Iraq plans to take security control of the whole country from foreign forces by the end of the year, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Wednesday after British forces handed over control of a southern province.
Fiery anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr is increasing pressure on Maliki to set a timetable for the withdrawal of 146 000 United States troops from Iraq, which Maliki maintains will only happen when Iraqi security forces are ready to take control.
In a speech delivered on his behalf by National Security Adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie at a ceremony marking the handover of Maysan province from British forces to Iraqi control, Maliki said three provinces in the autonomous Kurdistan region would follow next.
These would be followed by Kerbala and Wasit provinces, he said.
”Then it will be province by province until we achieve [this transfer] before the end of the year,” Maliki said.
In a reminder of Iraq’s security woes, a car bomb killed 10 people and wounded up to 15 in central Baghdad, police said. They said the attack took place in the Karrada district, a mostly Shi’ite neighbourhood.
Maysan is the fourth of Iraq’s 18 provinces to be handed to Iraqi security forces, joining Muthanna, Najaf and Dhi Qar, all predominantly Shi’ite regions in Iraq’s south where violence has been low compared with other more religiously diverse areas.
On Monday, six Sadrist ministers pulled out of Maliki’s government over his refusal to say when foreign forces should leave Iraq.
”Some people have demanded a timetable to end the foreign presence in Iraq,” Maliki said in his speech read at the ceremony in Amara, 365km south of Baghdad.
”I tell them this is the demand of every patriotic person, [and] … we are working to create the objective circumstances for this withdrawal. These circumstances are to accomplish training and equipping Iraq’s security forces.”
Britain has 7 000 troops stationed in Iraq’s Shi’ite south.
It pulled its troops out of Amara last year and repositioned them along the Iranian border, a move greeted as a victory by Sadr’s Mehdi Army militia, which Washington has called the greatest threat to peace in Iraq.
Overwhelmingly Shi’ite Maysan is home to the Marsh Arabs and has large oil fields.
It has been spared much of the sectarian violence that has engulfed Baghdad and other areas, leaving Iraq on the brink of civil war.
Maysan was the third of four provinces Britain took charge of after the 2003 invasion to be handed to Iraqi security forces. British forces now only retain control of Basra province.
Basra is crucial for Iraq because its port is the hub for the country’s largest oilfields. But stabilising Basra has been harder for the British as rival parties vie for control of its vast oil wealth, sometimes spilling over into violence. — Reuters