The US would only slow down its troop withdrawal from Iraq if there were a serious deterioration in security conditions, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Monday.
“Before we would consider recommending anything like that we would have to see a pretty considerable deterioration of the situation in Iraq and we don’t see that certainly at this point,” Gates told reporters at the Pentagon.
The March 7 parliamentary ballot is seen as a critical test for Iraq, which is trying to move beyond years of sectarian carnage between Shiites and Sunnis and revamp its war-battered economy and oil sector.
A reduction in violence over the past year has raised hopes of a smooth transition as US forces draw down in Iraq ahead of a complete withdrawal by the end of next year.
The top US military commander in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, told reporters earlier on Monday that he still expected to reduce US troop levels in Iraq to 50,000 by the end of August, from about the current 96,000.
SLOWDOWN?
But Odierno also signaled he could slow the pace of this year’s withdrawal if the situation deteriorated following next month’s elections — a scenario he did not expect to see.
“I could do that ... I would have to seek approval to do that, but yes,” Odierno said when asked about the possibility he might keep troops above the 50,000 level past August.
Asked whether there was anything that neighbors like Iran could do to influence the timetable for withdrawal, Odierno said: “I don’t think it’s so much about Iranian interference that would delay our withdrawal, but it’s about the overall situation in Iraq.”
“And if Iran and any other country would cause some significant change in the conditions in Iraq, we certainly would have to consider our timeline,” he said.
BLOODY DAY
In related news, eight members of a Shiite family were killed south of Baghdad on Monday in the worst incident of a bloody day across Iraq that left at least 23 dead. The spate of attacks — and the fact that some of the family were beheaded — raised fears that insurgents are trying to re-ignite sectarian warfare .
A “terrorist group” using guns fixed with silencers shot and beheaded eight members of a single family in the village of Wahda, a mixed Shiite-Sunni village 30km south of the capital, the Baghdad security command said in a statement. It did not indicate who might have carried out the attack.
“The crime of killing my brother, his wife and six children, five girls and one boy, is an ugly and ruthless crime,” said Mahdi Majid Maryoush al-Qabi, a brother to the killed father of six. “I call upon the Iraqi government and the prime minister to execute the accused immediately at the crime scene so that they will set an example for others. They are devoid of any human values.”
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