Iraq’s new prime minister gave his first televised address to the nation on Friday and insisted that the premature withdrawal of multinational forces from the country ”would be a major disaster”.
The warning from Ayad Allawi came as the number of American soldiers killed in combat since last year’s invasion reached 600.
The US military also disclosed that a close aide to an al-Qaeda leader who is America’s most wanted man in Iraq has been seized by police.
With a new UN resolution on Iraq still being negotiated, Allawi, who will serve as prime minister until elections are held next year, reiterated that Iraq was ready to assume full sovereignty from the coalition after June 30 and that Iraqis would never accept occupation.
But he admitted that the country would need to rely on the presence of US-led forces to ensure security until at least early next year.
Allawi thanked the US, Britain and other coalition members for removing the former regime.
”The targeting of the multinational forces under the leadership of the United States to force them to leave Iraq would inflict a major disaster on Iraq, especially before the completion of the building of security and military institutions,” he said.
”And I would like to mention here that the coalition forces too have offered the blood of their sons as a result of terror attacks designed to force them to leave Iraq.”
Allawi, who had developed close ties with MI6 and the CIA during his exile from the country, said his new government wanted to ”guide Iraq into a new era where Iraqis could decide their own leaders by voting”.
He said the new government would work to reconcile national divisions created by the former regime: ”Former Ba’athists can live with dignity in society so long as they have not committed any crimes.”
Allawi urged Iraqis to join together to ”confront the dangers of terrorism which aimed at destroying the foundations” of the Iraqi state.
He also promised to beef up border security to prevent the entry of ”foreign terrorists and criminals”.
The UN announced on Friday that the country’s elections will be conducted by proportional representation and will be overseen by an independent electoral commission.
Earlier, the coalition disclosed that a suspected terror ist, Umar Baziyani, had been captured.
Baziyani was described as a ”valuable officer” to the Jordanian-born militant Abu al-Zarqawi, the suspected al-Qaeda leader who has been blamed for a number of large-scale bombings in the past year, including last month’s assassination of the head of the Iraqi governing council.
The US military has a $10-million price on Zarqawi’s head.
Few details were given of Baziyani’s arrest last week by Iraqi police, but Lieutenant Colonel Dan Williams said he was being questioned over a series of attacks on US and coalition forces in Iraq.
Reuters reported on Friday that peace finally seemed at hand in Najaf, after two months of fighting there and across Shia southern Iraq.
The city’s governor said the rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and US commanders had agreed to withdraw forces.
Hailing the truce as a ”breakthrough”, US Colonel Brad May told CNN he would begin pulling back his troops from positions near the city’s shrines to allow Iraqi police to take over.
Washington has been keen to resolve the conflict in Najaf and the nearby town of Kufa ahead of the planned transfer of formal sovereignty to Allawi’s government on June 30.
The area was quiet for the first time in days yesterday after Shia leaders, including the politician Ahmad Chalabi, helped broker the latest truce attempt at talks on Thursday. – Guardian Unlimited Â