Iraq's top candidates back off setting date for U.S. pullout
January 26, 2005
BY HANNAH ALLAM
FREE PRESS FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Politicians from the two leading tickets in Sunday's Iraqi elections backed away Tuesday from earlier campaign promises to set a deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. forces.
The move underscores concerns that Iraqi troops are nowhere near ready to police their violence-wracked country.
With only days remaining before Iraqi voters choose a national assembly, the decision by leading candidates to forsake any plan to press U.S. troops to leave means the next government will face the same conundrum that plagues current leaders: Iraqi troops can't fight a sophisticated insurgency without the help of U.S. forces, but the United States' presence only fuels the insurgency.
Both interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, who heads a secular slate, and his chief rival, the Shi'ite Muslim-based United Iraqi Alliance, are calling for a gradual transfer of responsibilities from U.S. troops to Iraqi forces. The switch coincides with a U.S. military report this week that about 120,000 U.S. troops would remain in Iraq through 2006.
"I will not set final dates" for a U.S. troop withdrawal "because dates now would be both reckless and dangerous," Allawi said.
The change is especially significant for the United Iraqi Alliance, favored by many to dominate the balloting. Until this week, its campaign materials listed its No. 2 promise as "setting a timetable for the withdrawal of multinational forces from Iraq."
But the alliance rewrote its campaign materials. The second item now reads: "The Iraq we want is capable of protecting its borders and security without depending on foreign forces."
The alliance, tacitly endorsed by Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's highest-ranking Shi'ite cleric, is expected to draw millions of votes from the country's Shi'ites.
Iraqi transitional laws authorize U.S. forces to remain in Iraq until full democratic elections at the end of the year. Though a clause states the Iraqi government could request an earlier withdrawal, that scenario is improbable.
Sheikh Homam Hamoodi of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Iran-backed driving force of the United Iraqi Alliance, said the change came with the realization that Iraqi troops aren't ready to take charge.
"The item on the first platform called for a set time for U.S. forces to leave Iraq without taking into consideration the urgent circumstances," Hamoodi said. "The addition calls for an environment when Iraqis will be able to protect themselves, and, when we reach that point, there will be no reason for U.S. forces to stay in Iraq."
