Agence France Presse, 26 November 2005
BAGHDAD - US forces will soon hand over full security responsibility to Iraqi forces in a number of towns and regions, a senior Iraqi official has revealed.
"Very, very soon, we will have an agreement signed by the prime minister to hand over control of some cities," national security advisor Muwaffaq al-Rubaie told AFP Sunday.
"I very much hope it will happen before the elections" to be held on December 15.
The transfer of some regions to Iraqi forces will help weaken claims by insurgents they are fighting US-led occupation forces, he said. "It will undermine the claim by the terrorists that they are working against foreign troops."
US forces have already started handing over a number of bases to Iraqi forces, most recently a complex of palaces built by ousted dictator Saddam Hussein on the outskirts of his hometown of Tikrit.
A joint US-Iraqi transition committee was set up earlier this year work out how such a transfer would take place and how soon Iraqi forces would be able to assume responsibility for the new "battle space".
US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad had said said the task force would establish no timeline, adding that transfers of responsibility would be condition-based and dependent on how well the fledgling Iraqi services were able to built up their forces.
The transfer of responsibility will allow the United States to gradually reduce its 158,000 troops in Iraq.
Khalilzad earlier this month indicated that the United States could start to pull out some of its forces "beginning next year".
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Citation: "US to transfer security to Iraqis in several cities," Agence France Presse, 26 November 2005.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051126/wl_mideast_afp/iraqussecurity
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