Iraq government welcomes Study Group report
Source: Reuters
By Mariam Karouny and Mussab Al-Khairalla BAGHDAD, Dec 6 (Reuters) - The Iraqi government welcomed the recommendations made to the U.S. administration by the Iraq Study Group on Wednesday, saying its proposals that Iraqis should take the lead on security were similar to their own. "The report is in line with the Iraqi government's view that the security must be transferred to Iraqis and Iraq must assume the lead," Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih told Reuters. He and other senior officials, along with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, were briefed by video link by former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and other members of the Study Group just before they presented their report in Washington. Maliki met Bush last week and secured a promise of faster training and transfer of responsibility for Iraq's security forces. The prime minister said on Tuesday he did not expect the recommendations to be at odds with those principles. Maliki's office issued a statement saying he was briefed on the report and saw in it three main recommendations: that the national unity government should be supported, that Iraq's neighbours should be consulted and that U.S. forces should switch from combat to a supportive and training role. Salih said: "We, too, have called for international and regional consensus in supporting Iraq's transition to stability." A spokesman for the main Sunni minority bloc in parliament said he was disappointed the report contained no suggested timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal. "We don't want to see an immediate withdrawal that would cause chaos but we wanted a timetable for withdrawal," Saleem al-Jibouri of the Iraqi Accordance Front told Reuters. "We think the issue of addressing Syria and Iran is an admission of their massive interference." "We don't see it as necessary to increase the number of U.S. troops to train Iraqi forces. We just think they need to get more serious about it." A prominent lawmaker from the dominant Shi'ite United Alliance bloc, Abbas al-Bayati, said: "The ... report portrays an American understanding of the crisis in Iraq. To turn this into policy changes on the ground, the Iraqi government must be given a role to make it succeed. "The outline for a reduction in the size of troops is a common vision, but we should be more specific and say that as one Iraqi division is formed, one U.S. division can leave. "I think the report drew a horizon for the departure of U.S. forces and took out one of the long-standing demands we've heard -- for a timetable."
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