U.S. considers more troops for Iraq
Source: Reuters
(Corrects attribution in first paragraph to spokesman from Bush and introduces substitute third paragraph to back up change) By Tabassum Zakaria WASHINGTON, Dec 19 (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush is weighing a short-term U.S. troop increase in Iraq, a spokesman said on Tuesday as he denied reports of a rift between the White House and resistant Pentagon chiefs. With White House forecasts predicting Washington will spend more than $2 billion a week on Iraq into next year, a senior official declined to speculate on the cost of an extra 20,000 troops -- a figure U.S. media say Bush is weighing. A temporary infusion of forces into Iraq -- an idea the high-powered Iraq Study Group considered acceptable -- was "something that's being explored" as Bush considered options, White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters. Snow rejected a Washington Post report of a rift with the Pentagon. "I think people are trying to create a fight between the president and the Joint Chiefs where one does not exist," he said. But public support for Bush over Iraq is falling as U.S. and Iraqi casualty figures mount. U.S. Army medical experts said suicides among U.S. soldiers in Iraq doubled in 2005 compared with 2004 while a Pentagon report on Monday said violence in Iraq was at record levels. More than 2,900 U.S. troops and tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed since the U.S.-led invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein in 2003. A prominent think-tank on Tuesday joined the chorus pressing for a radical rethink on Iraq ahead of the expected announcement by Bush of a new strategy in January. The Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) said an international effort was needed to prevent Iraq collapsing into a "failed and fragmented state" whose Shi'ite-Sunni Arab conflict could draw in its neighbours in a proxy war. "Hollowed-out and fatally weakened, the Iraqi state today is prey to armed militias, sectarian forces and a political class that, by putting short-term personal benefit ahead of long term national interests, is complicit in Iraq's tragic destruction." The Pentagon said the Mehdi Army militia of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr had replaced al Qaeda as the biggest threat to security. Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who owes his position to Sadr's support, has vowed to dismantle the militias but has done little so far to rein them in. The Pentagon report said the Mehdi Army exerted "significant influence" over the government. NAJAF HANDOVER The ICG warned in its report of tensions between the Mehdi Army and the Badr Brigades, a militia loyal to the powerful Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. "Both Shi'ite paramilitary groups are engaged in a dangerous tug-of-war over the holy city of Najaf," the report said. It took issue with the Iraq Study Group's call to speed up the handover of security control to Iraqi forces, even as U.S. officials prepared to hand over Najaf on Wednesday. The Iraq Study Group recommended Bush withdraw most U.S. forces from combat in Iraq by early 2008. Iraq's vice president said he favoured a timetable for a withdrawal but that troops could not leave until Iraqi forces were able to handle the situation on their own. "A timetable can only be linked to serious efforts to reform the Iraqi military and security forces," he told a Washington think-tank. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Bush would not desert Iraq. "You will see this president remain strongly committed until Iraqis can govern themselves and sustain themselves," she told al-Arabiya television. She also echoed both the Iraq Study Group and the ICG in saying Iraq's neighbours, who include Syria and Iran, must play a role in resolving the crisis. "If I were a neighbour I would be especially interested to help bring stability in Iraq," she said. (Additional reporting by Ross Colvin in Baghdad and Caren Bohan and Andrew Gray in Washington)
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