city of Umm Qasr that the security situation in Iraq was improving.
He said he would travel to Baghdad ”as soon as they let me”.
In Mosul, the entire 5th Corps of the Iraqi army surrendered in the early hours of yesterday, leaving only isolated resistance.
Peshmerga fighters and Kurdish civilians from the region rushed to fill the vacuum in Mosul, some reportedly carrying deeds to houses. Locals happily showered themselves in banknotes taken from the central bank.
The swift progress of American and Kurdish troops in the north left Saddam Hussein’s hometown, Tikrit, as the last remaining stronghold of the old regime.
Earlier US planes bombed a building in Ramadi, about 95 kilometres west of Baghdad, in an effort to kill Saddam Hussein’s half-brother, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti. – Guardian Unlimited Â