Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki said on Sunday that the shooting of Iraqi civilians last week by Blackwater USA, a private US security company, amounted to a challenge to the nation's sovereignty, but he added that his government was working jointly with the US to bring those responsible to justice.
In an interview with The Associated Press in his New York hotel suite before his appearance at the UN General Assembly, he said, "The Iraqi government is responsible for its citizens, and it cannot be accepted for a security company to carry out a killing. There are serious challenges to the sovereignty of Iraq."
The Associated Press noted that al-Maliki had used the Arabic word tajawiz, which can be translated either as "affronts" or "challenges."
PHOTO: AFP
On Sept. 16, Blackwater security guards opened fire on civilians in Nisoor Square in western Baghdad, killing at least 11 people and reminding Iraqis of the behavior of private Western security companies operating in the country.
This was the seventh episode in which Iraqi authorities have cited Blackwater for the injurious behavior of its guards toward civilians.
However, an Iraqi security official said the government was compelled to allow Blackwater to remain in operation in Iraq in spite of deep misgivings about the company's role here. Tahseen al-Sheikhly, a spokesman for the Iraqi security forces, said that immediately removing Blackwater's hundreds of armed guards could create a security vacuum in the capital, forcing US commanders to redeploy troops from elsewhere in the country. That, in turn, could leave other volatile areas thinly patrolled.
"If Blackwater left at this moment, it might leave a security gap because most of the embassies and most of the foreign organizations that are working in Iraq" rely on Blackwater, al-Sheikhly said at a news conference with a spokesman for the US military in Baghdad. "This will create a security imbalance."
"That's why the Iraqi government preferred to be patient on activating this decision to stop them," he said. "But the government is still serious in finding certain rules" to govern private security contractors.
"We would like to have some laws," he said.
Meanwhile, a US soldier was killed and another was wounded when a sophisticated roadside bomb known as an explosively formed penetrator detonated near their patrol during combat operations in East Baghdad on Saturday, the US military said.
A British soldier died on Friday in Britain from wounds sustained in Iraq last week, the Ministry of Defense said on Saturday.
Overall, however, the US commander in Baghdad said that violence has continued to diminish in the capital. In a statement released on Sunday, the commander, Major General Joseph Fil, said there had been a 70 percent decrease in the casualties caused by car bombs since an increase in the number of US troops in the city in mid-February.
His statement also said that there has been a 125 percent increase in the rate at which car bombs are discovered by security forces before they are detonated by insurgents.
Prior to February, just one-fifth of Baghdad's neighborhoods were free of organized insurgent activity. Now, more than half of Baghdad's neighborhoods have improved to the point that economic investment can begin, Fil said.
The counterinsurgency doctrine embraced by the US' top commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, is "clear, hold and build" -- meaning that insurgents first need to be removed from neighborhoods, then the military needs to keep them from returning and then it is possible to start making investments and building up the area.
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